Reel Rock 2012 Film tour mini-review

Saw this on opening night. In brief, go see it, it's a good selection of films.

Doing this from memory at work, so feel free to correct any errors.

4 films included.

First "La Dura Dura", mostly about Chris Sharma and Adam Ondra attempting a potential 5.15c in Spain. Age old story of youth vs experience, funny and insightful. Good cinematography of climbers falling off hard sport climbs. My personal favorite amongst the films.

Next, "The Shark's Fin" an expedition to 'one of the last great problems' in the Himalayas. Superb mountain images, not sure how they even got them, levitation? Limited climbing footage, understandable given the setting. Has more of a human interest back story than most expedition narratives, fairly touching.

Intermission, the usual tedious gear raffle/give-away, enlivened minimally by a handstand contest.

Followed by a short film, I believe overly edited(IMHO)from a larger work, called "Wide Boys." Two unlikely, everyman climbing heroes from England take on the hardest off widths in America. I wanted to see more, not just of those two, but also the colorful cast of dedicated off-width loving natives. Century Crack is spectacular, but I'd like to have seen other routes too.

Finally, Honnold 3.0- chronicling Alex Honnold's solo in a day ascent of Watkins, the Nose and Half Dome. Great footage, although it suffers from the difficulty of keeping up with him. How could anyone station enough cameramen to cover 7,000 feet of climbing in 24 hours!Some of the commentary in the film comes across as somewhat forced- I don't need his friends to tell me they were worried during his climbs. Even with Honnold obviously unhurt, signing posters right there in the theater, your hands get sweaty watching the film. Honnold himself comes across as likeable and quietly passionate. Pretty inspiring- but I'll keep using a rope, just the same.

I felt pretty lukewarm about this year's films.

La Dura Dura: yes, some pretty funny moments comparing the differing skills (strengths) of Chris and Adam. But I feel like I've now seen more than enough footage in every film fest of the last three years of Chris working the overhanging limestone in Spain.

The Shark's Fin: Definitely an interesting follow-up to last year's Cold (which was awesome). But when Conrad and Jimmy take Renan on this trip just six months after a head-crush injury, I started feeling queasy. Then when Renan is clearly semi-conscious and incapable of making his own decisions, and they continue up, I felt like this was horribly irresponsible and Conrad and Jimmy. They appear to be risking their friends life in their own selfish attempt to complete a mission. Impossible to know the true situation of course, but that's how it appeared to me.

Wide Boyz was cute, but not special. Would have liked to see more about this crazy offwidth culture...

Honnold just makes me sweat. Seems like a great guy who, statistically speaking, is too likely to die young. I sure hope not, but if it does, all of us will have to bear a little guilt that we pushed him to do these things by watching his films and celebrating his amazing skill.

In general, the films in recent years are focusing on individuals taking extreme risk that I'm not sure we should support so much. I'd like to see more storytelling and less death-cheating.

I think you hit the nail on the head Nick.

Can a dude, even if he is the site landlord, call a film about climbing off widths "cute"?

Definitely agree about wishing the OW segment was longer. I wanted to see more groveling from the Americans!

The Shark's Fin was the only short I didn't feel like I'd seen 100 times already. Reel Rock promo'd the hell out of the film but most of the subject matter has been covered extensively anyway.

I'd rather see segments that weren't already in heavy rotation for advertisements.

Oh here's some more OW footage.

youtube.com/watch?v=batOAey…

^ damn

Monty wrote:Oh here's some more OW footage. youtube.com/watch?v=batOAey…

Nice find Monty! They should have included that in the film!

Is it just me or is watching Sharma, Ondra or any of the elite sport climbers sending 5.15's REALLY boring?

I'm probably biased but the majority of the climbing and backstory, albeit superhuman, puts me to sleep.

That video of Pamela is pretty burly however!

sweet video Dave! Pamela's metaphor relating OW climbing and UFC fighting against a rock got me thinking about how sweet it'd be to watch her and Ondra duke it out in a UFC cage.

My money is on the lady.

Scott McMahon wrote:Is it just me or is watching Sharma, Ondra or any of the elite sport climbers sending 5.15's REALLY boring?

I find most of that Spain footage all blends together, but I did watch a Chuck Fryburger film that really stuck out in my memory. I felt I finally understood what was so difficult about 5.15 with a series of crisp close ups on the "holds" themselves. Fryburger's got quite the visual flair though.

Mark Roberts wrote: I find most of that Spain footage all blends together, but I did watch a Chuck Fryburger film that really stuck out in my memory. I felt I finally understood what was so difficult about 5.15 with a series of crisp close ups on the "holds" themselves. Fryburger's got quite the visual flair though.

Oh they are like flys on a wall for sure. haha "holds"...more like glass.

The show was entertaining overall, but had a pervasive theme of cheesy hero-worshiping corn-ballyness. Maybe I've just seen a lot of climbing footage already and I'm jaded, but I honestly felt like I was watching reruns.

The footage of these shows keeps getting better and better, and the photographer in me is always psyched to see what they have come up with each year.

Beyond that though, this year's tour felt rather empty. There wasn't much insight into the athletes beyond little soundbytes, and other than a chance to see half a dozen amazing climbers do their thing on screen there just wasn't much to it.

"I trained really hard and then went on a trip and climbed some hard stuff" isn't much of a story anymore, and when 3 out of the 4 films use it it gets stale pretty quickly.

Guess you went potty during the part where we got to see a whole other side to honnold? And the way it was shown instead of told is more effective and interesting. A glimpse of Sharma and ondra came thru,not just yelling and pulling on small holds. Crowd was super into it too

Kyle Murphy wrote:sweet video Dave! Pamela's metaphor relating OW climbing and UFC fighting against a rock got me thinking about how sweet it'd be to watch her and Ondra duke it out in a UFC cage. My money is on the lady.

I dunno he'd probably just start with his banshee screaming and Pamela couldn't even get near him. That'd be a waste of a good UFC cage.

Dana wrote:The highlight of the evening was seeing Tony B and Elenor meet in the back of the auditorium and shake hands.

Whoa, that must have been tough... like 5.14b tough I'd say.