Stoke Mining with: Jazz the Glass

Thanks to a globetrotting CP ah've me grubby little hands on a copy of:

Jazz the Glass made by Stoke Films. If you've not heard of the film follow the link to Stoke Films to see trailers posted on YouTube.

What they've done is taken a load of footage from Captain Kidd and dubbed over it to create a kind of story about pirates, stoke and surfing, and then they've cut it in with the actual surfing footage. I don't know the exact proportions are but I was surprised to find it's mostly dubbed storyline and less surfing.

Plenty of the surfing on it is great - particularly Chad Marshall's noseriding in blustery waves. Whether you like this DVD or not is going to depend more on your enjoyment of the dubbed sequences.

Basically if you enjoy a load of tongue-in-cheek rambling about:

• kook-killing (don't take all this too seriously as a line at the end quotes Captain Blackstoke as saying "you're all kooks"),
• surfin' pigs that 'trim fast and tip-ride super rad',
• "four kooks dead, 47 Megatons of stoke - a good day!"
• and long shouts of "get the booooooooaaaaaaaaaards reeeaady" in a piratey gravel-drawl

... then you'll like it. Unless of course it's then ruined for you by all the coarse language and sexual innuendo. But all this is supposed to be enjoying the fun that is surf language and urban slang etc. There are times when you wonder if the makers of this film think that it's all more brilliant than it really is, however, most of the time I relaxed into seeing it as just a laugh+surfing+treasure. I've been schooled on Derek and Clive and Withnail & I so I don't mind the odd splash of rich language and I am a sucker for phrases that stick in your head like "stoke mining" (nothing to do with Stoke-on-Trent) and "I got a line on some stoke... the clean shit!". I was put off by some of the 'filth' at times when it seemed too schoolboyish - but nothing's perfect and I like a bit of irreverence and something fun and a bit different (different from other surfing dvds anyway - obviously there's nothing new about dubbing over films in general for 'comedy effect').

During the surf footage I liked the black&white (or green&white) and the atmosphere it created with the music by Bobby Lurie, Cory Mcabee and featuring performances by The Billy Nayer Show. The soundtrack made a difference from the hippie/wet guitar for longboarding or pumping dance music for thruster shredding, that washes over a lot of surf stuff!

Surfers on the DVD include: Chad Marshall, Matt Wesson, Kassia Meador, Jared Mell, Mike Black, Joel Tudor, Alex Knost, Christian Wach, Dave Rastovich, Birkin Newell, Tommy Witt, Brett Simundson, John Haffey, Connor Coffin, Andrew Bennet, Rob Curtis, Adam Lambert, Chris Ward, Jamie Parkhurst, Josh Kerr, Damien Hobgood, Jen Smith Clay Marzo and Nate Yeomans.

Right, that's enough rambling on: ah've got license to shred so I'm off to mine some stoke...