Travels in Alaska, review of a great movie, Anchorage, Alaska

by bicska review

► added on 25th of May, 2009

If you really like traveling you must watch this film!

I really really recommend it to you!

Into the Wild is a 2007 film based on the 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer about the adventures of Christopher McCandless. It was directed by Sean Penn, who also wrote the screenplay, and stars Emile Hirsch, Jena Malone, Marcia Gay Harden, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart, William Hurt and Catherine Keener. It premiered during the second edition of the Rome Film Feast. The film premiered outside of Fairbanks, Alaska on September 3, 2007, and the film was issued in limited release on September 21, before a wide release on October 19.

Into the Wild recounts the life of Christopher McCandless, a real-life National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS)|student-athlete at Emory University, as told by his sympathetic sister. In response to his parents, whom McCandless perceives as materialistic, manipulative, and domineering, McCandless destroys all of his credit cards and identification documents, donates $24,000 (nearly his entire savings) to Oxfam, and sets out on a off-road|cross-country drive in his well-used but reliable Datsun towards his ultimate goal: to travel alone to Alaska and experience its nature firsthand. Along the way, he abandons his automobile in the course of a flash flood, to hitchhike after burning the remainder of his dwindling cash supply. He acquires a Perception Sundance 12 open-water kayak and goes down the Colorado River, into Mexico, and later returns to America via freight train to Los Angeles. Taking a circuitous route, he encounters many unconventional individuals along the way, such as a group of hippies, a farm owner (Vince Vaughn), and a lonely leather worker (Hal Holbrook) who offers to adopt and be a grandfather to McCandless. McCandless purposefully trudges onward to his final destination, arriving in the wilds of Alaska nearly two years after his initial departure. He starts living in a "Magic Bus", used as a shelter for moose hunters. McCandless finds joy in living off the land and begins to write a journal of his adventures. As the spring thaw arrives and he seeks to return from the wild, McCandless is cut off from civilization by the torrents of a swollen river (one of his few admitted fears is of water). As his food supply of small game dwindles, he resorts to eating indigenous plants. Although he consults a book that he brought along in order to identify edible plants in the wild, he confuses an edible and a poisonous variety, which shuts down his digestive system and causes him to starve to death. In his final hours, he continues to document his demise in a painful and dramatic denouement.

Into the Wild is the first solo studio album by Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder based on his contributions to the soundtrack for the film Into the Wild (2007). It was released on September 18, 2007 through J Records.

fleeting appearances." Vedder is primarily responsible for the songs in the film while film music composer Michael Brook is acknowledged in the film's credits for composing the film's original music. Vedder said, "Michael made great choices with the way he orchestrated the score...Our pieces of music meshed together pretty well for not having approached it in a way of making sure these puzzle pieces fit. They just did."[8]

Vedder's cover of the song "Hard Sun" (originally written by Gordon Peterson who performed under the name of Indio on the 1989 album, Big Harvest) features backing vocals by Corin TuckerSleater-Kinney. Vedder collaborated with singer-songwriterJerry Hannan on the song "Society", written by Hannan. Both songs appear in the film along with a slew of other folky ballads by Vedder of other folky ballads by Vedder.