Airsoft Movie Reviews

The other diciplines like in-line, surfing, etc. are great. I guess I just wish there was more mountain biking to it. If you do want to get, I would probably suggest getting it used.

More details: "The Endless Summer Revisited" tells the story of the filming and distribution of the original "Endless Summer" as well as a little bit about its sequel. It runs chronologically, startingwith some early footage of Bruce Brown as a surfer and then progressing forward. Interviews shot on video are mostly of Bruce Brown, Dana Brown, and Robert August, with appearances by Greg Noll, Steve Pezman, Dale Velzy, Hobie Alter, Nat Young, Wingnut, Pat O'Connell, and some other old guys whose names I don't recall.

I got a few chuckles from Noll taking digs at Brown whenever he could get a chance, and there was some interesting grainy footage here and there from the original film that I hadn't seen before. They show a little bit of from-shore shots of the filming of the water camera footage, and Brown tells the real story of how Cape St. Francis was discovered by Mike Hynson. Hynson, by the way, is not interviewed at all for this film. The lack of his perspective is a major gap. The film winds up with details that I hadn't heard before of how they found a distributor for "The Endless Summer," including taking the film to Kansas during a snowstorm to prove that it could be shown to a wider audience. By the time they get to the sequel, the makers of "Endless Summer Revisited" have run out of gas, and don't have much to say other than "it's the same thing only better." There's not much additional footage at all from that film, which is disappointing since they must have a lot of it in the can.

Summary: Don't buy it, rent it if you're interested in surf media history.

What's not? Pretty much everything else:
-The video itself is maybe 15 minutes long. More than a dollar per minute of the main program.
-There is no video showing how each team made it to the Super Bowl, which is extremely disappointing.
-While there's historical context for previous Super Bowls, it's all basically text.
-The worst part of all: there is about a 5 minute advertisement that cannot be skipped, no matter what, every time you load up the DVD. Why publishers ever decided this was acceptable is beyond me. At least on VHS, you can fast-forward through the previews. Here, you cannot. I'm not sure who the bright guy was who thought it would be effective advertising to force consumers to watch an unnecessarily long ad multiple times, but hopefully we'll never see an utter debacle like this again.
-Given that there is a 5-minute ad for RCA that everyone has to watch, did they really need an RCA watermark on the bottom right of the screen? Do one or the other.

Save yourself some money and buy the VHS version instead. It's much better.

...

This disc does include a fairly impressive special features section, though, which includes many of the key plays from various angles and different play-by-play radio commentaries and narrator analytical breakdowns. And although the picture quality is grainy at times (which could be attributed more to the source film rather than the transfer to DVD), the overall visual clarity is pretty close to top-notch. I was especially struck by the clarity of the Dolby™ stereo sound. Unfortunately, despite NFL Films'™ laudable efforts to maximize the interactivity factor, the brevity of the main presentation left me feeling like I just didn't get my money's worth. And being forced to sit through a couple minutes of ads that I was unable to skip or fast-forward through only added to the aggravation.

My recommendation to you: if you're thinking about buying this particular DVD, give it a rent first-- you might just save yourself a fair degree of disappointment as well as a couple o' bucks.

'Late

It is difficult to see the kata being performed clearly, and due to the absence of audio in the clips (the only sound is the narrator and the funeral scene at the end), the breathing cannot be heard.

The video is blurry, dark and visually "noisy". The funeral scene at the end is so dark, it is difficult to see anything at all.

Don't waste your money

If you are a Goju Ryu student, especially from Yamaguchi style, you may want to have this DVD in your collection. If you are a general practitioner from other style and looking for some references and instruction material, this is not what you are looking for. Morio Higaonna's Kata series is a better instructional aid, but this Yamaguchi DVD is definitely a wonderful historical document.