Geek_the_Greek Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 (edited) Having depended on this type of thing to get my telemark stoke on, I thought I'd give a review of the 4 flicks UP Productions puts out, as well as their instructional vid "Free Time". Overall, I like ski vids. Being a tele skier, I like tele ski vids more. I watch these every fall and jump around the living room, giddy with the stoke of the upcoming schralping. So I'm biased, and like watching all of them, even the lousy one. All these vids have the typical "music video" format (except for Free Time), which is predictable, but fun. The music is pretty consistent throughout - I think it's pretty good - a lot of G Love, and other bands you probably won't know (or at least I didn't), but work well. Unparalleled I: A journey to the roots of telemark skiing This was the original "modern tele vid" that came out in 1998 or 99, I think. The camera work is a bit simple, with too many cuts. Fast-paced is one thing, but when you never see more than a couple of turns before the next shot, it seems too ADHD-ish. Still, the vintage footage of the roots of skiing is way cool, and the skiing is good. 3 stars (out of 5) Unparalleled II: Free World The second vid has more good skiing, and better camera work. In fact, this is the best vid of the series in some ways - good skiing, good camera work, not too much cheese, no over-reliance on slow-mo stuff (which is often an excuse for having a dearth of real footage). The annoying distractions are the long-boarding stuff (the analogy that tele skiing is the long-boarding of winter sports is tenuous at best, and leads to way too much irrelevant 70's footage of long-board surfing - yah, I'm talking about in the water). The B&W WWII intro "Telemark saves the free world" is cute, but too long, and feels like filler. 3.5 stars Unparalleled III: Soul Slide This is the introspective movie in the series. Starts out reflectively talking about a friend who was killed up in Alaska, and goes from there into all sorts of philosophical musings. Great skiing shots - very nice camera work, good light, sweet moves. Maybe a bit too much slow-mo, but it is arty, and works. The cheesy bits (background irrelevant pop-philosophy crap about life), girl meditating by the stream, afro-wig skiers doing dumb shit on shorty skis, irrelevant shot of dude playing guitar in the desert) are unfortunate, but the good skiing parts make up for it. 4 stars. Unparalleled IV: The Lost Season Apparently this is the vid that Bones (filmmaker Josh Murphy) had trouble releasing after a lot of corporate backers withdrew their support. I don't know the full story, but the lack of funds shows. Badly. Instead of good skiing shots, we get all sorts of little stories about the skiers. Some of them are kind of cute (watching Ty Dayberry build his first pair of skis), and some of them are totally irritating (watching one of those dudes at his off-season asphalt paving job?! WTF?! Another dude driving a logging feller-buncher?!). This is the weakest flick of the bunch, and barely qualifies as a ski vid. If you like a lot of rail tricks ( ) maybe you'll be into it. 2 stars. Edit: after writing all this, I went home and watched this one again. I suppose it's not actually that bad - there is still good skiing (mostly park stuff, tho, but not all), but something about it - maybe the music, the lack of different venues, the lack of helicopter budget, or whatever - makes it all kind of sleepy and boring. Well, not boring, but definitely slow-paced, sad and wistful, like the skiers all knew this was the Unparalleled swan song, their last chance to make such a vid. Anyway, the result is that it's still not really a good stoke, even though you feel for Ty and Max and Cody and the rest. I'll up it to 3 stars and leave it at that. Free Time: Techniques for Modern Free-heel Skiing This is the instructional vid. I'm not sure if anyone can really learn how to tele ski from a video, but it's entertaining to go through the paces. Plus, you get to learn some of the lingo - what some of those sick air moves are called. I suppose I may have learned a thing or two by watching it. 3.5 stars. I guess there are lots of these movies out there, although way fewer for tele skiing than alpine or snowboarding. I recently saw Sessions: Total Telemark 5 (from Tough Guy Productions). It featured many of the same folks as the UPP vids, and was at least as good as Soul Slide (better in some ways). Good times. Unparalleled Productions Tough Guy Productions (Sessions) Edited January 19, 2006 by Geek_the_Greek Quote
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