Ski film is lacking
Sawyer Sutton
Issue date: 11/24/08 Section: Entertainment
This past Saturday I visited the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, an organized, but somehow also warm and informal establishment, for the latest Warren Miller Film Company's ski thriller, Children of Winter. The film featured a medley of sports, mostly alpine skiing and snowboarding, with some mountain biking, ski joring and sailing thrown in for good measure. It is tricky to believe though that this disconnected series of winter sports shots is something, which would have done Warren Miller, the original filmmaker and narrator proud. Often ski movies have some sort of plot involved, often times it's concerning one group of people and their previous year's ski trips. This film offered clips of professional skiers and snowboarders doing some very impressive things, but at the intermission, I found myself wanting to go home already.
Admission to the film was $17, and seeing how much was spent on helicopters, sailboats, Jeeps, and lift-served skiing, it's not surprising, yet in retrospect I'm not sure I would have gone to the film even if admission were free. Another complaint, which will simply make me sound needy, but nonetheless, is that there was little of the swag offered to the average person at typical ski movie premieres. Before the film, the organizers spent 35 minutes stumbling about the stage offering t-shirts, water bottles, and some other items of clothing as door prizes. At the premiere of this film in Albany, viewers were given free lift tickets to reputable ski resorts, just for showing up.
Getting back to the film, there were bits, which one would think were interesting. A skier heliskiing managed to fall 60 feet over bare rocks and walked away unscathed. In Silverton, CO, the film took the form of a miniature documentary explaining how the founders of the country's only backcountry ski resort hand-dug the footings for a 3,000-ft lift line. Somehow the film managed to make this boring. The camera work failed to impress where the skiing managed just fine. This film also has much better potential of being interesting if it were cut differently and if it had a different style of narration. Johnny Mosely narrated in an over-hyped fashion sprinkled with the chintz of skiing clichés. Warren Miller, the skier and filmmaker, managed a much better job when he was at the helm.
Another qualm I had with the film was the lack of freeheel action given the odd combination of skiing and snowboarding in the same movie. When one of the skiing groups went to Iceland, they used alpine touring equipment, I would have expected at least one or two skiers in the film to ski on tele gear. In addition to the odd diversity in sports was the diversity of filming, a couple of minutes of the film were taken from another recent ski film; PoorBoyz Productions' Reasons, which was more interesting and more compelling to watch due to the amazing camera work and a concrete storyline. In conclusion, I would not recommend this film unless you manage to garner a free lift ticket from the showing and start an illegal bidding war. In other words, the only reason to view this film, apart from knowing any of the athletes in it, is of course if you're being paid to watch it.
Admission to the film was $17, and seeing how much was spent on helicopters, sailboats, Jeeps, and lift-served skiing, it's not surprising, yet in retrospect I'm not sure I would have gone to the film even if admission were free. Another complaint, which will simply make me sound needy, but nonetheless, is that there was little of the swag offered to the average person at typical ski movie premieres. Before the film, the organizers spent 35 minutes stumbling about the stage offering t-shirts, water bottles, and some other items of clothing as door prizes. At the premiere of this film in Albany, viewers were given free lift tickets to reputable ski resorts, just for showing up.
Getting back to the film, there were bits, which one would think were interesting. A skier heliskiing managed to fall 60 feet over bare rocks and walked away unscathed. In Silverton, CO, the film took the form of a miniature documentary explaining how the founders of the country's only backcountry ski resort hand-dug the footings for a 3,000-ft lift line. Somehow the film managed to make this boring. The camera work failed to impress where the skiing managed just fine. This film also has much better potential of being interesting if it were cut differently and if it had a different style of narration. Johnny Mosely narrated in an over-hyped fashion sprinkled with the chintz of skiing clichés. Warren Miller, the skier and filmmaker, managed a much better job when he was at the helm.
Another qualm I had with the film was the lack of freeheel action given the odd combination of skiing and snowboarding in the same movie. When one of the skiing groups went to Iceland, they used alpine touring equipment, I would have expected at least one or two skiers in the film to ski on tele gear. In addition to the odd diversity in sports was the diversity of filming, a couple of minutes of the film were taken from another recent ski film; PoorBoyz Productions' Reasons, which was more interesting and more compelling to watch due to the amazing camera work and a concrete storyline. In conclusion, I would not recommend this film unless you manage to garner a free lift ticket from the showing and start an illegal bidding war. In other words, the only reason to view this film, apart from knowing any of the athletes in it, is of course if you're being paid to watch it.
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