Grey's Anatomy Season 4 DVD Review

Rich Knight
TV 14
DVD
740 minutes
No Rate
Starring: Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers, and Patrick Depsey
Directed by: Rob Corn, et al
Produced by: Shonda Rhimes, et al
Written by: Tony Phelan, et al

At its very worst, Grey’s Anatomy is the kind of treacle that deserves to only be seen at two PM by your mom on her day off, with the only thing separating it from being a true blue soap opera being a lack of inappropriate organ cues and an eye patch for Dr. Shepherd. But at its very best, Grey’s Anatomy is a smart, highly addictive medical drama with deep, enriching characters, emotionally compacted storylines, and worthy cliffhangers that aren’t just thrown in for good measure. Luckily for us, season four of the acclaimed show is much more of the latter than the former.

The show: 5 Stars

Grey’s Anatomy is not House, and it took me a long time to come to grips with that. Being that I’m not the fervent Grey’s fan who gets with his lady friends every Thursday night for a evening of ice cream and McDreamy, I was a little skeptical about watching a whole season of the show, as I’d only seen it in brief snippets before in the past. But after you get beyond that initial first episode, which is mainly played out in exposition form to get you caught up with what happened last time on Grey’s Anatomy, the rest of the season, short as it is because of the writer’s strike, flies past you at a break-neck speed, turning this Hugh Laurie fan into a die-hard lover of the inhabitants of Seattle Grace.
For the uninitiated, few of you as there are, Seattle Grace houses a plethora of interesting doctors and nurses, with the central focus being on Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), a brilliant second year resident who has to deal with many problems. One such problem is being the daughter of a legendary expert doctor, who recently just croaked last season, and another is the love affair she has with Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Depsey), which is on again, off again, more times than a light switch. These two conflicts lead to a lot of drama this season. But wait, there’s more! (Spoiler alert!) This season also sees the break-up of a rather ephemeral marriage (in the first four episodes, no less!) from last season, a re-appearance of Alex’s old, just-had-her-face-changed flame, Ava (With sexy results), and also a few new characters to boot, including Meredith’s hot half-sister, Lexie, Burke’s new replacement, Erica, and a pretty little nurse named Rose that soon takes the place of Ms. Meredith Grey in Dr. Shepherd’s heart (But is it real love, or just a rebound shot to the basket?). If all those names have you swiping your hand in the air and saying, “Aw, who needs all that noise?” then you’re just like me before I took a look-see at this season, which is really as addictive as everybody says it is.
What always bothered me about Grey’s Anatomy in the past is that the show was never really about the medicine but more about the people behind it. It was more about emotions, feelings, and sex; lots and lots of sex. But once you get to know these characters, feel these characters, and even love these characters, the medicine sort of fades into the background, and it’s not as important as the problems these characters are facing right here and now. That rings especially true in this season, where the characters face some pretty heavy decisions that not all of them come out of safely.
One pivitol scene features a taciturn Cristina (Sandra Oh), somberly singing “Like a Virgin” by Madonna in a morgue after hearing news that her old flame, Burke, who left her at the alter in the last season (Probably because he was fired from the show for calling T.R. Knight a rather un-pleasant name), just won a prestigious reward and never mentioned her in the article written about him. At this point, you hurt for Cristina just as she hurts, knowing that behind that competitive scowl of hers is a shattered individual who hides behind that mask of hers because it’s the only way to shield herself from everybody else’s pity, which her character could never handle. I’d like to see the characters on House have that much complexity to them.
Also, as known as Grey’s is for having such a breath-takingly beautiful cast, it’s really the lesser sweet eye candy that really drives home the emotional impact of the show. Dr. Bailey, nicknamed “The Nazi” for being so tough, has one of the saddest episiodes of the season when she goes through marital troubles with her selfish husband who hates being a stay at home dad because it’s so emasculating to him. When her baby, Tuck, has a horrible accident on his watch, the mere look in her eyes is enough to send most running for the Kleenex box. Not me, though. I’m all man…but others I’m sure. Sniff sniff.
There are plenty more poignant, funny, and ultimately cathartic episodes on this season that really make this show worthy of its accolades. Season four is not to be missed, and it’s a good start-up point if you’ve never seen seasons 1-3, or its spin-off show, which I’m told is terrible, Private Practice. It gives it to you in sweet and syrupy doses, and is enough to handle at any temperature, which always seems to be hot, hot, hot on this show. Hugh Laurie now has some competiton in my life, with the medical mystery being, which show do I like better, House or Grey’s Anatomy. I’ll have to wait and watch both new seasons this year, making my Tuesday and Thursday night schedule now jam packed with shows. DVR, I need you, stat!

