Film tips

Filmmaker and director Tommy Joyce is no stranger to the extremes of nature. His work has taken him across the world to camp alone 6,700m up a mountain in Nepal, chart the frozen wilderness of the Antarctic Peninsula and negotiate the dust clouds and intense 49C heat of the Sahara Desert. These are testing places for people and equipment — whether he’s capturing someone at the peak of human endurance or a landscape in just the right sunlight, it’s work that comes with both challenges and rewards.

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Music soundtracks our travels, kills time and distracts, entertainingly. In Berlin, which has more than 300 train stations and where you can see everything panoramically from the overhead S-Bahn, a well-loaded smartphone or MP3 player turns a journey into a film with a score.

Luxury hotels in Thailand will be hosting "The White Lotus" season three cast in February, and they're just as swanky as the last locations.

Deliciously appealing, Stanley Tucci has returned to Italy this month to film an all-new, 10-episode TV series for National Geographic network that celebrates food and travel in the land of his ancestors. It is tentatively titled Tucci: The Heart of Italy. Pairing Nat Geo’s renowned expertise—creating stunning photography and evocative narratives—with Tucci, a multiple award-winning American actor, is a five-star recipe for success. Ever since the cancellation of Tucci’s previous culinary destination show, CNN’s Searching for Italy, which won Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series, fans have enthused on social media about their hopes to watch more of Tucci unearthing tasty morsels and showcasing lovely landscapes in Italy’s distinctive regions. In this fresh eye-opening iteration, which will also air on parent company Disney+, insatiable Tucci will step away from crowded spots to discover serene behind-the-scenes surprises, scrumptious sustenance and compelling stories, while talking and toasting with professional chefs, home cooks, farmers, fishers, winemakers and more. Expect classic Tucci charm, so smooth and inviting at times that he himself seems like an irresistible dessert. Among this year’s colorful touchdowns: Lazio, Marche, Sicily, Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto.

Universal is just as well known for its rides and theme park lands based on entertainment powerhouses like Super Nintendo World and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter as for its blockbuster movies because of one iconic attraction — the world-famous Studio Tour.

Over the years, Disney has dressed Scotland in fiction, overlaying its land and cityscapes with films and fables, and the nation has delivered a magical performance every time. Its varied landscapes, the architectural design of its largest cities, and the drama of its wildernesses have allowed filmmakers to create almost any world they choose within Scotland’s borders. From medieval fantasies to gritty sci-fi to tickertape parades in the Big Apple, the decades-long relationship between Scotland and storyteller has resulted in some of the most striking images in Disney’s deep catalogue.

Visitors have been flocking to the Thai island of Koh Samui for more than three decades, but it is about to get even more popular. Why? Because the third season of Mike White’s HBO hit ‘The White Lotus’ is expected to begin filming there next month.

My hometown — Victoria, British Columbia — is a popular tourist destination known for its whimsical architecture, beautiful gardens, and horse-drawn carriages.

To hold Dolce Vita—the new silk-swathed hardcover released by luxury publisher Assouline—in my hands feels as though I am embracing the essence and sensuousness of Italy itself. Sweet Life! Written by Italy connoisseur Cesare Cunaccia, this hefty (10-by-13-inch, 6.4-pound, 320-page) coffee-table tome showcases almost 200 expressive and evocative photographs that invite lovely lingering perusal. If you’re seeking an armchair traveler’s page-turner for yourself to kick off 2024 or a Valentine’s Day gift for a dreamer of things bellissimo, thispleases aplenty. Dolce Vita is a visual joy ride, chic and engaging. Indeed, gazing at its images fuels my fantasies of sliding onto a Vespa or into an Alfa Romeo, breezily wheeling from Venice to Milan to Genoa to Florence to Rome to Naples to Sorrento and beyond, through undulating verdant landscapes and glistening seaside ports, savoring fantastic cuisine, then sailing to Sicily for more. Prego!

Jason Momoa is usually splashed across our screens as Aquaman, but his latest venture is a little closer to home than the DC Universe. On the Roam, a new eight-part docuseries streaming on Max, sees the Hollywood actor travel across the US on his motorcycle—making stops to meet with homegrown artisans and craftsmen, many of whom are his friends and mentors, along the way. From the restoration of a 1936 Knucklehead bike in both Tennessee and North Carolina to guitar restoration with Guns n' Roses very own Slash at Gibson guitars’ headquarters, the show is Momoa at his most authentic, describing himself as “a vagabond, a dirtbag, a roamer” seeking out “the artists who are doing things out of their own shops and back yards.”

Utah’s iconic Great Salt Lake is drying up which will have catastrophic consequences if something isn’t done soon, so state officials are taking unprecedented steps to head off what some are calling an environmental disaster on the order of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

“The people on this cruise ship continue to give me dirty looks everywhere I go,” Marc Sebastian announces to his 1.5 million followers on TikTok. He is filming in a cabin onboard the ship, addressing the camera in classic reality-TV confessional style. Text floats above his head. It reads: “day one on the 9 month cruise.”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Sundance Film Festival. It’s a big milestone for the festival, which takes place January 18-28 in Park City, Utah. The years following COVID have been muted, with parts of the festival taking place virtually. This, of course, impacted party attendance and the overall festival vibe, which traditionally does a full takeover of Park City’s historic Main Street corridor. The sense is that 2024 will restore Sundance to its full capacity, which also means Hollywood will truly bring the party to Park City this year.

If you've ever watched a Hallmark movie, you may have seen my hometown, Victoria, British Columbia. With its charming, storybook-like setting, it's become a filming hotspot.

There’s nothing in skiing quite like the Sundance Film Festival, which takes over Utah’s Park City in a way even the Christmas and New Years holidays cannot, with lodging sold out, restaurants, bars and sidewalks jammed, and roads closed to traffic.

When watching Maestro, it’s easy to feel as though no world exists beyond the one shared between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Monteleagre. The film, for the most part, is concerned only with the couple, their domestic life, and the turbulence of their romance. But wherever a sense of place is cultivated to its fullest potential—in a dreamy mid-century Big Apple, for example, or on the Bernstein’s Connecticut estate, and especially across the pond in the English town of Ely—there’s magic to be found. These are the real sidewalks that Lenny and Felicia strolled along, the homes they shared, and the concert venues where he played and she waited in the wings.

The English country house is a familiar character, but often the fictional houses seen on screen are the same repurposed National Trust properties. For Saltburn, about a young man who is drawn into the tempting world of the aristocratic Catton family, writer/director Emerald Fennell wanted to find a unique house that could also serve as a single location. She and production designer Suzie Davies discovered a 127-room privately owned manor in Northamptonshire that hit every mark. (As part of the agreement to film there, no one involved in the production is allowed to disclose the name of the house.)

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Waking after a night at sea, I was elated to look out of the cabin window and see the city of Algiers, blazing white. The splendid capital rises from its Mediterranean bay in improbable layers, from the arches of the French colonial port to the warren of the Casbah, to the clear blue sky, all overlooked by the Martyrs’ Memorial, which represents the country’s fight for independence. “Never was town more nobly placed,” wrote Edith Wharton, who visited by yacht in 1888. In the cabin, my toddler son was still sleeping. I looked at him and thought, we’ve made it, baby: all the way from West Yorkshire to north Africa by rail and sea in 48 hours.

Gaddings Dam was built as a mill pond in about 1833, when the Industrial Revolution positioned West Yorkshire and the north of England as the centre of the developed world’s cotton-spinning and weaving mills. It sits above the market town of Todmorden, out of sight on the moor of Langfield Common, with a sandy beach that claims to be the highest in England.