Hottest big budget ski films of the season

T’is the season for fall ski movie premieres and there’s no better way to build anticipation for pow shredding  than to watch pro skiers do rad stuff in front of a camera. But in the age of YouTube, a bunch of stitched together segments of skiing to a soundtrack of the year’s alternative hit songs doesn’t quite cut it anymore. The skiing audience wants a story. They want narrative. Productions such as Sherpas Cinema and Sweetgrass Productions are masters of this art, but with significantly smaller budgets and lots of other contracts on the go, they can’t keep cranking out films every year. But the big guys can. So grab a caffeinated or hopped beverage and enjoy some teasers from this year’s big budget ski films.

Ruin and Rose – Matchstick Productions

With an intro resembling something out of George Miller’s Mad Max movies, Ruin and Rose begins in the desert of Namibia depicting the world as a water-less post apocalyptic wasteland. It strikes a chord with passionate snow seekers, who realize that in a couple of generations, there may be very little snow to ski anymore. Best make the most of it while we can, and the crew of athletes from Matchstick do just that. Shot on location in Alaska, Switzerland, Bulgaria and France.

Tight Loose – TGR

Teton Gravity Research (TGR) let it all hang out for their film Tight Loose, which celebrates their 21 years of ski movie making radness. Expect a lot of montages, bro moments, plenty of tight skiing, even more loose skiing and a healthy dose of naval gazing. This is the kind of movie that makes you want to get together with your buddies and shotgun a beer before the opening titles. Tight Loose will likely have the funniest crashes and highest percentage of “what the f—!” close calls of any ski film this year.

The Fourth Phase – Red Bull Media House/Brain Farm Cinema

If Jeremy Jones showed us one thing, it’s that you don’t have to be a snowboarder to appreciate his films. Travis Rice doesn’t mind blowing a ridiculous amount of budget and resources on his own vision of radness (as he demonstrated in 2011’s Art of Flight), but The Fourth Phase actually shows some promise of documentary style investigation into the hydrological cycle of the north Pacific Ocean. These cycles are what give us the snow storms that bring us winters full of adventurous sliding and by following them around the world, Rice and his crew may just nail the best snowboarding footage this year.