The Disc: Four stars

Fans, you’re in luck, as this five disc set truly caters to those who have been watching the show from the very beginning. If you haven’t been watching the show, though, don’t fret, as the excellent booklet inside the casing gives you a comprehensive, albeit basic, anaylsis of the show up to where we are at now. It beats the hell out of chapter selection notes, I’ll tell you that.
Besides the stellar packaging, though, which also comes with a disc full of sneak peaks of Dirty Sexy Money and Private Practice, there’s also audio commentary on a few episodes, revealing once again that the morose characters on the show don’t match their genuine personalities as they laugh, giggle, and snort at their own jokes just like everybody else in real life. Every audio track is worth a listen, and if there’s only one complaint I have with them, it’s that there aren’t enough of them, as only certain episodes have commentary and not all of them. Bummer.
“New Docs on the Block,” discusses the three new characters on the show, Dr. Erica Hahn, Rose, and Lexie Grey, with all three of them talking about what a great pleasure it is to now be a cast member on the show. Whatever. As long as you three don’t mess up the chemistry with the already existing characters, you’re alright with me.
“On Set With Patrick and Eric,” is a brief little featurette about McDreamy and McSteamy heating up the screen for all the ladies out there who can’t get enough of them. Repeated clips of McSteamy stepping out of a bathroom with a towel draped around his waist are shown more than once, so those who get overly excited really fast, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you. “Good Medicine: Favorite Scenes” seems to be a wasted opportunity, as the comments on the scenes don’t really feel all that justified, but the “In Stiches: Season Four Outtakes” more than makes up for it, making Grey’s Anatomy, for all its mopey eyed moments, look like the most fun show to work on in show business. Everybody’s just letting loose and goofing around, and you can tell that the cast members really love showing up to work everyday, the outtakes being proof of that.
What most fans will probably love the most though are the extended cuts of some of the episodes they saw during the season. With the writer’s strike putting a huge damper on the series, allowing only 17 episodes to provide a true story arc, the writers pushed all they could with the time they had, and it shows, as the extended cuts add a bit more depth and undertone to the stories. Honestly, these cuts do so much more than the requisite deleted scenes that of course come bundled with this package that don’t do anything but elongate scenes that don’t need to be elongated. Overall, though, this package is really stacked and any passing fan of the show will really appreciate all the work that went into making these special features, well, special. Really, the only thing missing here is an autographed scapel from Dr. McDreamy himself, and that sounds awful dangerous to me, even for the TV-14 and up crowd this show is pandeing to.

Mother daughter team bike to save the planet

Sometimes, the best defense against global warming is a good offense, and Hopatcong resident, Suellen Malloy and her daughter-in-law, Christine Rojas found that the best way that they can make a difference in this world is to get on their bikes and ride.

“You can see a lot of what we’re doing to the environment from your bike,” Ms. Malloy says in relation to passing garbage on her many trails.

But besides just saving on gas emissions and carbon, she’s also taken it a bit further by entering the Brita Climate Ride, a five day fundraising event that starts in Manhattan, snakes its way through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and eventually ends in Washington D.C., making for a 300 mile trek.

“I do about 100 miles a week for a race,” Ms. Malloy says in regards to her training for the big event that starts on September 20th.

Her daughter-in-law follows a similar path.

“She (Ms. Malloy) is like my mentor,” Ms. Rojas says, “I would call her up and say, I did 50 miles today, and she would say, ‘Oh, great.’”

Outside of the grueling training, which the mother-daughter team have been doing cross coastal via text messages, emails, and telephone calls since Ms. Rojas currently lives in San Diego with her husband, another one of their biggest challenges is the actual fundraising part.

Both have to amass $2,500 dollars apiece for the ride, with proceeds going to Focus the Nation and Clean Air-Cool Planet. At press time, though, they still had a bit to go with that number, with Ms. Malloy at $550 and Ms. Rojas at $1000. Both hope to get more sponsorships for the race, with Freedom Waterless Carwash, Mason Street Pub, and Lakeview Acupuncture, just to name a few, already chipping in. But The Malloy Girls, which they call themselves, are ready to eat the cost if they can’t make the rest of the money in time.

“We’re in it for the long haul,” Ms. Malloy says about paying for the rest of it if she has to. “We both really feel like it’s worth it,” Ms. Malloy says.

A trooper to the very end, this isn’t Ms. Malloy’s first race. It is her daughter-in-law’s, though, who wanted to do it to help save the planet and also spend some time with her mother-in-law.

“I was so up to do it,” Ms. Rojas says, “She said, ‘would you like to do it,’ and I said, oh yeah, I totally would.”

Ms. Malloy’s first race was for another beneficial cause, that one the fight against AIDs in an event called AIDS/LifeCycle. AIDS/LifeCycle is a bit more recognized than Brita Climate Ride since it has a few years under its belt, while this is Brita’s first year ever.

"In the AIDs race], you got to meet people who have AIDS who say, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” Ms. Malloy says.

