American Football Funny Moments Snowboard Shake It Off

The all-time scene in The Quaternary Phase, the new 92-minute snowboarding film starring Travis Rice, does not feature a snowboard. The setting is Russian federation. Rice, along with fellow snowboarders Mark Landvik and Eric Jackson, has been holed up along with two helicopter pilots for over four weeks in a cabin, waiting for a break in the weather. They are about to lose their minds.

The motel is in Kamchatka, merely a few hundred miles westward of the Aleutian Islands tip of Alaska, one of the nearly inhospitable places on globe. Overlooking their cabin, which is built atop pylons planted deep in the Russian snow, a volcano spews blackness ash into the gray sky. They tin't snowboard – the mountains there are covered with a thin layer of water ice, and the helicopter tin can't get to the mountains of the nearby Kuril Islands, what with the high winds of this month-long, near unbelievable low-pressure system. They try surfing, dipping in the frigid Pacific waters nearby to catch a keen, but their limbs soon go numb (and Landvik can't surf anyhow).

Left with nothing else to practice, the three farthermost athletes slowly descend into madness. The film cuts to Landvik, who has all of a sudden sprouted a twirling blonde mustache. He stares into the photographic camera, his eyes wide, snowfall flecked beyond his face and covering his Russian wool hat. He screams.

Red Bull

The music of Kishi Bashi, who wrote and performed an original score for the film, swells. Smith, Jackson and Landvik are all sprinting now, pushing a toboggan and leaping into the air like crazed animals through the deep drifts. These 3 men are not exactly known for their zen-similar at-home, and after a month in the Russian islands here in this desolate corner of the earth, they've snapped. This continues on, and on, beyond merely a short interstitial between shred sessions; this is a major passage in the moving picture. We cut to the cabin, and a title carte tells us iv weeks have passed. One month. The men whisper to the camera, cursing their luck, blasphemous God. Rumors fly, almost each other, about when things volition improve, well-nigh the weather. Landvik and Jackson, the two tagalongs on this ballsy journeying, are set up to get out, simply Rice won't let information technology. They've come up to Russia. They are here to take downwardly mountains which have never been taken downward before. They talk more, discuss plans, question their desire to be there, question their sanity. Still, no ane steps atop a board.

You are watching a snowboard film, an exercise that comes with expectations. Most people watch these things to run into cool athletes perform sweetness tricks with some jamming tunes on in the background. And yet, for well-nigh half an 60 minutes in a 90-infinitesimal picture, no 1 snowboards. Which may lead y'all to ask: Is this fifty-fifty a snowboarding picture show? And if information technology isn't, what, exactly, is it?

Cherry Bull

The Quaternary Phase premiered worldwide Sunday night via Red Bull Television set, the visitor's online streaming service, for gratuitous, bachelor for anyone with an internet connection to watch around the world. Information technology is now available on iTunes and Amazon and anywhere else you tin buy loftier quality extreme content out on the internet. The film is created by and stars Rice, the 33-year-old snowboarder whose name is often prefixed with the earth "legendary." Rice is a pioneer in the world of big mountain snowboarding, the man who, perhaps more than anyone else live, has pushed the sport college, into e'er more than terrifying places. If Shaun White is the rex of the halfpipe, Rice is the rex of the untouched, 11,000-human foot-high mountain ridge.

(Not that Rice is a stranger to the competition earth – he burst onto the scene in 2001 when he, an unknown xviii-year-one-time punk from Jackson Hole, showed up atSnowboarder Magazine'southward Superpark event uninvited and promptly started throwing down backside rodeos over a 100-foot gap, something no ane else at the competition would have even dreamed of attempting. He's since won a few competitions and an X Games gold in slopestyle, but for the most part, he's moved on from judge'due south scorecards, instead finding satisfaction in finding lines down the most terrifying mountains on earth.)

