( USA TODAY )- For the adventurer in you, there's Sean Penn's Oscar-nominated Into the Wild. If sports are more your thing, you can relive the action of this year's Super Bowl win by the New York Giants.
A boy becomes a man the hard way - by dying, and Sean Penn moves to the next level as a major filmmaker.
Christopher McCandless was the Emory University grad who jettisoned his savings to go it alone in Alaska's wilderness, a story that inspired Jon Krakauer's book. Penn's movie runs just under 21/2 hours and carries its length impressively: character-driven yet capturing the elements. It is labor-intensive to tally the memorable performances, not just from Emile Hirsch and wonderful Oscar nominee Hal Holbrook but more than a half-dozen more.
Two featurettes include Hirsch's weight-loss regimen of going from 155 to 115 pounds to convey his character's despairing final days and Krakauer's description of his own youthful solo Alaskan trek.