Who knows what anybody will say after this race? But there are still a few spaces available if you’re willing to join the cause. Sign up or donate to the Malloy Girls on the website today: http://www.climateride.org/.
###

Review: Reprise

Rich Knight
R
DVD
107 Minutes
No Rate
Staring: Espen Klouman Hoiner, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Viktoria Winge
Directed by: Joachim Trier
Produced by: Karin Julsrud
Written by: Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier
Miramax Films

Being a Norwegian film, Reprise is the kind of movie that smart people will call you a philistine if you don’t like it, and simpletons will call you “fruity,” if you do (mostly because you’re watching something with subtitles in it). But Reprise presents the strange scenario where being on either side of the fence isn’t really an option. You’re really never sure whether to cringe, laugh, or squint at what’s going on in front of you, and for that reason, I think Reprise is a winner. If not just for being a film compacted with so many different emotions at once, then at least for being such a damn good movie with a great deal of emotional oomph.

The movie: Four and a half stars

Norwegians are smart people. It’s not enough that they have to have that cool diagonal slash through most of their o’s, making them look all sorts of erudite. But they also have to have sophisticated movies that aren’t quite drama and aren’t quite comedy, and surely aren’t what you’d call a black comedy, or, dramedy, if you’re familiar with all those hippy dippy terms these days.

No, Reprise doesn’t really fit into a category, and if it did, would it make it any more or less sublimely meditative in its scope or presentation? Probably not, but if it did fit into a category, I’d say it’d fit into this—Existential coming-of-age buddy flick. And even that specification isn’t doing it justice, because Reprise is more than just that and it’s not. It’s everything that I just mentioned and it’s none of those things at all. Confused yet? You have no idea what confusion means until you watch this movie.

The story centers around two friends who aspire to be novelists but meet very different outcomes in the process. One becomes successful on the onset, leading him to a quick, spiraling descent into depression that he never snaps out of. And the other achieves it a little later in life, never fully enjoying the wanderlust excitement that he pictures in his head when he goes on his little mental romps. Of course, being a foreign film, the characters think forward in flashback form, progressing the film in means that conventional American storytelling just doesn’t abide by. In that way, I was a little lost with how the story was moving. At times, many of the wishful thinking scenerios that the characters have in the movie are really just that, wishful thinking, and about four minutes of film can be spent on a reverie that never really happens. This makes you shake your head and say, “So wait, that was just a daydream?” And as hard as it is for me to admit this at the risk of sounding dumb, this happened to me a lot while watching the movie, especially at the end.

Even so, even if the emotional depth of the film is too great for me, I feel that it’s the kind of movie that grows on you for being so displaced and out of synch, sort of like the stories the two authors write in the movie. This creates a very meta feeling that the characters in the movie might be watching the same movie you’re watching, but only from a different seat in the house. I’ll explain.

In one scene in the film, one of the characters takes his girlfriend to France after suffering a mental collapse that has all but alienated him from pretty much everybody, including his mother and his best friend. While they’re in France, though, you feel as out of place as they do. You feel displaced and lost in a location that should be distinct and clear in your mind from hearing and seeing so many pictures of it so many times. But the depth of the character’s emotional distance is so great that you don’t feel right at home there and actually feel a sort of yearning to get back home to a steady narrative again. If there’s one thing I love about foreign films—well, besides their nonchalant attitude towards sex—it’s the feeling of change you go through yourself while watching the movies, and Reprise does that on many levels. In a way, it’s like watching a writer craft a new draft of a novel with every viewing, which is so apropos for this kind of movie about writers writing and dealing with their responsibilties as being writers.

And if you’re wondering why I said “apropos,” instead of “appropriate,” blame it on this movie for being so damn smart. It kind of rubs off on you by the end. But if you’re not looking for that kind of “rubbing off,” feeling, then stray far, far away from this movie, because it’s all about rubbing off—rubbing off old skin, rubbing off expectations, rubbing off even a future. If you’re interested in any of those topics, then Reprise is the movie for you. If not, as said before, then stay away. This movie isn’t meant for you. Philistine.

The Disc—2 stars

Special features are important on a DVD release. Commentary is usually my favorite feature of any movie that comes home, with the obscure and the humorous being a good mix on any voice track. Foreign releases don’t normally get that treatment, though, because sometimes, there would have to be two subtitle lines, one for the actual movie and one for the writer/director/actor who was in the movie talking about the film, leading to a jumbled mess if there ever was one.

There is a solution to this predicament—American critics can provide commentary on the movie, but Reprise doesn’t take that approach, which I think is a pity because a deep, introspective film like this could definitely use the discussion . Instead, we’re given some rather blah special features, with the deleted scenes being the only memorable addition to the movie.

In the “Casting Resprise,” feature, we find that the Phillip and Erik characters played in the movie were selected out of 1200 different people just to get the part, which is an interesting little tidbit, I guess, but seeing the two actors (Anders Danielsen Lie and Espen Klouman Honer, respectively), just sit on the couch with their legs crossed, discussing the acting process is just a little too boring for me. Sure, a movie about relationships, both of the friend and significant other variety, is going to be laden with dialogue and long moments of silence, but on a bonus feature, that can be fatal. I was yearning for less yack, more munching on snacks and throwing popcorn at each other. But I guess that was hoping for too much from a couple of Norwegians.

