Eye Candy #469 - "First Descent"

First Descent: More and more, I’m finding the X-Games much more entertaining than the more conventional Olympics. We really get the impression that the athletes are trying to top themselves year after year, not just for the benefit of winning a medal, but for the enjoyment of the fans, who follow some of the athletes in a very cult-like fashion. They make you care about their sport moreso than the U.S. Women’s Synchronized swim team.  Also, if you watch X-Games, you know Shawn Farmer, the red-haired, freckled Olympic gold medalist who can pretty much do anything on a snowboard his mind can imagine. Helluva way to make a living.  This documentary juxtaposes the history of snowboarding from its original pioneers, with an all-era group of them descending mountains in Alaska that most people have never even seen before, much less skied or snowboarded down. Some of the mountains attempted look phenomenally dangerous as they are breathtaking.  Snowboarding also has the benefit of being one of the better filmed sports in recent history so there is a ton of archive footage in the film as well.  This film just didn’t have the *oomph* of “Dogtown and the Z-boys” and “Riding with Giants”. There is no mysticism with snowboarding, no mythical “waves”, no mythical figures from early in the history of the sport. It was real easy to get other stuff done around the apartment with this in the background.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”