In person, Rice is friendly, just has an intensity and focus you don't find much in top-level snowboarders, who tend to operate more on the Spicoli wavelength. He has large, expressive eyes and a wide smile. A thin scar carves the space between his eyebrows, a small-just-ever-present reminder of the damage he's done to his body in the years he's spent atop the sport.

The Fourth Phase serves equally a spiritual sequel to the previous film The Art of Flight, which many at the fourth dimension considered the most complete and visually arresting snowboard film always made. The championship The 4th Phase is both a flash at the fact that it'due south Rice's fourth film, but also a reference to the so-called "fourth phase of water," a theory espoused by University of Washington bioengineering professor Dr. Gerald Pollack that states that at that place exists a fourth phase of water beyond vapor, gas and liquid. The science is somewhat interesting and apparently quite controversial in the hydrological world, and despite reading upwardly on it extensively I still can't tell if Dr. Pollack has stumbled upon a profound quantum or if his theory is but a fleck of particularly well-packaged pseudoscience meant to sell his book.

Red Bull

For his part, Rice doesn't seem much to care, and despite Dr. Pollack providing several voice-overs, the moving-picture show doesn't get besides bogged down in the science, instead choosing to focus on this "4th stage" as a metaphor for our own limited understanding of the world. It also provides a structural hook for the movie – Rice, inspired by the work of Dr. Pollack, begins reading more than into the hydrological cycle, specifically the jet streams that form the weather patterns (read: snowfall) along his corner of the World: the northern Pacific. Under the guidance of Bryan Iguchi, the outdoorsman/poet/snowboarder/mystic/artist that acts as a sort of shaman for Rice, he maps out a journey that volition accept him follow this cycle, from his home in Jackson Hole, to Japan, upwardly to Russia, so finally to Alaska, specifically a section of barely explored Alaskan mountain wilderness he has named "And so Far Gone."

If all this sounds sort of hokey and ridiculous to you, I promise information technology's not. Or at least, it's non so much that it detracts from the movie. The mystical and/or scientific elements may inform the film's direction, but Rice and director Jon "JK" Klaczkiewicz never get hung up in them, and the film moves briskly to gear up the construction and also the central conflict at the middle of the flick: The i between Rice and the planet he seems determined to conquer.

Travis Rice (Red Bull)

I first saw The 4th Phase at its official New York City premiere, a swanky outcome held at The High Line Hotel in Chelsea and hosted by Red Bull. At a cocktail 60 minutes held in a courtyard, well-dressed and extremely good looking bartenders synthetic bespoke cocktails that all featured Red Balderdash, a somewhat daunting task because no matter how many fresh fruit juices and sprigs of thyme they infused into the drinks it however ended up tasting exactly similar Red Bull. One bartender spent upwards of five minutes working to craft a drink for me that tasted like someone had taken a Blood-red Bull and vodka and melted a ruby-red popsicle into information technology.

The party's attendees made upward a fascinating blend of Manhattan tastemakers and Wyoming snowboard punks, and you could run across the two groups orbit each other at the party, intermingling hither and there before retreating to their respective teams. Event staff carried effectually VR headsets which allowed you to experience, for two minutes, what it felt like to exist on the mountain with Rice. The virtual reality feel was wild and incredibly engrossing, and you could really look around and run across Rice right there, backside you, striking you with a high five as yous descended a massive snow face atop a sheer mountain face. The 2nd I took off the VR headset, however, I became disoriented, and had to find a tree to concord myself up on, scared that I was nigh to fall over. I was momentarily embarrassed until I looked up and noticed there was another invitee holding on to the tree for the exact same reason. We nodded at 1 another, my brother in disorientation, then both returned to the party.