“All in Trier’s Details,” is another feature with a lot of hand waving and crossed legs as the director talks about all the minutiae that goes into making a film like this, including sound work, editing, and yada yada yada, talk, talk, talk. I get it! Making movies is hard work. Okay, you don’t have to talk your guts out about it. “Annecdotes,” is actually pretty interesting. Here, the director and his pal, Eskil, discuss the writing process of such an emotional movie, and how a lot of their own lives found a way into the picture. It’s candid, it’s real, and it’s enjoyable. You kind of wish the whole bonus features was really just all anedoctes, which really might have actually worked for a movie like this.

“Love’s Not Easy” discusses the painfully awkward sex scene in the film, and “So Sorry,” shows just how penitent Norwegians are, with the word “Sorry,” dropped so many times in the movie that a special feature was actually made just for that. The only real winner though is the “Deleted Scenes,” which features out of synch details that actually look like they complete the film better than just being extra added fluff. With such an out of place movie of this caliber, more out of place stuff just sweetens the pot. Overall, though, you feel a little cheated in the end for lack of a commentary and deleted scenes that all but should have been in the actual movie itself. The other features are just a giant, gaping yawn.

Editorial: Which Was The Best SNES Game Of All Time-A Link To The Past Or Chrono Trigger?

While it might seem like a pretty arbitrary question for an editorial, I think it’s valid because 1: A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is currently out now for the Virtual Console, and 2: Chrono Trigger, arguably Squaresoft’s (Now, Square Enix), greatest game ever, Final Fantasy IV and VI, notwithstanading, is coming soon to the DS on November 25th. Oh, and 3. I’ve actually been playing A Link to the Past lately and forgot how doggone good it is.

Now, I know the issue is debatable, especially when the SNES had so many boss games— Super Mario World, Actraiser, and (okay, I’ll admit it), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time are all on my list for best games for the system—but there’s just something about both ALTTP and CT that elevate them beyond being just great SNES games. They’re in a category all on their own and easily qualify as occupants for best game ever territory.

But let’s count the many ways I love thee, shall we? A Link to the Past was a revolutionary milestone at the time that took the concept of light and dark and made it into a feature long before Samus would start meddling with all that nonsense in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Traveling back and forth through the light and dark realms, Link would find his precious Hyrule in a different state of turmoil whenever he would leap into the Dark World. My favorite moment of the game actually occurs early on when you first fall into the alternate universe and you come out a pink bunny, signifying that Link is good wherever he is, even in a world that’s supposed to bring out the worst in you.

What I really love about the game, though, is the fact that it’s so damn fun to play. Link has gone through some really interesting dungeons in the past (The water dungeon in particular if you’ve ever played The Ocarina of Time), but none were nearly as fun and, more importantly, as consistenly fun, as they were in ALTTP. Every single one is pretty short and easy to figure out if you just try out all your available options, which is something that wasn’t always true in some of the later games in the series (Again, I’m looking at you, water dungeon).

It was the kind of milestone of a game that makes you pay attention to Nintendo, more so than even Super Mario World, which was grand in its scope, but never really felt like a masterpiece that made you feel like turning it off was like turning off a part of fun you could never attain again unless you turned it back on. I even want to play it right now. Screw this editorial! Bah!

But then, there’s Chrono Trigger, a game that poses so many moral questions that it has about ten or 12 different endings just to answer them all. CT is like no other game you’ve ever played, even making its supurb sequel, Chrono Cross, which is supremely underated, look weak in comparison. I actually remember the first time I played CT and can remember how blown away I was by the music. In my opinion, and in the opinions of thousands of others, CT has the best music of any video game ever. Every song by Yasunori Mitsuda and legendary Final Fantasy composer, Nobuo Uematsu is perfect, utterly perfect, and they match the heroic adventure that even with 16-bits still looks spellbinding, even today.

And the characters can’t be beat. Frog, Marle, Lucca (MAGUS!), all of them complete a quest that’s as heart-rending as it is amazing. Seriously, no RPG has ever matched the splendor of CT, and no RPG probably ever will. We fanboys are hard to impress with new things, and no new thing has ever come close to being as good as CT, that’s just how good it is.

So, which one is better? Well, as surprising as this may be, I’m going to have to go with A Link to the Past. While the Chrono quest is comparable to none, and has way more replay value, I might add, A Link to the Past, just has more heart, more gumption to it. From its achievement music to when you get a new piece of heart, to the way the combat system just works on so many levels, A Link to the Past is the greatest SNES game in history, and I’m sticking by it. Chrono Trigger fans, who wants some?

Local Boy Saves Life

Long Valley resident, Michael VanHouten, is just like any other 11-year old boy his age. He goes to summer camp, likes to play sports (With Baseball, Soccer, and Basketball being his sports of preference), and loves creatures that go bump in the night.

“My favorite movie is The Lost Boys, Michael says, “I love vampires.”

