BudgetTravel

"Brokeback called and said they wanted to match Wyoming," says Tina Alford of the Alberta Film Commission. "I said, 'Perfect, done.' Clint Eastwood, who shot Unforgiven here, said it best: You can get five different looks in Alberta--badlands, prairie, rolling hills, mountains, and grasslands."

Then again, Clint Eastwood never made a movie quite like this. Released December 9, director Ang Lee's moving film concerns lovers Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall), who discover their feelings while tending sheep on "Brokeback Mountain." When they return to their small-town lives, the mountain becomes a metaphor for a better world, one where they can be themselves--and be together.

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It's certainly one of the most physically beautiful metaphors you'll ever see. The Brokeback Mountain scenes were filmed in Kananaskis Country, provincial parkland in the Rockies (search "Kananaskis Country" at travelalberta.com). Location manager Darryl Solly says his team chose the Upper Kananaskis Lakes campground and day-use areas such as Mud Lake and King Creek. As the movie proves, it's an area perfect for exploring via horse. To find a stable that leads rides, check out ranchcanadianrockies.com.

The crew stayed in the ski town of Canmore. "You fly into Calgary," says Solly, "and then it's only a 45-minute drive." Canmore has the services you'd expect--though it's still wild. "The Marriott is a good place to stay," Solly advises. "It's the most remote from the town but closest to the park." Summer rates for the Residence Inn by Marriott start at $129 (800/331-3131, marriott.com). Solly also recommends the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis. "You wake up and there are deer and elk and moose outside minding their own business. People always ask how the animals are kept so tame." The Delta Lodge's bed-and-breakfast packages start at $145 (403/591-7711, deltahotels.com). 

The town scenes were a challenge for Solly: "There's an economic disparity between Alberta now"--where oil has brought a fair amount of prosperity to small towns--"and Wyoming in the '60s and '70s." So the production cherry-picked from among eight different locations. One they featured quite a bit was Fort Macleod, 90 minutes south of Calgary. "It's a gorgeous place," says Tina Alford. "A stereotypical prairie town with two streets, sandstone buildings, and a great old-time hotel called the Queens Hotel." Rates at the Queens Hotel start at just $38 (403/553-4343).

3. Memoirs of a Geisha

Inside the secretive city of Kyoto, there's an even more secretive society  

The geisha in question is Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang). As a young girl, she's abruptly removed from her fishing village in Hokkaido and sold to a geisha house in Kyoto. The crux of the story is her training in, and mastering of, the arts of the geisha, under the tutelage of Mameha (Michelle Yeoh).

Shooting in Japan is expensive, so the producers of the long-awaited adaptation (due out December 9) of Arthur Golden's best-selling 1997 novel spent three months scouting locations around the world. Director Rob Marshall certainly had experience making one place sub for another; he shot Chicago in Toronto.

Much of the action in Memoirs of a Geisha takes place at studio soundstages and sets that the crew built outside Los Angeles. For garden scenes, they used the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, near Pasadena. "We did a scene from the baron's cherry blossom viewing party there," says Patty Whitcher, unit production manager (626/405-2100, huntington.org, $15, $6 kids; closed Mondays). The end of the film was shot at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (415/752-4227, $3.50). The Hokkaido scenes were filmed south of San Francisco in Moss Beach, at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. It has a harbor seal rookery and extensive tide pools (650/728-3584, fitzgeraldreserve.org, free).

The Memoirs crew did go to Japan, packing as much as they could into two weeks. The emphasis was on exteriors, particuarly at temples, which have remained more or less unchanged for centuries. "We spent a magical day at Kiyomizu-dera, a temple on stilts," says Whitcher. All the shots of "epic sunrises" were done there. "What was really neat was seeing all of the elderly people starting their day with sunrise yoga." The temple is open daily from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (011-81/75-551-1234, $2.60).

After Sayuri meets the Chairman (Ken Watanabe) and he gives her some coins as a gift, she offers them to the Buddha as thanks. Those scenes were shot at the Yoshimine-dera temple (011-81/75-331-0020). Whitcher learned that people go to specific temples depending on what they want to pray for or whom they'd like to honor. "This temple, at the very top of the Kyoto mountains, was probably the most calming place I've ever been," she says. "So I asked one of the monks what is special about the temple. He said it's where people come to heal their broken hearts."

As readers of Golden's novel learned, Kyoto's most famous geisha neighborhood is Gion. It's one of the prettiest parts of the city, and it still holds its secrets very close. Meeting a geisha is costly and difficult to arrange, but if you walk around Gion early in the evening you may spot them hurrying to their appointments. Gion Corner is a touristy production displaying seven types of traditional Japanese arts, including a dance performed by maiko, or apprentice geisha (011-81/75-561-1119, kyotoguide.com/gion_corner, $24.50). Meanwhile, the International Hotel Kyoto, across from Nijo Castle, hosts free maiko performances in its lounge every evening (011-81/75-222-1111).

Anticipating interest in Kyoto as a result of the movie, Kintetsu International has created a package covering airfare from New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles on American Airlines, five nights at the New Miyako Hotel, transfers, and tours of various landmarks, including Kiyomizu temple. Rates start at $1,229 (800/422-3481, japanforyou.com).

2. Pride & Prejudice

With apologies to Keira Knightley, the real estate steals the show

A ridiculously reductive plot summary: Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley), whose family could use some good fortune, takes what seems like forever to get over her negative first impressions of the very wealthy Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen). The pleasure of watching Lizzie and Darcy realize they're right for each other is mitigated only by the nagging awareness that you'll never marry so well.

