Video Review: Poisonous Products

January 20th, 2012 | 11:05 am | Reviews | 8 Comments

The all-montage video died when YouTube became the destination for footage of people who didn’t have enough for a full part. “One hit wonder” status held by many 411VM Chaos heroes has found no modern equivalent. (Maybe if you have a few tricks in a friends section, and your name still comes up on autofill when you search it?)

Poisonous Products may be the first shot at the montage video’s modern revitalization in hard copy form. It is the latest video from Jeremy Elkin, who’s responsible for Lo-Def and Elephant Direct, two other concise offerings that documented skating in this small quadrant of North America (loosely bound by Montreal and New York.) The video is all lines, and all filmed in New York.

A combination of cellar door skate culture, and New York’s growing lack of reliable plaza spots has made the whole “skating shit you see in the street” thing fairly standard protocol. And luckily, this video never dips into annoying, “I majored in sculpture, so I’m going to skate this lump of concrete into a curb” spot selections. The absence of single tricks could easily go over your head because the all-line “concept” is so natural to skating here in 2012.

Winter Video Round-Up: Shake Junt, Nike SB & Sk8Mafia

December 15th, 2011 | 4:08 pm | Reviews | 5 Comments

Two white cups and I got that drink, could be purple and could be pink…

(Just realized the phrase “Winter Video Round-Up” originates from Boil the Ocean, so shout out to that guy.)

It will be snowing in a few weeks, and the average length of a skate video in 2011 is about as long as the original cut of Once Upon a Time in America. So, if you didn’t watch a lot of full videos this year, you’re about to have an opportune time to do so. (Just kidding, we’ll all probably just go to the bar, right?) Here are three that came out in the past few weeks, and will likely be the last major releases until the spring.

Shake Junt — Chickenbonenowison

Shake Junt is the only company with the luxury of being able to make a digestible, 68-minute video. They are self-aware enough to acknowledge their position as mainstream skateboarding’s last remaining purveyor of ignorance and hi-jinx. Their latest can thus justify straying away from the skate video’s natural function of being watched as motivation prior to actual skating, because the company’s videos serve as a superior post-session viewing experience. While watching Chickenbonenowison, thoughts of beer and similar intoxicants are as, if not more, prevalent as thoughts of nollie flips, which is why it was made to be viewed as an interlude between the day’s skate session and the night’s party-related activities (hopefully with a thirty pack and a group of friends.)

While we solved the question of why this video would allow itself to run so long, several other questions remain. For instance: It’s good to know that Antwuan Dixon and Shawn Powers have the same “Song of the Year 2011″ vote, but why on earth does he own a Drake shirt? How responsible was QS in the video’s inclusion of a lighter, more rap-oriented Andrew Reynolds and Bryan Herman shared part, given that we fixed the two that originally appeared in Stay Gold? And finally, could Steve Nash possibly be Bryan Herman’s father?

Video Review: The Mandalay Express

November 11th, 2011 | 1:25 pm | Reviews | 3 Comments

The Mandalay Express is a sequel to last year’s more expansive 10,000 Kilometers, which was a train ride through two continents’ worth of skate spots. Mandalay is confined to the southeastern quadrant of Asia, near where the previous video left off, and covers four countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar, via “78 hours of buses” in 30 days. The crew for the trip consists of Casey Rigney, Kenny Reed, Denny Pham, Geng Jakkarin, Laurence Keefe, John Tanner, TF personality / nose manual mastermind Dan Zvereff, and the video’s creator, Patrik Wallner.

Travel videos are made to tap into our instinctual fascination with new skate spots, even if we experience them on a vicarious level. Patrik could make this same video another eight times in regions that have experienced a similar lack-of-interest from mainstream skateboarding (for example, non-Brazilian South America, or even Africa, though probably not the Middle East), and it would be just as interesting. Watching it, we could only imagine what sort of skateable things exist outside of major cities on this planet, as one of the video’s most amazing architectural discoveries is a bust-free, half-completed religious theme resort in the middle of Myanmar, which is described as looking akin to a mini golf course.

Video Review: Fuck Yinz – Volume 2

October 28th, 2011 | 9:41 am | Reviews | 9 Comments

A few weeks back, the crew at One Up Skateshop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sent over Fuck Yinz Volume 2, their 30-minute promo video from earlier this year. The DVD-R came wrapped in a size small digi-camo tank top with their logo on it. The G-Man, who once received a medium tee from Vinny Raffa only to respond with “You don’t have a 2X?” lamented it was not a few sizes larger.

One Up is the only skate shop in Pittsburgh, and it is run by a friendly, tight knit crew, that has always been accommodating with sharing spots and skating around with us whenever we would make the six-hour drive out there. It’s the sort of shop that every city should have. Their video has parts from several names that have began receiving more coverage in recent history (Kyle Nicholson, Zach Funk, Austin Kanfoush, Nick Panza), plus a whole bunch of lesser-known dudes who still shred just as hard (Dan Peindl, Grem Trails, Rob Dumas, Bill Cunningham, Justin Funk, and others.)

Video Review: Not Another Transworld Video

June 8th, 2011 | 12:31 pm | Reviews | 13 Comments

The past seven or eight years of Transworld DVDs seem like a blur, but specific memories of a Peter Smolik comeback, Dylan Reider’s first major impossible tailgrab, and Richie Jackson’s striped bell bottoms left lasting impressions. The videos have always been vehicles to hype up the latest to-be / just-recently-turned pro, with one or two classic parts that will continue on with a prolonged shelf life. Transworld got worried about any potential redundancies in their video formula, and self-referentially named their latest Not Another Transworld Video. Maybe it is not another Transworld video because it is filmed (mostly? all?) in HD (this website isn’t an expert on formats by any means), with the assistance of some footage that looks like it came from a GoPro.

Although Transworld is a year late for the Waka Flocka train, the recently-pro Theotis Beasley skates to “Hard in the Paint” for the video’s opener, and it works wonderfully. The part is a bit more lighthearted than your typical Transworld section, in a way that makes it feel like the best part you’ve seen in a homie video. They chop up the skating with candid shots of iPod diddy bop sessions, Facebook browsing, and best of all, him standing in a pool wearing a full suit and tie. The skating switches between tech manual and ledge tricks, large bigspin heelflips, flip-in tricks down hubba ledges, and the patented double backside flips, double back heels, and even double half-cab flips. After this part, it may round him out to be the most versatile dude on Baker. (Speaking of Baker, they need to put Forrest Edwards on already. Nevermind.)

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