But Michael differs from most kids his age in one major way—he has saved another person’s life.

On his last day at the YMCA Camp Washington on Schooley's Mountain Road where he’s been going to summer camp for the past five years, Michael got behind his fellow camper and began to push and lift above his belly button. He was doing the Heimlich maneuver.

“He kept telling me in the car ride home, ‘Can you imagine if I hadn’t gone to camp today?’” says his mother, Dorine VanHouten.

Similar to everybody who actually saw Michael perform the Heimlich maneuver, Ms. VanHouten is proud of him for taking the initiative to save the choking boy’s life.

“In his mind, it wasn’t about being a hero, it was about being there to help,” Ms. VanHouten says.

Michael couldn’t have been in a better location at the time of the incident. Sitting at a table far from the camp councilors, Michael noticed something was wrong with his friend when he began pointing at his chest but couldn’t say a word.

“We were eating lunch and having a good time when one of the kids smashed my friend’s desert,” Michael says, “I kept asking if we should tell on him (the kid who was smashing the desert), but all of a sudden, he was silent.”

In that moment, everybody froze up, and the councilors were too far away to quickly rectify the problem. After a second’s hesitation, though, Michael began performing the movement having visually learned it eight years ago when his father had performed it on his younger brother, Matthew, in a diner.

“He (Matthew) started choking on a hot dog and my dad pushed and lifted,” Michael says.

In regards to how his brother feels about Michael being a hero, he just smiles at the idea.

“I think it’s cool that my brother saved his life and I’m proud of him,” Matthew says.
Matthew isn’t the only one proud of Michael. Cindy Smith, a camp councilor who was at the YMCA during the incident, is also grateful that Michael had his head on his shoulders when things started to get chaotic.

“It was wonderful that he knew what to do,” Ms. Smith says, “He got to him first and he saved him.”

###

What are they running from?

One of Parkour’s break-out Star’s is a resident of Chicago





It’s Wednesday night in Oz Park and Michael Zernow, who everyone here knows as “Frosti,” is undressed for action. Wearing nothing but a black skull cap, black shorts, and yellow sneakers, he prepares to run a precarious route on, over and around the playlot equipment he is using as an obstacle course.



He stands on a two inch-wide plank and takes a flying leap toward a wooden playset stacked like a castle rampart. His feet land with perfect precision. He then winds in and out of the maze-like grooves in the structure like a centipede trapped in a bath tub. He crawls along the exterior of the playset before taking another flying leap about four feet down. His landing barely makes a squeak. With two giant steps, he runs up a slight ledge and does a side flip in the air.



The run leaves Zernow winded but not spent. His bare torso – inscribed with a tattoo that declares “Change Yourself, Inspire the People, Save the World” – is glistening with sweat. The discipline he has just demonstrated is called Parkour, which in France, where it originated, means the art of displacement.



Parkour, a close cousin to the free wheeling, trick friendly art form, free running, is the art of getting from point A to point B in the quickest manner possible. Typically, that means jumping over, climbing on or flipping off of any obstacle that presents itself. You may have seen a variation of Parkour in the opening sequence of 2006’s Casino Royale. In that movie, Daniel Craig as James Bond chases the creator of free running, Sebastian Foucan, all over town, navigating any dangerous surface—including a construction site girder—that got in his way.
Parkour is one of those Gen Y phenomena that has grown exponentially in the past few years thanks to the constant YouTube hits scored by videos of “traceurs” – as Parkour practitioners are called– racing over urban landscapes.



Frosti, 21, is one of an estimated 40,000 American traceurs. He is also one of the sport’s rising stars. Every Wednesday night around 7 p.m., he and his Parkour pals congregate in Oz Park where they practice precision jumps, cat leaps, and flips. They also talk about their daily lives away from the Chicago Parkour forums that are their primary means of communication. Oz Park is an ideal location for these traceurs because there are so many apparatuses around the place to climb on and over – uneven ledges, benches, wooden railings. It is also Frosti’s domain; he commands the scene like a rock star.



At 5-feet-8 with a sinewy marathon runner’s build, exotic poly-ethnic features and short black hair that he tends to spike in a faux hawk, Frosti has the looks and the moves to stand out in the Parkour crowd. He is known as a daringly acrobatic traceur, with the ability to make moves like a standing backflip look easy. His is definitely one of the most recognizable faces both in and outside of the Parkour community, due not only to his free running prowess but also to his high-profile stint on last season’s Survivor China on CBS. At 20, he was the youngest person ever to appear on the show.



He capitalized on that exposure with gigs performing Parkour in Madonna concerts and in KSwiss commercials as an extra. Many say that if Parkour is going to break out of its Gen Y niche and go mainstream, Frosti, will be its first superstar.

Frosti the Showman

Born and raised in Traverse City, Michigan, Frosti, who’s half Russian and half Japanese, seems to have had the elements of Parkour embedded in his DNA. Both of his parents teach Aikido, and Frosti grew up practicing the martial art all the way through grade school. In his sophomore year of high school, he discovered Parkour when one of his Aikido instructors brought in a tape of Ripley’s Believe it or Not with footage of people doing it. After watching the tape, he traded in his gi for running shoes, “I watched it [the video] and later that day, me and my friend were doing it [Parkour].



