Oscar Locations

Pay homage to some of this year’s Oscar-nominated films by visiting their locations.

Friday Night

Start off visiting landmarks from the noir thriller “L.A. Confidential,” nominated for nine Academy Awards including best picture. Pierce Patchett’s Dundee Drive residence is better known to architecture buffs as the 1927 Lovell Health House. A modernist construction with stacked cement planes jutting out of the hillside, the private residence was designed by Richard Neutra. 4628 Dundee Drive, off Commonwealth Avenue, Los Feliz.

Next, do a drive-by of the 62 year-old Crossroads of the World, one of the nation’s first shopping malls and the headquarters of Hush-Hush magazine’s Hudgens (Danny DeVito) in the film. The structure opened in 1936 and is anchored by an ocean liner (the central building) surrounded by retail shops in designs that represent different international styles. 6671 Sunset Blvd. at North Las Palmas Avenue, Hollywood.

For more than 50 years the Formosa has been a hangout for silver-screen stars like Lana Turner, who is mistaken for a look-alike of herself while sitting in a booth at the Formosa in “L.A. Confidential.” Order a stiff martini at the blood-red bar where the walls are still papered with black-and-whites of famous faces. 7156 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 850-9050.

Saturday

Die-hard fans of the unsinkable movie “Titanic” may want to drive to Baja California and visit the Titanic Museum, near the site of the film’s Rosarito Beach location. The museum is on the 20th Century Fox lot in Rosarito, Free Road, three miles south of Rosarito. Saturdays, 2 to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. $5.

Or, just drive to Long Beach to see artifacts from the real-life 1912 Titanic voyage, ranging from binoculars to a soup tureen to dinner plates and full champagne bottles. “Titanic: the Expedition” also features enlargements of vintage photographs, including shots of survivors in lifeboats, displayed side by side with photos of the research and retrieval process that first uncovered the boat’s treasures in 1982, one half-mile beneath the sea off the Newfoundland coast. 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach. Daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. $6, children under 4 are free. Through mid-April. (562) 435-3511.

Sunday

Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles is such a tempting spot that “Jackie Brown’s” Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson) has only to promise a visit to lure lackey Beaumont to his death. Get the car out and take a drive to one of Roscoe’s four locations for divine chicken and fixin’s. (We don’t recommend riding in the trunk.) 1514 N. Gower Ave., between Hollywood and Sunset boulevards, (213) 466-7453, and three other locations.

Much of Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” (for which Robert Forster earned a best supporting actor nomination) takes place in the South Bay, including the pivotal bag switch scenes in Torrance’s Del Amo Fashion Center. Shoppers won’t find a Billingsly store, but they will find the Macy’s stand-in, as well as more than 300 specialty stores in this mall bounded by Sepulveda and Torrance boulevards, and Madrona Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard. (310) 542-8525.

In “Boogie Nights,” the tawdry tale of the 1970s and ‘80s porno business for which both Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore are Oscar-nominated, the San Fernando Valley itself plays a role in the film, with Sherman Way figuring into an important (and violent) sequence. But it is the family-style coffee shop Du-Par’s that Jack Horner (Reynolds) chooses for his first business meeting with Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg). With father figure Horner at his side, den mother Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) across the table, and Du-Par’s homey fare to boot, how can Adams say no? Du-Par’s, 12036 Ventura Blvd., Studio City and two other locations. (818) 766-4437.