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Warren Miller’s Playground

Skiing in a relentlessly-cut-to-heavy-metal format

By TOM MEEK | October 31, 2007

2.5 Stars

PLAYGROUND HOPPING: The ski documentary gets around.

Ski-movie icon Warren Miller has made countless documentaries about daredevil snow riders over decades, but he has little to do with the film franchise these days (he’s in his 80s) apart from lending his voice to bookend the amazing antics. The narration duties are left to former Olympian Jonny Moseley and the directing falls to Max Bervy as Playground hops to points in Alaska, Canada, Japan and even Dubai (an indoor slope). There’s a brief profile of reigning American ski king Bode Miller, and some neat freestyle stunts on groomed trails, but the most awe-inspiring runs come from the free spirits who drop out of helicopters and fly down precipitous slopes in the middle of nowhere or the speed riders (kite surfing on skis) who cruise along the jagged rock faces of the Eiger without a care. Exhilarating to watch, but somewhere in the pumped-up, relentlessly-cut-to-heavy-metal format, Playground loses the intimacy that the similarly fashioned Endless Summer surfer series achieved.

Topics: Reviews , Sports, Extreme Sports, Extreme Summer Sports, More

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