What could be a better setting for a travel-related screwball comedy than an offshore military prison many argue violates the Geneva Conventions? Sounds like the makings of a major yuck-fest, right? Actually, the premise for the new Harold and Kumar film, which opens today, sounds vaguely amusing as summarized by the New York Daily News’ Joe Neumaier: “Following their munchies-fueled mishaps in the first film, the Jersey college guys head to Amsterdam, but thanks to paranoid airline passengers and Kumar’s bomb-like bong, they’re mistaken for terrorists and shipped to Gitmo.”

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In Alfonso Cuarón’s 2002 film Y Tu Mamá También, it’s a restless summer in Mexico City. Protestors are in the streets, and Tenoch and Julio—best friends who’ve just graduated from high school—are bored, their girlfriends overseas for the holidays. When an older woman in a failing marriage agrees to come along on a road trip in search of the perfect beach, it’s not long before the boys break one of the cardinal rules of their friendship—never sleep with another guy’s girl. Life lessons ensue. In this second installment of the World Hum Travel Movie Club, our occasional look at travel movies new and old, Eva Holland and Eli Ellison traded emails about the results. Part one appeared yesterday. Here’s part two.

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In Alfonso Cuarón’s 2002 film Y Tu Mamá También, it’s a restless summer in Mexico City. Protestors are in the streets, and Tenoch and Julio—best friends who’ve just graduated from high school—are bored, their girlfriends overseas for the holidays. When an older woman in a failing marriage agrees to come along on a road trip in search of the perfect beach, it’s not long before the boys break one of the cardinal rules of their friendship—never sleep with another guy’s girl. Life lessons ensue. In this second installment of the World Hum Travel Movie Club, our occasional look at travel movies new and old, Eva Holland and Eli Ellison traded emails about the results. Here’s the first of two parts. 

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Jon Krakauer’s book “Into the Wild”—and Sean Penn’s movie adaptation—have boosted tourism in parts of Alaska more than 100 percent, and the “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy caused a 34 percent increase in travel to New Zealand during its run a few years back, according to a piece in the April issue of Outside by World Hum contributing editor Frank Bures. Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” also inspired travelers, drawing 57 percent more through-hikers to the Appalachian Trail in the two years after his book’s 1998 debut. 

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More specifically, he asks, as the subhead of his rambling story in The Believer says, “What’s the difference between a road movie and a movie that just happens to have roads in it?” Klosterman’s attempt to get to the bottom of the question involves references to “non-dead author John Leland,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” It also includes equations, such as this:

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By now, you know the story. In 1990, a 22-year-old college grad named Christopher McCandless renounced his privileged upbringing, adopted the nom de drifter Alexander Supertramp, and turned to a new life of vagabonding. Two years later, Alaskan moose hunters found his corpse in an abandoned Fairbanks city bus outside Denali National Park. Jon Krakauer pieced together Chris’s odyssey and wrote the bestseller Into the Wild. Sean Penn‘s movie version of the book, which hit theaters last fall, arrives today on DVD. Eva Holland and Eli Ellison gave the disc a spin, exchanged e-mails and debated Hollywood’s adaptation of Into the Wild in the debut of the World Hum Travel Movie Club.

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Congratulations to Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, winners of the Oscar for best original song earlier this week for Falling Slowly from Once. It’s an excellent song from an excellent movie, but for me, the best performance comes toward the beginning, when Hansard, playing a busker, belts out “Say It To Me Now” on a near-empty Grafton Street in Dublin:

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In honor of this weekend’s Oscars ceremony, I’ve put together a few shout-outs to some of my favorite travel-related movie moments of the year. These picks make an odd collection, but each one made me curious about a place I’d never been, or made me see one that I had visited in an entirely new light.

Best Turning of a Romantic Travel Cliché on its Head
2 Days in Paris
Plenty of movies show people falling in love, in two days, in Paris. In fact, in a global vote for the most romantic city in the world, Paris would probably be John McCain to everywhere else’s Mike Huckabee. So it’s a bold move on director Julie Delpy’s part to chronicle the unraveling of a relationship there instead. 

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That’s the tagline for the latest Rambo movie, and according to Reuters, the people of Yangon are “going crazy” for it.

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The news just broke about Redford’s renewed plans to produce and star in Bryson’s book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, and already the knives are out. “If made correctly, this would be the funniest movie of the year,” writes New York Magazine blog The Industry. “It will not be made correctly.” I disagree. The pieces are in place for a great adaptation. 

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That would be $105,730, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Mary Forgione. She added up the cost for two people to follow in the footsteps of Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in the film “The Bucket List”—and to do it “in style,” taking into account that you’d want to “stay in each place longer than a Hollywood scene change.”

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A few months back I wrote about Sylvester Stallone’s latest addition to the “Rambo” series. Sly had wrapped up filming on the Thai-Burmese border right around the time that the military junta began cracking down on protesting monks, and he told the media that he wanted his new flick to help expose the cruelty of the ruling generals. “It would be a whitewashing not to show what’s over there,” he said at the time. “I think there is a story that needs to be told.”

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