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STUDIO: Shout!
MSRP: $49.98
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 390 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
· The Making of Higher Ground
· On Location in Bulgaria
· Epic Conditions: Sneak Peeks
The Pitch
Slow Motion. Snow.
The Humans
Too many professional skiers to mention. The disembodied voices of Warren Miller and Jeremy Bloom.
The Nutshell
There is a legacy to Warren Miller’s extreme sports films. Or at least that’s what these films are trying to get across. There are three films in this box set. Each one is around two hours. There is no story. There are no characters. Nobody comes to any startling revelations. These movies are 120 minute commercials for the next Warren Miller film — and for the sport of skiing and other snow-related activities.
That being said, what’s here isn’t bad…it’s just that there’s waayyyy too much of it.
The Lowdown
I made up a formula while watching this box set: For every minute of narration in the films, there will be about three minutes of slow motion skiing, accompanied by trendy, bland, rock music. Three films are included in the set: Impact (2004), Higher Ground (2006), and Off the Grid (2007). The films are narrated by Warren Miller (who sounds a lot like NPR’s Carl Kasell) and part time professional skier/part time wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, Jeremy Bloom.
There is so much skiing and snowboarding footage of people speeding down the side of a huge mountain, that it all starts running together, to the point that it’s both boring and that you’ve seen it before. This isn’t to say that the footage isn’t impressive. The landscapes are breathtaking, and the physical prowess of the skiers can’t be denied. These guys and gals jump off cliffs and land head first in the snow, narrowly avoid being crushed to death by avalanches, and careen down mountains that are more rock than snow. It’s just that there are enough sweeping mountain range shots to make Peter Jackson weep.
All three films contained in the set don’t do anything to differentiate one from the other. In all of them, we get to follow along on a globe trotting adventure as we follow along professional skiers and X-Game winners as they attempt to conquer snowy slopes around the world. This would maybe be more interesting if the film didn’t jump locations every five minutes and if we could actually get to know any of the people involved. Unfortunately, when they do let the camera linger on the athletes for more then ten seconds, it either feels incredibly staged (it normally is) or it makes them look like shallow, hippie, jocks.
Weak attempts to string a loose narrative together are made in each film. It usually involves a cheesy, meaningless, conversation between two or more of our athletes, and at the end of the conversation they’ll work in the title of the film in the last sentence before diving out of a helicopter. Sometimes worse then that though, is the pseudo-pop-philosophies of the skiers. It gets real old, real fast, hearing them say over and over again things like "Man, I just live for the white stuff." or "Give me some fresh powdered snow and I’ll be happy for hours." Seriously, if that’s your entire philosophy on life then maybe you’ve been spending too much time in oxygen-deprived mountainous environments.
It truly is a globe spanning set, though. Any place where there is a remote chance of ski-ability a few skiers and a camera will be there. It doesn’t matter if it’s in India, or France, or Colorado.
The most fascinating part of the box set is the second disc included with Higher Ground. There is a one hour Making Of, that goes into incredible detail about the making of the film. We actually get to hang out with the filmmakers as they try to set up cameras in difficult places, schedule helicopter times, and coordinate events in foreign countries. The best part of the documentary covers the best segment of the entire set, and it’s not even about skiing. It’s about two men named Dave Barlia and Andy West, who go base jumping out in Chamonix, France because it’s illegal in the states.
There’s a joke here…I just don’t know what it is.
There is so much footage of this that they have to spread it over three sections of the documentary, and the footage that they collect is amazing. These guys wear gliding suits, jump out of helicopters, and then careen over mountains at speeds of 100 miles per hour, sometimes only ten feet from the ground. The footage that they get ends up taking up no more then two minutes of running time of Higher Ground, and that’s too bad, because I could have watched two hours just about those guys.
The Package
There are three regular sized dvd cases in a cardboard slip case. The special features (excluding The Making of Higher Ground) aren’t anything to write home about. The sound and picture quality are all top notch. If you’ve got a large, flat screen television with a nice sound system, and are a big fan of skiing…or watching people ski…then this is definitely the set for you.
6 out of 10