Ah, the Oscars happened last night, and while at one point in my youth I was able to force myself to somehow be interested in the hype, that is no longer possible, and I'm easily content to allow myself to watch the Wolves lose a hard fought game against the Lakers instead of sitting through the ballyhoo, back-patting, and general Hollywood masturbatory spectacle that the Academy Awards is, and always was. (Not even a heartthrob of a host like Wolverine can make me check in, and wanting to see what Miley Cyrus is wearing makes me feel creepier and dirtier than normal.)
I did however take a peek last night to see who won and who didn't, because I had my eyes on two of the few movies that I had seen, the amazing Waltz With Bashir, and the equally awesome Man on Wire. Bashir came up empty handed, but Man on Wire came through with the Best Documentary. Now this introduction has gone way too far into Oscar talk, and I feel as dirty as I did when I google image searched Miley Cyrus. Enough digression.
Man on Wire, as the photo above might have clued, is about the balls out barging of the Trade Tours and the ultimate tight rope act that ensued, lasting some 45 minutes or so. The film details the planning, preparation, the actual go at it, and then the resulting events. Simple enough...My reasoning for bringing it up here, is that even though it centers around a rather eccentric and egotistical French-man, his lover, and a bunch of stoners (at this point I was trying to contrast...), I couldn't help but find some sort of veiled skateboard element to the whole "heist," that being the word I shall use. Barging for the sake of it, doing something just for it to be done, or documented or whatever...all the cheesily grandiose reasons that deep down inside maybe we skateboard for; not sure here. Watch the clip: Yes, while it's much, much larger scale, it's doing something for the sake of it being done. That's cool. Here's a an interview from NPR's Studio 360 with Phillippe Petit, high rope walker extraordinaire. I'll try to make my next post make sense.
1 comment:
Good looking out for seeing the relationship to skateing and not the contrast. You have become a wise and powerfull jedi. The world is a weird place and the older i get the more i see everyone has their own version of skateing. Hit me up mike i have keys to the ill spot and we havent skated together for many a moon.
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