He’d always been athletic, though – captain of both the wrestling and track teams at Traverse City’s Central High School. But it was his Parkour skill that helped him pull off a legendary high school stunt.



In his senior year, he scaled the school rooftop dressed as a ninja. With the walkie talkie-toting principal standing in the cafeteria lording over the students all God-like as they ate lunch, he repelled down the side of the building and began flipping around outside the huge cafeteria windows behind the oblivious principal, much to the amusement of the rest of the school. Unfortunately, he was caught by one of the school’s vice-principals who was already outside patrolling the area. “I feel like if I had focused on being a better ninja, I wouldn’t have been caught,” he recalls.



Following high school, he moved to Chicago supposedly to study film at Colombia College, but he admits that it was Chicago’s burgeoning Parkour scene that was the real attraction. Andrew “Ando” Cousins, 25, and his younger brother, Ryan, known as “Cloud,” were helping to establish a thriving Parkour subculture here. Andrew was part of a troupe of traceurs dubbed “The Tribe,” while his younger brother was in a second generation of traceurs called The Alliance. Their videos were appearing all over the internet, attracting the attention of marketers for the likes of Timberland and Unilever



After hooking up with The Tribe, Frosti lost any interest he might have had in making films. Appearing on film had much more appeal, hence his decision to audition for Survivor China. Ask him why he wanted to be on the show and his terse reply (“Shit, why not?”) shows that he’s not a man prone to introspection. Ask him why he thinks he was selected to be one of the 16 contestants on the show and you get a blast of the charm and braggadocio that fuel his popularity. “Why’d I make it onto Survivor China? Because I’m badass, what do you mean why?”



The truth is his audition was a hoot. In one scene, he flips off his covers to show that he’s already dressed and ready for action. The caption on the screen reads: “Fact: FROSTI is the only person ever to win SURVIVOR before the competition began.”



Not everybody loved seeing him slug in out in China, though. During the one month he was there, he received tons of hate mail. Surprisingly, a lot of younger viewers resented him for his youth.



Nor was the experience a run in the park. He lost 20 pounds while out in the woods, and got sick in the jungle. Despite his best efforts to make strategic alliances with his castmates, he was unceremoniously bounced from the show in week nine.
He only has one major complaint, though.



“I’m kind of pissed they didn’t have a challenge that was Parkour related.”

Taking the world by storm

Nobody knows exactly how many traceurs are practicing Parkour around the globe. It’s not exactly an organized enterprise. It’s a pick up and practice sport, requiring no special playing surface or equipment. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular – anyone can do it, any time, any where. And it’s definitely not a sport relegated to the western side of the world. It’s popular in Japan and Australia in addition to France and Germany.



Despite the danger inherent in leaping from buildings and balconies, the injuries sustained by traceurs are about the same as those suffered by skateboarders or BMX riders, meaning that sprained ankles and knocked out teeth abound. As haphazard as Parkour may seem, there is a method to the madness. Discipline and precision help reduce the prospect of injury. A traceur’s training is comparable to that of someone participating in the martial arts in that there is a lot of mental preparation involved. Breaking cinder blocks with your bare hands in martial arts, for example, would be similar to leaping a large gap between buildings in Parkour. It’s all mind over matter.



It’s also a highly individual preoccupation. The focus is on individual development rather than competition, meaning the only real failure is personal miscalculation.



David Belle, a Frenchman, is considered by many to be the father of Parkour. He coined the term and helped popularize the sport by uploading countless videos of himself in action on the Internet. And his fans soon followed, posting videos of themselves performing Parkour, mostly set to raucous rock music.



But the development of the art of Parkour predates Belle by several generations. In the early 1900s, a French physical education teacher named Georges Hebert began teaching a technique called the “natural method” to members of the French Navy. It was used to help members of the French military maneuver through natural surroundings. Hebert had observed the movement in Africa where he saw native people navigate through dense vegetation with great agility. Hebert adapted the movement for use to save soldiers and seamen in treacherous environments. The motto he adopted for the training was “be strong to be useful.”



David Belle’s father, Raymond, learned the movement while he was in the French military and passed the techniques on to his son.



In 2004 David Belle appeared in the hit French Film District B-13, jumping off of walls and leaping between chasm-like rooftops. The thrill of seeing Belle fly through the streets of Paris was an inspiration to many potential traceurs, one of them being Washington DC native, Mark Toorock. “When I first saw the movie, I said, I just gotta try this,” Toorock says.



Toorock, who owns a gym in DC called Primal Fitness, is also the primary organizer of Parkour in this country. He founded the American Parkour website and is also the founder of both the Tribe and the Alliance, two groups that feature clusters of ten highly skilled traceurs representing specific regions of the country. Frosti, along with Andrew “Ando” Cousins represent the Tribe in Chicago. Their mission is to teach other traceurs the proper way to practice, such as how to roll out of falls and how to judge what stunts are actually doable—such as jumping in between rooftops or any of the other stunts seen in YouTube videos.



