Kauai’s Oscar Night

Kauai is ready to celebrate a George Clooney win for his performance in Descendants. All the scene locales for the movie are portrayed in Kauai Trailblazer, a book that goes back 13 generations of printings and with a fifth-edition 2012 edition now available. With strong competition, the Descendants is no sure thing, but win or lose, when the spotlights are turned off the Islands will still glow in warm tropical sunshine (although today Kauai happens to be under a floodwatch).

Some of the Descendants was also shot on Oahu and the Big Island—and those locales are also shown in Trailblazer guides (though you can find Waikiki without assistance). Director Alexander Payne and his team made a movie that stayed tight on its characters, but they also revealed the heart of the islands, with the help of a soundtrack of slack-key music and background scenery that threatened to steal the show.