We had an absolute blast testing this suit. There’s something to be said for trying to destroy the fancy new setup you just got in the mail. Most questions you may have about this kit will be answered by pressing play on the video below, but this suit has some sexy little details that aren’t immediately apparent in a little embedded screen. I especially like the little zipper-pull shovels. I’m a sucker for bells and whistles.
real deal review
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Real Deal Review: Orage LTD
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Real Deal Review: Steamboat
Thursday, January 21st, 2010As an East Coast boy, Steamboat always seemed to me to be the epitome of a Warren Miller segment from the early 90’s. Picture it- an opening shot with a pair of cowboys riding horses with skis on their back, a bunch of little kids getting towed down Main Street by some other cowboy into a kicker. Then there’s the four minute montage with lots of bump skiing closeups and Billy Kid destroying tree sections while somehow managing to keep a cowboy hat with a silver and turquoise broach on the front secured to his head. Countless ads from old SKI magazines that I read in the dentist’s office showed Steamboat’s front side stocked with thousands of moguls glowing in the pinkish dawn sun. It always somehow suggesting that a) people go on vacation to ski moguls, and b) no one on the East Coast knew what powder was or wanted to ski it. Needless to say, I wasn’t really sure what I’d be getting when I visited the ‘Boat this December, days away from 2010 and at least ten years since I’d seen a Warren Miller movie (by the way, middle fingers in the air to the Bonnier Corporation!).
Sundown Express, scene of literary & spiritual investigation for the duration of the stay.
Real Deal Review: EDIAS
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
There isn’t much to say about Everyday is a Saturday. If you like Poorboyz releases and find that they fulfill what you want in a ski film, then this one will likely fall into the same category. If you tend to find them visually and conceptually overwrought, there’s no growth demonstrated that would change your mind. It’s the same formula, and damn near the same movie they’ve made for years.
Tanner gets the call for narrating duties, and it’s largely what we’ve come to expect from him. There’s the suburban-Rasta patois & clothing with some discussion of “passion” thrown in to assure us that nothing’s changed. Frank Raymond gets about 15 seconds for the absolute best rail footage in the video, and then quickly moves aside for the standard cast of characters. Theory-3 import, Charley Ager, is the only person with lifestyle footage that comes across as remotely affable or relatable. It’s immediately apparent that he’s having fun in the mountains, without any footage of him sitting on a couch and telling us so. Who’d have known you could capture that in a film without a contrived monologue? Finally, Dane Tudor absolutely slays. It’s the kind of skiing that snaps you out of the trance you’ve fallen into and makes you say, “Damn, this dude is too good.” It’s against the rules to end a paragraph with a quotation, so I’ll say that this movie is exactly what you expect it to be. Whatever that is.
Real Deal Review: Traveling Circus
Friday, September 25th, 2009
I pledged (kinda) to hate on the shitty movies that come out every year, rather than provide the standard ski mag review of “great riders, great locations, great movie.” So it’s a little dangerous to start with such a sappy bullshit review, but I love the Traveling Circus series. It is probably the only film project in skiing that I have no qualms about. The damn thing just succeeds on so many levels:
- The hosts (Will and Andy) aren’t committing any of the sins every skier commits when they are asked to speak on film. These sins include- overdoing a thug persona by making hand gestures and mugging for the camera, attempting to get intellectual with it and philosophizing about the meaning of style or the transcendence of the mountains (I’m talking to you Nimbus), and finally…they aren’t self-consciously posturing /overdoing it. This final sin is relentlessly transgressed by the host of another popular webisode series that shall remain nameless (rhymes with “thug wife”) to the point that I have to look away from the screen because his awkwardness makes me feel squeamish.
- It’s a new form. Sure the video-blog format is already kind of played out in internet media, but within skiing it serves a different purpose. It’s a bridge between the old format of annual full length ski movies and the newly ubiquitous web edit. It works as a marketing tool for the sponsor companies (important bc that’s how those fancy cameras are paid for), but it maintains the immediate and personal feel of a midseason edit by your favorite unknown rider.
- There’s a plot, and it doesn’t suck. Ski film companies have tried several times to imbue their films with some sort of cohesive theme, but it usually fails miserably. You’ve got the absurdist radio show of Tanner’s WSKI, MSP’s (lame ass) attempt with Yearbook, or Poorboyz more recent film Reasons. They all SUCKED.
- Traveling Circus doesn’t suck.