Red Balderdash is the big name in extreme sports right now, and while no one likes to talk almost it much, the company is most singlehandedly propping up a lot of the biggest names and projects in the business. (I asked Jason "Hondo" Newman, the former TransWorld online editor who chastened the Q&A panel at the premiere, what would happen if Blood-red Bull decided to change marketing strategies and exit the world of farthermost sports, and all he could do was grimace and shake his head.) The Fourth Phase exists because of the company; it was fabricated as a partnership between Cherry Bull Media Business firm and Encephalon Farm, the independent film company that fabricated Rice's previous film. Every bit you expect at the scope of the film, though, and consider its 3-year motion-picture show time and numerous locations, Kishi Bashi score and helicopters (and so many helicopters) information technology's clear why the financial ascendancy of the free energy drink visitor was needed to complete the projection. Dolby, Toyota, DC, GoPro (the other large role player in extreme sports sponsorship), Skullcandy, Quiksilver and several other companies are involved as sponsors also.

Red Bull

While the money flowing into the sport is somewhat limited, watching high-level snowboarding has never been easier. ESPN televises the X Games and other events, and at present thanks to GoPro and Hd iPhone cameras, snowboarders now regularly provide an onslaught of easily digestible content to YouTube, Vine, Twitter and all their other favorite social media services, well-nigh in perpetuity. If you want to encounter what any of the best snowboarders in the globe are upwardly to at any moment, it isn't hard to do and then.

Which is why it's such an interesting time for Reddish Bull to bet on one of the most ambitious, and certainly ane of the most expensive, snowboarding films ever fabricated. At a fourth dimension when snowboarding is both struggling to find new riders and is also a source for near countless content, Rice went "basically dark," every bit he describes it, for the iii years leading up to the film. There were whispers near a new movie, but no i knew much about it. Rice posted little (for him) to social media, shared no edits of his seasons. If the rest of the snowboarding world was going to quickly share every piece of content as speedily as information technology could, Rice would wait, out in that cabin in the Russian wilderness, until he had his masterpiece.

Red Bull

And The Fourth Stage is a masterpiece. It's as visually arresting every bit whatever extreme sports film I've ever seen – director Klaczkiewicz manages to capture at in one case both the immense telescopic and the intricate particular of big mountain riding. He'll zoom in, and linger, on a single fleck of ice resting upon the eyelash of Rice, then pull back with a crystalline aerial shot, and the scope will at one time become clear – Rice is standing upon the crest of a cliff at the very elevation of the world. This back and along between the grand and the minute, the sublime and the beautiful, is at the heart of the work, and Klaczkiewicz has a real eye for capturing those moments of beauty. The large air matters, yes. The back flips are, indeed, gnarly. Only the moment I will virtually remember from the flick is the arresting vision of a grouping of four riders, friends, riding down through a misty Japanese forest, and the photographic camera pausing, if only for a moment, to capture a mitten touching the tip of an icicle-covered branch.

Kishi Bashi's score is similarly g. The multi-instrumentalist's songs capture the energy, yes, just pull away when the movie demands silence. If y'all want to see the film, I can't stress enough the need for a good fix of headphones or speakers – the thunderous whomp of a difficult play a trick on landed, the spine-tingling scratch of a board edge across an icy mountain face, the thick phwop of a helicopter blade cutting through mountain air are all as important to enjoying the picture show equally whatever visual. It is, more than any nausea-inducing VR experience could hope to be, immersive in this sense. Watching information technology, it's hard to imagine y'all could exist anywhere else on earth.

Carmine Balderdash

It is as well, strangely, as much a film about not snowboarding as it is nearly snowboarding. Two of the biggest journeys in the movie, to Russian federation and Alaska, are both failures. In Russian federation, after a month of waiting for the weather to change and going through that mental collapse described above, the riders finally get in the helicopter and fly to the Kuril Islands … and are immediately detained by Russian government, who care not that they had obtained all the proper paperwork to exist there. The iii riders pack up, dejected, and caput to Alaska, to the and then-called "So Far Gone" section of protected mountains … and observe that the heavy snow they'd all been expecting isn't in that location. Information technology'd been the warmest winter anyone tin can call up, and the deep pulverisation they'd dreamed of had been replaced by sheer rock faces. (Global warming is never explicitly discussed in the movie, equally the filmmakers seem more concerned with Rice'due south interior journey, but it hovers effectually the picture, always, just offscreen.)

