Blogs

©Perry Kibler

There´s an undeniable allure for travellers to embark on a cinematic pilgrimage to the locations that have captured our imaginations on screen. One such destination which promises to enchant, with sweeping vistas and rugged landscapes, is Utah, the setting for Kevin Costner's epic four-film series Horizon: An American Saga, the first of which was just released at the end of June. With a budget of $100 million, the films series a dozen years of the settlement of the U.S. West befo

Mountain Lake Lodge, AKA Kellerman’s Resort: Where Dirty Dancing Comes to Life. Photo courtesy of Mountain Lake Lodge

Is there anyone who doesn’t know you don’t put Baby in a corner? Or who doesn’t automatically hum along to The Time of My Life? Imagine revisiting Dirty Dancing at its original locale – and visiting the site where Baby and Johnny practiced “the lift” – possibly the most famous dance routine ending ever? Welcome to Mountain Lake Lodge in Pembroke, Virginia channeling the Catskills

Recently at the Castel Monastero, in the rolling hills of Tuscany’s Chianti region, the famed medieval, five-star one-of-a-kind hotel hosted a Bulgari art exhibit of famous actresses of the 50s and 60s. The famed Italian jewelry house, Bulgari has brought back a star-studded collection of esteemed precious stones worn by dynamic divas of the 50s and 60s. On screen goddesses who personified an era of elegance, style and taste. The Bulgari exhibit included photos of  Italian starlets Sophia Loren

Looking back at the 23 James Bond movies made so far, it’s hard to pick one that is widely considered by fans and critics alike to be the best. But chances are that License to Kill is unlikely to be too many people’s favorite: Considered to be one of the weakest movies by the critics, Tom Hibbert of Empire described Timothy Dalton’s performance as “quite hopeless” while Entertainment Weekly slammed the movie’s Bond girl Pam Bouvier as “a nagging pest”. Others however have defended the movie, cl

Costa Rica has become the darling of the international news media even more than usual lately. The popular tropical vacation destination is being featured in everything from news articles to cute commercials.

Well, roll out the red carpet and get the spotlight ready, because Costa Rica is about to premiere to the world in a new Hollywood feature film.

Releasing today, the new romantic feature film After Words, starring Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden (Fifty Shades of Grey, Pollock, Myst

As we travel, we check off places that are on our Bucket List. Being film buffs, many of the things on our list are related to movies we have seen over the years.

We recently checked off another “to do” from our list by skippering the authentic “African Queen,” the boat made famous by Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in the 1951 Academy Award Winning film of the same name.

The “Queen” is presently docked at a destination also made famous by Bogart in the Florida Keys, Key Largo.

Finding the Qu

by Andy Jarosz
 

Every so often a movie comes along where its on-screen plot is overshadowed by the story of how the movie was made and the problems that had to be overcome to reach the final cut. The 1982 movie Fitzcarraldo, directed by Werner Herzog, is a prime example.

Manaus' Teatro Amazonas

Using the neo-Renaisssance Amazon Theatre (inuagurated in 1986) in Manaus, Brazil, for part of the filming, Herzog tells the story of Brian Sweeney “Fitzcarraldo” Fitzgerald, an Irish entrepreneur who

by Marita Acosta

Just this week came word that the Corleones' mansion in New York City is up for sale. Well, you know...the place where it was filmed...to the tune of $2.89 million. More details on the house below, which has entered pop-culture immortality as a key part of the Big Apple stomping grounds of the notorious fictional Mafia family, becoming a classic travel circuit for millions across the world.  And not only are the wiseguys of this powerful movie trilogy based on Mario Puzo’s nov

Sometimes when you watch a lousy movie, the only compliments you can muster are about the scenery. For many people this was the case with the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, widely criticized for the quality of the 3-D graphics as well as the dubious plot. In fact, the landscapes of the Canary Islands were the only feature of the film to have emerged with credit. Even the actors spoke very highly of their own surprise in discovering the natural diversity and dramatic views across Gran Canari

The exact origins of capoeira are uncertain, although most people recognize that it was created by the 16th-century African slaves who were shipped across the Atlantic. The movements contain unmistakable native Brazilian influences. What noone can deny is that capoeira has been around for almost 500 years and is now as powerful a cultural symbol of Brazil as it ever has been.