“The one thing I have against the videos,” says Toorock, “is that they don’t distinguish between the people like David Belle, who have been practicing it for years, and some jackass who’s just jumping off his roof for the first time.”



Toorock, though a great force in the field through his marketing of the sport, has actually gotten a bit of flak lately for his support of efforts to turn Parkour into a competitive sport, with tournaments and prize money. Competitions are already sprouting up around the world. They emphasize the stylistic tumbling of free running – Frosti’s speciality – versus the pure adrenaline rush of Parkour.



Many traceurs disdain the effort to create more commercial tournaments for Parkour or free running. They say it contradicts the original purpose of Parkour—to train for the sake of training, and not for the sake of competing.



“Keeping it old-school is kind of okay,” Toorock says, “but I don’t completely agree with that.”
Frosti, whose telegenic style and countenance make him a prime candidate for multi-media Parkour stardom – is curiously ambivalent about the prospect of competition. “There are a lot of positives and negatives to the idea of competition [in Parkour], [but] as far as it’s concerned, I’d rather make sure that it happens right [than not at all].”

The Non-Frosti’s

Back in Oz Park, traceurs like 20-year old, Cody Beltramo, arrive to hang out and master the perfect backflip, which is not necessarily a Parkour technique per se, but a coveted maneuver if it can presented in just the right way.



Standing on a wafer thin piece of wood at the top of a park bench, Cody bends forward before he hurls himself backwards into the air like a gymnast spiraling off of a balance beam. He lands on the wood chips behind him with a loud and uneven thud.



The other park visitors don’t seem to mind the high-flying traceurs. Some even take pictures with their camera phones of Cody, Frosti and the other traceurs flipping and flopping around them in the park.



is Parkour in its purest form –traceurs trying out tricks, urging each other on. It’s not about competition, compensation or Kswiss commercials. For Cody and his ilk, Parkour is just part of their very being.



“After watching a few of the basic techniques, we [my friends and I] went out and tried them, and just kept going with it,” Cody says.



Frosti walks around Oz Park with his hands on his hips. For him Parkour is about more than just fun. It is a sporting life that could make him the Parkour equivalent of Ryan Sheckler, the 19-year-old superstar of the skateboarding world. Fellow Tribe member Andrew “Ando” Cousins sits on the ground and plays Rick Astley’s, “Never Going to Give You Up,” on a small stereo he has sitting by his hip.



The song is very in tune with Frosti’s plans for the future. No matter what direction Parkour takes, he’s never going to give it up.



The crowd of traceurs shimmies back and forth and hefts up their shoulders to the music, singing along to the catchy tune. Frosti just smirks and slides back and forth on his heels along with them. The community is in complete harmony.



Wherever Parkour goes, Frosti’s going to run along with it.

###

Postal Review

Rich Knight
R
DVD
100 minutes
No Rate
Starring: Zack Ward, Dave Foley, Julia Sandberg, Chris Coppola, and Verne Troyer
Directed by: Uwe Boll
Produced by: Uwe Boll, Dan Clarke, and Shawn Williamson
Written by: Uwe Boll and Bryan C. Knight
Freestyle Releasing
Website: http://www.postal-the-movie.com/

It’s easy to make fun of Uwe Boll. His movies suck, he seems to have a limitless supply of video games to make into movies, and heck, why not add this to the argument, he’s unapologetically German. But while I could probably just say Postal sucks without even watching the movie as Boll’s name precedes his films, that wouldn’t be surprising. What is surprising, though, is that Postal isn’t really all that bad. In fact, I’d go the length to say that it’s actually pretty good. So good, in fact, that I’d actually suggest that you watch it.

The movie--Three and a half stars

Uwe Boll is already fast on track to being the physical successor to the worst director of all time, Ed Wood. His movies are almost offensively bad, with House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and, God Almighty, Bloodrayne, being new gold standards in terms of garbage cinema. And the fact that he’s so oblivious to his atrocities is further proof that his claiming of the throne from Ed Wood should definitely be forthcoming. Be that as it may, though, you can’t deny that there’s a certain charm to his work that makes you smile just a little, even if it’s at how bad his movies are. Whether it be the over the top acting, pointless panty shots, or surprising big wig actors starring in his films, there’s just something about Uwe’s movies that illicit some kind of response, whether it be good or bad.

And while I can’t completely condone head honcho, Josh Tyler’s acceptance of In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale as a decent movie, I will say that it had a grand spirit to it that showed that Uwe was at least trying to be a good director, which you have to respect from a man who’s pretty much made his entire career on video game translations. Postal, his latest effort, is an even greater step forward for Uwe Boll--one that shows at least a modicum of growth from a director that so many critics have crapped on.