Rice seems undaunted past the atrocious conditions in Alaska, eager to press on, and in this moment, the films transitions into something I've never quite seen before in an extreme sports movie. Rice, the righteous and badass hero of the film upwardly to this moment, is suddenly cast in a new light. His desire to conquer these moments is no longer dauntless; it's beginning to look arrogant.

Landvik, one of Rice's oldest friends, quits, broken downward after weeks later weeks of disappointment and uncomfortable with the conditions in Alaska that Rice seems bent on overcoming. Rice says he understands, simply can barely hide his disdain. Jackson, the youngest of the three, stays on, but with a nervous trepidation. During 1 unforgettable moment the photographic camera focuses on Jackson as he gazes upon Rice with a expect that suggests both admiration and horror – he'due south following this man, aye, only he'south clearly afraid of him. Rice has become Ahab in a backwards Red Bull cap, driven by a monomaniacal want to get that adjacent peak, to capture that next shot.

Blood-red Bull

Rice never deteriorates into a total monster, and much of the terminal hour of the film seems to business organisation him coming to his own grips about what he is willing to try, and how far he is willing to become. I won't spoil the ending, though I volition say there is a moment which is every bit (literally, in this case) gut-wrenching as annihilation I've always seen captured on flick, a scene which brought the 250 people in attendance at the New York screening to a shocked, and sustained, silence.

Perhaps what'due south virtually admirable virtually The Quaternary Phase isn't that it'southward a wildly aggressive and expensive snowboarding film at a time when making a snowboarding picture show has never been cheaper or easier to exercise. It isn't the excellent score, or the editing, or the brand integration (which, it has to be said, is rampant), or even the fact that people spent three years creating a picture nearly a sport that is struggling to remain relevant.

What'southward most admirable is that this film refuses to get to any easy answers. It asks big questions, yes. Many extreme sports films inquire these big questions, about the meaning of life, about our relationship with the planet, simply their answer is inevitable and ever the aforementioned: You just gotta go out and ride, homo. That'southward the big solution that is offered by all these films, a catch-all answer to all of life's problems, the deep and nighttime lie that past simply strapping yourself to a board and sliding downwardly a cold mountain y'all will observe all the answers yous need.

The Quaternary Phase pays a piddling lip service to this idea at the end of the film, with a gratuitous scene of the gang riding back home in Jackson and a funny credit-ringlet blooper reel showing them all having fun. But the last, post-credit shot undermines all of that, which (over again, without spoiling anything) shows that Rice has really learned nothing at all. He will keep to push to the tops of these mountains, for reasons he can barely begin to clear, and he will keep to look death in the face and elevate these beau riders upward there with him, riders who are all a petty scared of him simply at the same time sort of need him, because without Rice they'd all simply be launching themselves off kickers in Park Urban center and appearing on ESPN every couple years and getting wasted at firm parties with those same old friends. This is the central idea at the center of The Quaternary Phase, a film that begins as something about water and by the cease is about hubris and pride, most our collective need for boggling people who are willing to push button united states where we don't want to go, and the psychic and physical costs that come with being a person like that.

There is a scene toward the end of The Quaternary Phase when, after missing out on their first attempt at "So Far Gone," Rice and Jackson are helicoptered to the elevation of a craggy peak at a nearby range in Alaska. Landvik is gone. They take been waiting over a calendar month for this moment, the chance to get back on the mountain, to hurl themselves into the abyss atop zilch but a plank of laminated fiberglass and wood. The helicopter dumps Jackson off in a migrate of snow, and he sits in it, and so stares up at the peaks in a higher place him, cut clean from the cold air, jagged spires of death that he volition shortly effort to conquer. Rice is about to throw himself downward one of these spires, and and so it will be Jackson's turn to follow him, to find his own peak, and to attempt something no man has ever tried before.

"I'm scared," Jackson says. "Finally."

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Source: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/10/the-fourth-phase-travis-rice-movie-review-red-bull

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