[.ca] Extreme Summer - DVD

From Amazon.com:
This documentary about extreme athletes challenging dangerous but awesomely beautiful conditions in Hawaii features an offbeat format in which the cameramen are often shown doing their work, so the film itself has a curious "making of" feel to it. Shot with IMAX cameras, the video features awesome footage of "tow in" surfers, intrepid souls who are towed with jet skis onto enormous waves, which they then surf down so that it appears as if they are snowboarding down a mountain. The surfers appear in interviews, with one describing the challenge as "the culmination of everything you've learned in surfing." The massive walls of water look like they really belong in a National Geographic special about extreme weather, and it's a little unsettling to see men challenging these monsters. Much of the footage was shot from helicopters, and even footage of the camera-carrying choppers ducking in and out of the waves is heart-stopping. Other segments on the video feature astonishingly gorgeous IMAX footage of rock climbers tackling towers of stone in Arizona, and again techniques of intrepid cameramen are prominently featured in the production. A concluding segment featuring windsurfers tackling enormous waves in Hawaii concludes a production that is as visually pleasing as it is exciting. --Robert J. McNamara

This is NOT the IMAX film!:
I was disappointed to find that this is not the actual IMAX film transferred to DVD. Instead, it is a documentary ABOUT the IMAX film. It does indeed show some impressive footage from the original, but it was frustratingly interrupted by interviews with the director and shots of the camera crew. The disc does NOT provide the "sit-back-and-relax" experience of awesome visuals and cool music that I was expecting, as the constant voice-overs and back-and-forth switches between the beach and the studio do become annoying. It seems redundant for the disc to have a "making of" section, as the whole disc is just that. On the bright side, there is some great footage on sports that you don't easily find on DVD (or anywhere else, for that matter). I'd recommend buying it, but caveat emptor!

Extremely fascinating:
EXTREME Summer DVD is second of two parts (Extreme Winter being the other) of this DVD edition of IMAX's EXTREME. The summer edition is, I find, more daring in its pursuit for extreme sports than the winter one. The whole atmosphere for the film is man's interaction with nature, on sea, land and snow (for the winter edition). It showcases very good new age music while featuring top athletes doing what probably only 10% of the world's population dare to do. On the surfing side, instead the usual paddling, the surfers are towed by jet skis miles from the shore to surf the perfect waves, 30 feet high! You can actually see the immense force of the waves (though a lot of its IMAX impact is lost on the your tv-no matter how big your tv may be). On windsurfing, the athletes are also riding through massive waves. Not much on the windsurfing in itself is presented, but by how much air these guys are going. These windsurfers were floating so high above the waves that they have been said to have run the risk of hitting the chopper w/ the camera hovering above. On the side of rock-climbing, forget Tom Cruise and his stunt in MI-2. The two female climbers featured are the best in the business. The film shows how much of a vertical and how high these climbers go and you can pretty much see the stress their bodies go through to attempt such heights.

be aware, this is not the imax movie!:
This is not the imax movie. It is just the "making of" of half of it. Boring... 2/3 of the DVD is just the director talking about the imax camera.

Not IMAX Original, but Making-Of:
This is not the IMAX original of "Extreme", but really a documentary of how they made it. In that respect, it deserves five stars. If you read about IMAX going to Everest ("Into Thin Air", etc.), you get an idea of how much more difficult it is to get large-format films made (200 pound cameras that cost $300,000). BUT, with this film, you also get behind-the-scenes interview snippets with surfers, climbers, and filmers as well as more shots of the waves and such. If you keep that in mind, you will be better off.