If you’ve never played the game Postal before, don’t worry about it. All you need to know is that one man gets his buttons pushed all the wrong ways and he eventually goes berzerk with bullets, hence the title of going postal. But Uwe’s take on the game goes way beyond that plot and surprisingly turns into a satirical tale of everything from terrorism, racism, and even Boll’s entire career as a director, making for some legitimate laughs this time around, rather than just laughs at how funny Ben Kingsley looks as a vampire.

The film stars Zack Ward as a guy simply known as the “postal dude,” but the movie doesn’t start with the main character. Instead, it starts with two terrorists piloting a hijacked 9/11 plane that eventually crash lands into the twin towers. The two terrorists are debating over how many virgins they’ll be rewarded in Heaven for getting the job done, and they call up Osama (Yes, that Osama) upset that they were promised more virgins than they’re actually getting. Obviously, this kind of humor is going to offend both Muslims and Americans who lost anybody in 9/11 at the same time.

Still, I don’t think the scene is nearly as bad as it sounds on paper. Sure, it’s offensive, and it’s meant to be, but there’s a certain charm to how brazenly politically incorrect Uwe is. Obviously, he’s willing to push a lot of envelopes into the Hollywood mailbox because he knows that hardly anybody’s watching, and for those who are, at least he can drop a few jaws in the process. Of course, the film falls apart when it comes to the actual plot, but who cares? The story that is told is good enough to balance out all the jokes stuffed in there, so it’s not a complete failure in the slightest like many of Boll’s other creations. Written partially by Uwe himself, you begin to realize that he probably just padded the slapdash story in for good measure, as his criticism of modern day Bush America is what he really wanted to show in the movie.

As mentioned before, the story is centered on this “postal dude,” who can’t seem to get a break. His morbidly obese wife sleeps around with everybody in the trailer park, he can’t get a decent job that doesn’t involve selling his soul, and his get rich quick scheming Uncle Dave (Dave Foley), who runs a cult-like empire, wants him to break the law just so he can get out of financial debt. It’s the eventual failure of Uncle Dave’s plan to pilfer a new hot toy on the market called a Krotchy doll shaped like a penis (get it? Krotchy? Ha!) to sell on the black market that ultimately leads to the “postal dude,” well, going postal.

But forget all that. Between the director playing himself as a sausage eating Nazi apologist, to little kids being the only accidental victims in a gun battle scene, to even the wacky conclusion of Bush and Bid Laden skipping through a field holding hands, Boll’s satirical message movie isn’t half as bad as you’d expect it to be.

Uwe Boll may never reach Ed Wood status at this rate. Postal isn’t the greatest movie in the world, but at least it’s definitely better than Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Special Features--Four stars

Even better than watching Postal is actually listening to the director talk about his movie on the hilarious commentary, which involves lengthy discussions on everything from people in Hollywood being “pussies,” for not distributing his movies, to how people need to be more open minded about watching his films. If they’re not open-minded, Uwe refers to them as “retards.” Love him or loathe him, you can’t say that Uwe doesn’t have a pair of brass balls on him.

The rest of the special features aren’t nearly as great as the angry commentary, where Uwe pretty much says that the Jihad can come after him personally if they don’t like his portrayal of them. He’s not afraid of them. He even admits it openly and tells them to bring it on.

Perhaps, a boxing match with some of the Jihad members can be arranged for the release of his next DVD, as this one features him fighting a few of his harshest critics in a boxing match. Entitled, “Raging Boll--Director boxes his critics” (How clever), Uwe squares off against puny critics of his who don’t have a chance against the supposedly former boxer. He demolishes all of them with either a knock down or without being hit a single time, his dodging and weaving minimal for these out-of-shape journalists.

If anything, watching him bat around these flies is at least enjoyable for a little while, and I have to tell you, it’s a relief to know that Uwe takes out his aggression in a physical manner, which is exactly what you’d expect from a man who has made a career on adapting video games into movies. He’s still kept that Punch-Out!! persona alive, which pretty much legitimizes everything he’s done as a director thus far. In other words, at least he puts his fists where his films are, which is refreshing to see--sort of in a rough, Hemingway sort of manlihood that hasn’t been around for a long time.

“A Day in Little Germany,” doesn’t succeed as well, though. Basically just showing shots of the day on set at the gas chamber and Hitler adorned faux amusement park in the movie, it seems like this special feature could have been ramped up a bit to really delve deeper into how they could possibly get away with such a scene in this day and age.

And the “Verne Troyer as Indiana Jones” feature is just annoying. Coincidently, Uwe Boll pushed to make it so his movie would come out on the same exact day as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and this feature is just featuring Troyer calling Indy out , claiming that Postal is in fact better than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Really, after seeing both pictures, I tend to agree with Troyer on this one. I mean, at least Postal doesn’t have Shia LaBeouf swinging from vines like Tarzan. Overall, I liked Postal, and I don’t care what anybody thinks, so there. It’s clearly Boll’s best work to date, and the special features only add to that fact.