6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 3.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
An in-your-face look at extreme sports and the daredevil athletes that risk their lives for the thrill of adventure. The cameras were rolling when Ross Clarke-Jones surfed through El Niño tidal waves, when a ferocious twenty day snow storm lured four snowboarders to rocket down Alaska's steppest mountainsides, and when rock climbing expert Lynn Hill scaled the notoriously difficult rock formations of Utah to display in a big way the larger-than-life feats of athletes willing to risk death in order to celebrate the passion of living.
Director: Jon LongDocumentary | 100% |
Nature | 74% |
Short | 16% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Adrenaline junkies are a fascinating lot, at least when they’re out getting their heart rates pumping. Strangely, these same folk seem almost preternaturally calm when they’re not scaling the sides of insanely high mountains, or, alternatively, whizzing down a mountain at 80 miles per hour on a snowboard. National Geographic’s Extreme, originally an IMAX release, takes a look at a good assortment of these folks and if that look is somewhat short (coming in at a running time of a mere 44 minutes) and at times quite disjointed and episodic, it does deliver the goods, at least partially, in providing a bird’s eye view of what these people experience in their recreational lives.
Extreme starts with a desaturated shot (a technique that will be repeated throughout several bridging segments) of a mountain that may have you screaming that your new HDTV or Blu-ray player is malfunctioning. But be patient for a moment and you’re soon transported to some extremely colorful and lush scenery of a Hawaii beach. Within moments, you’re actually underwater, watching two deep sea surfers learning to expand their lung capacity by carrying 80 pound rocks across the ocean floor for as long as they can hold their breath. These brave souls need to up their breath holding capability because they don’t just surf—they “big wave” surf, being towed out by Jet-Ski’s to take advantage of waves so large they couldn’t be accessed by simply paddling out to them. Big wave surfer and Hawaiian water patrol member Brian Keaulana waxes philosophic about how the ocean speaks to those who can hear, I guess sort of like Circe’s siren call to Ulysses, and perhaps just as deadly at times.
Well, that's one way of learning to hold your breath longer.
Extreme arrives from its IMAX version with a 1.78:1 AVC encoded image that is remarkably sharp and artifact free. You can actually see individual snowflakes and water droplets in the various segments, bringing an often breathtaking level of detail to the excellent photography. Colors are beautifully saturated, sometimes amazingly so, as in the ocean sequences, where the gorgeous aquamarine and teal of various waters will delight most viewers. The only drawback, as noted above, is the fact that this was originally projected on a screen of immense proportions, meaning that some of the wide shots (and there are many, as might be expected) simply swallow up the human element whole.
Two decent enough soundtracks are offered, a DD 5.1 at 48 kHz streaming at 640 Kbps, and a DD 2.0, also at 48 kHz, streaming at 192 Kbps. While certainly not up to lossless Blu-ray standards for your basic summer blockbuster, these certainly suffice well enough for these proceedings. A generally amiable score by Soulfood (along with occasional source cues by such groups as The Cure) is well mixed into the proceedings. Everything here is clear, though surround channels are largely forgotten except for occasionally ambient moments like water sounds and the like. There's nothing here that is going to knock your high def socks off, but there's certainly nothing to complain about per se--these are two completely acceptable DD soundtracks for what is, after all, a documentary built mostly around visuals.
The only real extra (apart from trailers for other National Geographic product) is The Making of Extreme a 23 minute standard def documentary that spends way too much time with the filmmakers doing the talking head routine and way too little time actually showing us how stuff was filmed. In fact a lot of the actual behind the scenes footage showing the documentary being shot is included in the credits sequence for the documentary itself.
Extreme offers some excitingly visceral footage (although it might have been fun to have had a "first person" view at least for the downhill skiiers), but no real through line or cohesion. The IMAX format offers crystal clear imagery, but vistas that are sometimes so wide you need to put your player on pause to spot the actual human. All in all, though, this makes for a worthwhile rental for anyone who enjoys seeing someone else risk their life.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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