Sundance & SK8 Life

I went to see the movie SK8 Life with my friends in SLC last night. I figured I had to go see something at the Sundance Film Festival, because everyone back home keeps asking if I’m going. I’m heading to Vegas on Sunday and then I’ll be in Colorado the rest of the week for X-Games, so this was my only chance. Tickets were sold out, so my roommate and I went 2 hours early to get Wait List numbers. We were there before they were handing them out so we walked around and when we got back there were 3 people on line. However some older guy came around and wanted to sell 3 tickets so we bought 2.

We got pretty good seats with Caitlin, James, Liz and Devin. So there was some debate about whether this was a fictional film or a documentary. Turns out it’s a fictional film made with real skateboarders who are, in effect, playing themselves. The premise of the movie is that an older skater is going to lose his house, which is called the crashpad, due to back taxes. He has some teen skaters come stay there and they have a month to film footage to raise money. The bottom line is good skating, bad acting. I also had the impression that the editors had just gotten a new video program and wanted to try out every single special effect in it. I thought the cartoon aspects were ok, but all the stylized and sketch filters were really annoying. It was cool to see the entire trick in one shot and not your usual stunt double switcheroo. I also commend the director for showing how often skaters crash when trying new tricks, and how much commitment it takes to nail it. The director did say there will be SK8 Life: The skaters cut on their website with more skating and no special effects. Holla!

Oh and I won a SK8 Life skateboard deck for knowing that Spike Jonze directed Video Days (which was also in the credits).

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