What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product details
|
Reviews
Amazon.com
Riding Giants review
Riding Giants is more than another blissful surfing movie. It's an outstanding documentary about one era in American alternative lifestyles, when surfing was well-suited to a radical culture of social drop-outs. Using an amazing array of amateur film clips, shot for the most part in Hawaii and California from the late 1950s and early '60s, director Stacy Peralta traces the rise of surfing's appeal to young men looking to test themselves in an unorthodox (and sexy) milieu--of "living life to the fullest," as former surfer-turned-screenwriter John Milius (Big Wednesday ) puts it at one point. Lengthy chapters on the glories of Oahu's Makaha and the "superstition and dread" that accompanied the big-wave challenge of Waimea Bay are riveting and sometimes heroic, particularly told through the memories of surf legend Greg Noll. Great material, too, about the deadly wonders of surfing Mavericks, California, where the rocks will get one if the violent tides don't. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Dogtown and Z-Boys review
In the early 1970s, a group of young surfers from a tough neighborhood south of Santa Monica took up skateboards and offhandedly changed the world. At least it appears so after watching Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about how twelve "Z-Boys" (including one girl) resuscitated a dead sport and created a lifestyle that spread infectiously to become a worldwide counterculture phenomenon, namely high-flying "vert" (i.e. vertical) skateboarding and punk rock abandon. Director Stacy Peralta, one of the original Z-Boys, and Craig Steyck, the photographer whose publicity first made them famous, would have you believe that with empty pools as their springboard, the clan single-handedly carved a niche that grew into what is now referred to as "extreme sports" (snowboarding seems particularly implicated). Degrees of accuracy aside, the hoard of original footage Peralta and Steyck have access to makes for an engaging portrait of "accidental revolutionaries" whose mythology as expressed by themselves (all but one of the original crew give extensive interviews) and those they influenced (including Henry Rollins, Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, and Sean Penn, who narrates) is far more entertaining than any evenhanded version could ever hope to be. --Fionn Meade, Amazon.com
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Stacy Petraltas two documentaries "Dogtown Z-boys" and "Riding Giants" are two of the best movies on skateboarding and surfing... "Dogtown" tells the story of the innovative people that invented the modern skating including the vertical ramp and the airs. "Giants" treats the history of big wave surfing and travels the globe, to show some of the greates sufers at the mightiest waves.
For the community of the extreme board sports, these are instant classics. Petralta comes from the Califirnian surf and skate scene, so there is a lot of credibility to the storytelling. This is one of the masters telling the true story...
But the great thing about these movies is that they give the outsider a fantastic look into the world of the board riders. Normally you have to be a skate/surf board geek to like skate/surf movies, because they are generally boring and repetetive. But these two movies give the viewer an insight into what drives the board riders to push themselves beyond their boundaries (and into the painful meeting with concrete or reef).
The double pack with Dogtown and Giants, thus combines two great movies that compliment each other as they tell two tales of brave (insane?) and innovative (insane?) people with a committed (insane?) lifestyle...
If you have no interest in board sports, you can see them as just stylish documentaries with some great footage. You'll be stoked!
Format:DVD
I think dogtown and Z-boys is one of the best skateboarding documentaries that has been done, and for the same price taking home another Stacy Peralta documentary is a good choice. I'm into skateboarding, not into surf, but riding giants is a real good story with a superb audiovisual job. They both are worth enough to be bought even you surf, skate, or both. Must have!
Format:DVD
Great films! Dog Town & Z Boys is produced well and the footage is very retro in it's style. Riding Giants makes tense viewing (I had to bite my nail whilst watching the surfers charge the gigantic waves!) Great value for two dvd's. Enjoy!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
