Video Review: PW’s Chose Your Adventure

 

Okay, I’ll admit I was wrong about ski vids. Well, not most of ’em. Most of ’em are just more time spent watching someone else skiing while I’m not. I can’t afford to spend that much leisure time watching any sort of video, let alone a ski video. On the otherhand, when I do bother to sit down to video out they can be the perfect escape – which pretty much sums up the latest flick from the PowderWhore crew – Chose Your Adventure.

What changed my mind from the latest PowderWhore vid being just more silly ski stimulation of the visual coretex was the opening segment of Chose Your Adventure . At first I figured it would be another senseless bit of drivel about a ski bum who let his adrenal gland control too much of his life and some bro brah explanation. You can drop that perspective in the round file after about four minutes into the film when you find out that, even though fanatical skier Daryl Finlayson figured his record 100 plus months of consecutive skiing was toast after he managed to break his neck in a bike crash, it wasn’t. The PowderWhores were there to document him rallying and keeping the streak alive as he managed to make a few tenuous and awful turns in terrain that posed enough challenge in the thin snowpack to make reinjuring his neck highly likely. Perseverance paid off.

You could say, “see, I told you the guys a lunatic,” but that little snippet said volumes about Finlayson’s perspective. It wasn’t explicitly stated but it showed how skiing can sooth a soul and keep a man’s spirit young as long as you do it, even posing a few character enhancing challenges along the way. Finlayson just decided skiing is how he keeps his motor running and he quietly explains at the end of his five minutes in the spotlight how it becomes more than skiing.

That segment alone is worth the price of admission. But wait, there’s more.

The point of view footage of Neil Provo ssnowboarding down a steep spine that crumbles underneath into an avalanche will make your heart skip a beat. Or Jake Saxon’s quest to compete with freeriders using training heels and landing on the podium. There’s some pretty damn good cinematography too, showing not just some superb athletes, but a sharpening of the skills these powder whores are using to make their movies.

All in all an impressive bit of ski porn, with a high level of skiing and an even higher degree of porn.

It’s showing for a few more weeks, or you can add a copy to your archives.

© 2012