Chlorine |
Madman Entertainment/AV Channel .
R4 . COLOR . 47 mins .
M15+ . PAL |
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Back when I was a little tacker there were no ramps or skate parks so we had to make do with what little concrete we could find. Where I grew up there were no backyard pools and if there were they had that horrible pebble crap all over them and you can’t skate on that. This is not the case for people south of Los Angeles. After the oil market crashed in 1974, thousands of people lost their homes and abandoned their resorts leaving hundreds of pools falling into disrepair. Then came the skaters who fed on the decay of civilisation. Posing as pool cleaners or mosquito control, they cleaned ‘em up, got in there and skated. "After skating a pool the ramp seems kinda boring…" |
It’s not like these places weren’t under surveillance though and even if some place is abandoned, the police don’t look favourably upon trespassers, so the underground pool movement began in earnest. This is where the old-school skaters still do their stuff, reminiscing on the old days when pools were it as far as skating goes. Actually, to these guys skating pools is still it, even if they’re older and wiser now with kids and homes of their own. Shot in a documentary format with a shaky portable camera, the only real flaw with this documentary is that it’s too short! There is stacks of awesome pool skating footage but I wanted more. Running for 47 minutes it covers the underground pool skating movement in a fun and humourously law-breaking manner, but there just isn’t enough skating. Some of the best skaters in the world are all here doing crazy backyard stunts and break-ins and yet we are disappointed in skating content. There’s still some awesome stuff, don’t get me wrong, but I can watch dudes skate all day. There shoulda been more.
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Shot to video, the film looks fairly okay for the most part, but is in that mildly grainy/mildly poor resolution documentary format. There’s plenty shot in poor light too or over-saturated light and the colour leans heavily on the greeny-blues, but it’s still pretty cool. This delivery suits the underground feeling anyway, so actually works in the doco’s favour. We still manage to get a 1.85:1 transfer, but no anamorphic enhancement, unfortunately. The picture quality overall is fairly washed out, but as noted, it suits the film. There are plenty of well-captured skating moments where the camera's mobility is definitely a plus and this serves the purpose just fine.
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Only a Dolby Digital stereo delivery with the music emptying into the subwoofer and out again like gangbusters. Dialogue is often low when pool scouting is taking place, but occasionally the levels are out in the dialogue to music ratio. Some moments of playback from the phone or answering machines aren’t real good though, I gotta say. Too low. Music is killer with plenty of metal tracks really amping up the volume and even an impromptu banjo performance in a second hand store gets thrown in for good measure. Julie Angel (a name that enters very many aspects of the film’s production) is credited with scouting the tracks and she’s chosen very judiciously to support the particular item of discussion or skating action. A score of sorts is performed by Pete Isaac and his hip-hop beats do the rest of the support work, bringing a very specific essence of rebellion to the piece. Brilliantly, we get numerous previously unreleased tracks from Devo as well! These add serious weight to the film's quirky feel and to the non-conformist edge. I love the soundtrack and it comes across in the transfer beautifully.
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Chlorine is for anyone who ever got on a skateboard and felt the thrill of controlling it. It’s also for anyone who ever crashed and burned or ‘ate shit’ as the expression goes today. The good-natured criminal aspect of it all adds a certain charm that’s hard to resist and some of the skating is unbelievable. Just as unbelievable is the urban decay just 55 miles from Central Los Angeles where motels and hotels and private residences are literally laying uninhabited and rotting away. This is just great fun for anyone who likes a little extreme in their sport or anyone who remembers their youth fondly, but wouldn’t really want to go back to it.
LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=3718
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