Lonely Planet Presents Travels with OscarT
Red Carpet Tours of Best Picture Cities

MARCH 01, 2003 | OAKLAND, USA
Fascinated by a film's setting, audiences often turn movie locations into travel destinations. And for film buffs who'd rather explore the magic of a film's set than pine hopelessly after its actors, the following locations will not disappoint. On March 23rd one of the following films will be awarded the Oscar for Best Picture at the 75th Annual Academy Awards Presentation. Below, we offer you the inside scoop on the real star of each of these movies.

CHICAGO, Chicago, IL (Lonely Planet Chicago and Chicago Condensed)
• Pump Room A certain timelessness prevails at this Gold Coast classic, where jazz and dance trios and vocalists provide slow-dance swing every night. Real VIPs, or just lucky poseurs, sit in Booth One, a see-and-be-seen throwback to a previous, glamorous era.
• Green Mill During the mid-1920s the cover for the speakeasy in the basement was $10. A true cocktail lounge complete with curved leather booths, you can still sit in Al Capone's and listen to jazz in its swank setting.
• Hubbard Street Dance Chicago The preeminent dance group in the city, with an international reputation to match. The group has become known for energetic and technically virtuoso performances under the direction of the best choreographers in the world.
• Maxwell Street Police Station This station exemplified the corruption rife in the Chicago Police Department in the 1920s. At one time five captains and about 400 uniformed police were on the take here.
• Tommy Gun's Garage This dinner theater has chosen a phone number thoroughly in keeping with its name; converted into letters, the numbers 728-2828 spell out 'rat-a-tat.' The performers - beginning with the guy at the door, who talks with lots of 'de's' and 'dems' - have an infectious energy that comes from not taking the material too seriously. Soon the audience is singing right along.

GANGS OF NEW YORK, New York City, NY (Lonely Planet New York City and New York City Condensed)
• Lower East Side Tenement Museum Further explore the appalling conditions endured by many New York immigrants by joining an evocative tour through 97 Orchard Street, a tenement that housed more than 10,000 people from the 1860s to 1935. The Confino Family Apartment tour is great if you're with kids.
• Central Park Central Park is the great leveler. Created in the 1860s and '70s by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux on the marshy northern fringe of the city, the immense park was designed as a leisure space for all New Yorkers, regardless of color, class or creed.
• Museum of the City of New York This eclectic mix of historical items includes period rooms from the 17th to the 20th century and a scale-model of New Amsterdam shortly after the Dutch arrival.
• New-York Historical Society Founded in 1804 to preserve the city's historical and cultural artifacts, the collection is as quirky and unique as NY itself; only here can you see 17th century cowbells, baby rattles and the mounted wooden leg of Gouverneur Morris.

THE HOURS, New York City, NY (Lonely Planet New York City and New York City Condensed)
• Library Hotel Each room is dedicated to a different genre of books. Literati choose between Classics, Fiction and Poetry rooms.
• New York Public Library A giant treasure chest of history, knowledge and atmosphere. The special collections house the manuscript of TS Eliot's The Wasteland, Shakespeare's first folio and novelist Charlotte Bronte's writing desk. The heart of the building is the massive 3rd-floor reading room, with its cloud-painted ceilings and handsome long tables punctuated by original Tiffany lamps.
• Gotham Book Mart In business since 1920, this premier book purveyor is packed with the highest quality reads, accompanied by impressively knowledgeable staff. Its trademark shingle declares that 'wise men fish here,' and poets WH Auden and Marianne Moore have both dangled a line.
• Rubyfruit For a gay night out, this is a civilized spot with a welcoming regular crowd frequented by older lesbians. Weekend entertainment runs from piano-bar schmaltz to '50s bebop. Dinner is served every night.

THE HOURS, East Sussex, England (Lonely Planet England)
• Lewes An attractive old town that occupies a ridge above the River Ouse in East Sussex. The town is built on a steep ridge between the river and the castle ruins. Monk's House, 4 miles south of Lewes, was bought by Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard as a retreat from London life. Woolf later drowned herself in the River Ouse.
• Charleston Farmhouse Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister) and her husband Clive Bell lived in this Tudor/Georgian farmhouse in East Sussex. It remains a fascinating memorial to the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia and Leonard Woolf were important members).

THE PIANIST, Warsaw, Poland (Lonely Planet Eastern Europe and Lonely Planet Poland)
• The Jewish Historical Institute features permanent exhibits about the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as art and photographs relating to local Jewish history.
• Pawiak Prison Museum This museum occupies the former building used as a Gestapo prison during the Nazi occupation. Moving exhibits include letters and other personal items.
• Old Town Amazingly, all of the 17th- and 18th-century buildings around the square were completely rebuilt from their foundations after WWII. The reconstruction was so superb that Old Town has been included on Unesco's World Heritage List.
• The Warsaw Historical Museum Make sure you're there at midday to see the English language film which unforgettably depicts the wartime destruction of the city.
• Lazienki Park Piano recitals are held next to the Chopin monument in this large popular park every Sunday from May to September and chamber concerts are staged there in summer at the Old Orangery.
• Chopin Society and Filharmonia Narodowa The Chopin Society organizes piano recitals in its beautiful historic auditorium in Ostrogski Palace. Filharmonia Narodowa has a concert hall and a chamber hall. Regular concerts are held in both halls by the brilliant Warsaw Orchestra and visiting ensembles.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS, New Zealand (Lonely Planet New Zealand and Tramping in New Zealand)
• Weta Workshop Located on the southern tip of the North Island in director Peter Jackson's hometown of Wellington, the now world-famous Weta Workshop masterminded the film's special effects.
• Embassy Cinema If you make it to Jackson's home town, you might as well go see the film(s) a second time (third time, fourth time.) at their spiritual home - Embassy Cinema - in Kent Terrace. There are plans in the wind to put all the left-over props from the Rings films, presently housed at Weta Studios, into a Lord of the Rings museum in that fair city.
• TranzAlpine train On the South Island, catch the world-famous TranzAlpine train that leaves the town of Christchurch, and glides through the Canterbury plains to the foothills of the Southern Alps. It's a ride that takes you from the Pacific Ocean to the Tasman Sea - from Rivendell to the caves of Moria.
• National Parks Hikers (trampers) who are also Lord of the Rings fans might recognize several New Zealand settings. Among the parks in which Fellowship of the Ring was shot were Tongariro National Park, Kahurangi National Park, Mt Somers Conservation Area and Mt Cook National Park.
• Film Sites Hobbiton was filmed in the rural Matamata region in the Waikato among the gentle and mossy plains. Mount Doom was shot in Ngauruhoe, Central Plateau. And if you're in Wellington, Christchurch or Queenstown the information center should be able to direct you to local Rings sites of interest.