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Watching now. Impressions:
Through 3 and a half minutes I disagree with everyone's views on what the sport is and why they do it. "we're adrenaline junkies and we like to push the limits and being scared of getting hurt is what makes it fun", etc. Not only is that totally wrong, imo, but also plays right into the mainstream narrative of freeskiing just being about getting a rush from doing something stupid and dangerous.
Around 4 minutes, JF has the most insightful comment about why he and the NCAF started this sport, gets 15 seconds of time to speak. Making me wish this whole documentary was just a Q&A with those guys.
Aaron Blunck is hilarious. Just his manner of speaking. He sounds like what I think the personification of NS would be like.
At 7.5 minutes, why is this documentary supposedly about Freeskiing just talking about a few US athletes? If it was a US team profile vid, maybe it should have been presented as such. Of course it couldn't be because Tom and Aaron aren't on the Sochi squad, but it's pretty transparent when it isn't released until the first week of February and it's basically just footage from Momentum.
Hey look Tom going on record about how bad Women's freeskiing is. Seems to be happening more and more this season. "Where the boys were 4 or 5 years ago", Bowman, as she learns an uphill 3 in the pipe. Uh huh. Hey, go look at the winning run from men's X slope four or five years ago and tell me what girl would contend in those comps. Or, hell, here's a slope run from ten years ago, and it's better than anything in Women's freeskiing right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpftGSyM5rE
Emotional shot after rambling incoherent treatise on concussions in snowsports. Okay. I guess the point of that was basically the tears.
And we're talking to people about whether they'd be okay dying while skiing. FML. We're back to "this is just about arenaline and doing scary stupid dangerous shit". Come the fuck on.
Okay the back and forth about freeskiing and whether it should be in Sochi has potential... and it's an opportunity completely wasted because the only perspective we get is from Devin Logan and Tanner Hall and Maddie Bowman. Look, when Tanner sounds like the reasoned and insightful participant in a free exchange of ideas, there's a problem. Wait, nevermind, Tom makes at least one brief point on creating new divisions within the sport.
23 minutes and something in... Hah, Devin's "you had your chance now it's our turn". Did you just compare yourself to Tanner Hall? The face of the sport for the better part of a decade? Jesus, I hope you've got a switch triple or something to justify you being in any way connected with the current "turn" of leading people in the sport. It's Tom's turn and Petit's turn and Goepper's turn, maybe, but don't lump yourself in with those guys.
Hey looks like some comp footy from this winter, 25 minutes into the 40 minute program.
Oh shit, that helmet cam footage of the knee injury, fuck my life. I have my blown ACL on video and I've never watched it. I think my reaction was similar. Christ, I wish I hadn't seen that.
28 minutes in, and we switch to women's pipe, and I can no longer tell the difference between practice and finals.
Back to Tom, and this is just making me feel terrible for him.
Haha and a 5 second compilation of each of ABM and Russ, marking perhaps the first time a non-american has been mentioned in this video more than 30 minutes in. MURICA!
33 minutes in and I don't think anything Maddie Bowman has said in this entire thing has enlightened anyone on anything involving skiing.I can't say this without sounding like a bit of a jerk and I'm sure they're all good people and they're actually pretty funny, but if you were going to ignore 95% of the names in this sport could you not have chosen more than one (Tom) who can actually speak at all usefully about the sport? I know, Maddie's and Devin's and Aaron's job is to ski in comps, not provide commentary. This is really on Vice, not them.
35 minutes and Chris Logan is notable because he's Devin's brother. Well then. Someone want to get Vice a copy of Sunny? I know Rogge must have one. I think this is forgivable because in the context it doesn't really matter that Chris even knows how to ski, to say nothing of skiing like a boss. But still. Jarring.
37:30 - "Come on air bear!" Hahaha I bet he wishes that was never shot. Wait did she just help him figure out how to click into his binding?
39 - Apparently she didn't do a very good job of it.
42 - And apparently Devin and Maddie are intent on making Tanner's point, or at least via Vice's editing they are: apparently everything in life is about making the team. That's... not... yeah. I'm sure this was unintentional.
43 - Really badly written "where are they now" titles. You're named to a team or you earn a spot, you don't "win" a spot, it's not the fucking lotto.
And credits. All I can say is "meh". Still think you could've done that much better. I was kind of hoping for a newschoolers-oriented version of Steep, so I guess I was setting myself up for disappointment. Any time someone wants to make that movie I'll watch.