Capoeira – The Early Years

Practicing a form that's part dance, part martial art, a capoeira fighter is distinguished

In 2002 the movie Cidade de Deus (City of God) brought to the eyes of many a picture of Brazil that was uncompromising but gave a glimpse of life inside one of Brazil’s many favelas. Telling the story of an ordinary young man and his struggle to survive in a rough, tough world, the movie won over 50 awards and received four Oscar nominations. But how does the drug-fueled gun-toting world of the movie compare with the reality of life within the favelas in Brazil?

Brazilian Favelas

The term favel

The movie Anaconda was a box office hit when it was released in 1997. Starring Jennifer Lopez and telling the story of a group of documentary makers who make enemies with a giant anaconda in the Amazon rainforest, it brought the drama of the jungle to cinema screens and TVs all over the world. Much of the movie was shot in the spectacular landscapes around the  Brazilian city of Manaus.

Anacondas: How deadly?

It doesn’t take long to realize why they chose the anaconda to play the leading role in

From Stage to Screen

Best known as a Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof has been delighting audiences for almost half a century with its blend of boisterous and mournful melodies. The Tony award winning story of Tevye, the humble milkman with five young daughters and a feisty wife, has played out thousands of times on the stages of Broadway, London’s West End and in theatres all around the world.

With such a popular stage play it was inevitable that a movie version would be made and in 1971

Guitar case full of weapons, guns swinging from each hand, whole bars full of villains wiped out by one man and his sharp shooting. It is surely the hallmark of only one man, an actor who can keep both a male and female audience simultaneously breathless (if for very different reasons). Antonio Banderas as “El Mariachi” cuts a lonesome, brooding and very dangerous figure wandering through small town Mexico; dangerous that is if you are on the wrong side of the law in the violent world of the Mex

Rather like the best 1970s disaster movies or the science fiction B-movies of the 1960s, the spaghetti western still boasts a strong and dedicated following many decades after the last movie was produced and the dust, quite literally settled. And like these other genres, even those who look back fondly at the age of sharp shooters in dusty saloons remember the films not so much for their artistic merit as for the joy they brought to a whole generation of young movie fans.

What Were Spaghetti W

Primero, Segundo, Tercero, Cuarto, Quinto, and… and… Sixto, ahhhh…  And the sixth time was a charm (not that the first five weren’t), and Sixto Diaz (Jesus) Rodriguez came into this world on July 10, 1942, the sixth son of Mexican immigrants working in war-time Detroit, more than three years before atomic bombs would fall on Japan and twenty-five years before rockets would land men on the moon.  No one would have predicted that his life would have been easy, but no one would have predicted that

It all started as a bit of an accident. A big fan of Cuban music, American guitarist Ry Cooder had been invited to Cuba to work on a collaboration with local musicians and two well-known musical stars from Mali. When the Africans were denied entry visas to Cuba, Cooder set about creating his Plan B: A recording of Cuban son music with local musicians.

A Star is Born

The resulting album, recorded in only six days, included the title track Buena Vista Social Club and was released to critical acclaim

A funny thing happened on the way to the movies.

Forty million international movie-goers opted to travel to a place where a movie they loved was shot.
Travel Daily News (TDN) reports that these travelers made their travel plans and chose their destinations based on a movie they saw in 2012. Obviously, as TDN says, filming in a destination is "clearly a very efficient driver for attracting new visitors."

Makes sense. As Mashable reported, old Hollywood had its star system and magazines. New mov

by Andy Jarosz

If ever a movie has perfected the ability of making its audience hungry it’s surely this Mexican classic. Released as Como Agua para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) in 1992 and based on the 1989 novel of the same name by Laura Esquivel , the story is set in the 1910s in revolutionary Mexico. It features sweeping landscapes, smoldering passions (literally) and the most bitter family politics, yet the central theme of traditional Mexican cooking and its power to evoke the wil