Of the eight historic buildings used in Pride & Prejudice, two make a deeper impression. "We were in the most beautiful houses in England," says location manager Adam Richards, sighing. "Chatsworth and Burghley."

Chatsworth stands in for Pemberley, Darcy's palatial estate--and in fact, the 16th-century Chatsworth was rumored to be Austen's inspiration for Pemberley. It's the seat of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and a three-hour drive from London (two hours by rail; a one-way ticket to Chesterfield, 11 miles from Chatsworth, starts at $11). Chatsworth's size is staggering: There are 297 rooms in the main house (one-third are accessible; you wander at your own pace), 105 acres of formal gardens (including a hedge maze made with 1,200 yew trees), and 1,000 acres of parkland (011-44/1246-565300, chatsworth-house.co.uk, $17 for house and garden). Note: Chatsworth is closed December 21-March 15.

While Lizzie was unfazed by her first encounter with Darcy's snobby aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Judi Dench), anyone else would be cowed simply by laying eyes on Burghley ("Rosings" in P&P). The house was constructed between 1555 and 1587 by Sir William Cecil, Lord Treasurer for Queen Elizabeth I. Subsequent members of the Cecil family filled the house with objets d'art from their travels. "The paintings are just stunning," reports Richards. Particularly notable are the Heaven Room and the Hell Staircase, painted by Antonio Verrio. "The Heaven Room is where the drawing room scene was shot, and the Hell Staircase leads off that room. It's a big double staircase painted with images of hell." Burghley is a mile from the village of Stamford (see below). The house is open April 1-- October 29 (011-44/1780-752451, burghley.co.uk; $16, kids $7).

The Lincolnshire town of Stamford, a two-hour drive from London, subbed for Austen's village of Meryton. "We chose Stamford because there were no trees," says producer Paul Webster. "When you look at any drawings of market towns"--back in the time when Austen's novel is set--"there's no greenery." Webster recommends a pair of establishments in Stamford: a hotel called the George (011-44/1780-750700, georgehotelofstamford.com, doubles from $204, includes breakfast) and the Crown Inn, a pub (011-44/ 1780-763362). "They're funky but not stuffy," he says.

Visit Britain, the British tourism organization, is distributing a map of the locations (from the film version and the much-loved 1995 BBC adaptation), and has loaded visitbritain.com with film-related information. Likewise, the East Midlands region, which is home to Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and the Peak District, where most of P&P was shot, created its own website, visitprideandprejudice.com.

Finally, Austen aficionados won't want to leave England without stopping at two attractions: the Jane Austen Centre, in Bath (011-44/1225-443000, janeausten.co.uk, $10.50), and Jane Austen's House and Museum, in the village of Chawton, a mile from Alton, which is only a half-hour train ride from London (011-44/1420-83262, jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk, $8). The former explores Austen's time in Bath; the latter is the house where she lived from 1809 to 1817--and where she finished Pride & Prejudice.

1. March of the Penguins

It's the year's big success story--and there's a new star on the adventure travel circuit

There was no such thing as a blockbuster documentary before Fahrenheit 9/11 came out in 2004. Now there's another, and it couldn't be more different. French director Luc Jacquet and his crew spent 13 months deep within Antarctica filming March of the Penguins. It has grossed $73 million, and forever anthropomorphized everyone's favorite formally dressed bird.

Each year, thousands of emperor penguins abandon the ocean waters and waddle hundreds of miles inland. Once at their breeding ground, they find a partner to monogamously mate with. When the female lays an egg, it's passed to the father, who cares for it (amid 100-mph winds and in temperatures 70 degrees below zero) while the mother makes the brutal walk home, returning two months later with food stored in her belly for her chick. The father, by then starving and cold, heads back to the water and waits to be reunited with the mother and their baby, who follow soon after.

Spotting emperor penguins in person is wildly expensive, since the majority live inside the Antarctic Circle, far from the peninsula where the bulk of tour operators go. "Mating occurs in the most remote and inaccessible place on earth," says Denise Landau, executive director of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators. "Plus it happens at the beginning of the Antarctic winter, thereby assuring the penguins' privacy." TravelWild Expeditions' 15-day tour goes to where the emperors are, but it starts at $12,000 per person.

Catching a glimpse of other penguin species is much easier. Canadian outfitter G.A.P Adventures runs a 19-day cruise of the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands, for $6,470 per person (it departs from Ushuaia, Argentina, and the price does not include airfare; 800/708-7761, gapadventures.com). You get a shared triple cabin aboard the 108-passenger Explorer, all meals, visits to scientific research stations, shore excursions, and stunning views of king, chinstrap, and gentoo penguins (as well as seals and orcas and other whales). The next two departures are December 11, 2006, and January 16, 2007.

To see penguins without the bitter cold--and the expense--visit Australia's Phillip Island Nature Park, 75 miles south of Melbourne. The two-hour, ranger-led Ultimate Penguin Tour leaves at sunset with no more than 15 visitors in a group (011-61-3/5951-2800, penguins.org.au, $45). You go to protected Summerland Beach, where the aptly named "little" penguins--at 13 inches tall, they're the smallest of all 17 species (adult emperors are more than four feet tall)--pass in front of you en route to their burrows. Once the sun sets, you watch them with infrared binoculars. You must not touch them, of course, and photography is forbidden. But the photos in the gift shop benefit penguin conservation--and unlike the March of the Penguins crew, you don't have to worry about frostbite.