I wasn’t expecting to see what I saw in this trailer. It starts off portraying the natural, native spirit of surfing in a remote coastal culture. It looks like the anti-surf movie, a story grounded in the roots of wave riding. Then it turns. And it turns hard. “Splinters” looks to be a true documentary, not a surf film intoxicated by tube shots and sponsored yacht trips to remote breaks. As the title implies, this is a story about what happens when the norms of an exotic, insular island culture clash with the harsh, jagged edge of commercial surfing.
Tag Archives: movies
A documentary about an Indian Yogi, motorcycles and the Himalayas? Yes, please.
Wow. This looks super freaking cool.
“The Highest Pass” is a documentary about seven followers of a contemporary spiritual guru named Anand who set out on motorcycles along one of the world’s most dangerous roads in northern India to witness, possibly, their teacher fulfill his vision of dying in an accident at age 27.
The trailer shows us the possibility for a film that seemingly exposes the innards of a distant mountain culture often shrouded by our pining for its surface-level wilderness and commercialized adventure. I would love to hike in this part of the world, no question about it. However, there is always something else going on in the places we love to explore beyond the places we love to explore.
Color me intrigued. It comes out in April and hopefully makes it to a nearby theater.
The City Dark explores the deep reaches of what’s important about the night sky
I never knew what was up there until I began regularly visiting the west. On a trip to Moab one year my wife and I pulled over on Utah Highway 128 out of Grand Junction because we noticed something highly unusual in the night sky: bright, bright stars. Lots and lots of them. We were still living on the east coast at that time and we just never knew what true darkness looked like.
Growing up in the suburban east never encouraged me to understand what darkness meant. Deep, tar-black night is hard to come by in the way most of us live today. Maybe it’s because we’ve become so accustomed to needing the comfort of light and too driven by unaccounted for fears of the dark. Given what I now know about what thrives above us in the Milky Way, I often find myself craving the solitude of vacant land at night somewhere in the West just so I can be reminded of how much more there is to the universe.
There’s a great line in this trailer for “The City Dark” that I think would make a great tagline: “When we add light to the environment, it’s an alteration of habitat.”
I’ve never thought of it that way before. I will now, though.
“The City Dark” is in theaters now. But go see a matinee.