A look at some DVD's... and a watch!

First up the.....

Fat Boys Tour 2009.

From Britain's hardest searching mountainboard team comes a round up of the places and events they went wheelie boarding in 2009. It's also worth mentioning at this point despite what the name suggests, it's not what you could class as vid featuring the antics of what the FatBoys crew got up during 2009. There is a section of a weekend trip the crew took to OTG but not much else. Instead the pretty much the whole DVD is filmed and put together by Emmeline Thrower aided and abetted by Shane Herd.

If you are wondering why this flick has passed you by, then it's because this production is very much grass roots. That doesn't mean it's all dodgy camera angles and riders jumping out of shot- The standard filming is as good as you would expect from any professional production with quality music through out. It's worth mentioning that Emmeline has been busy searching for bands and songs still yet to make the mainstream, which is pretty cool as it's always good to see when someone has gone to the effort of tracking down decent tune-age from new places.

When I say ‘grass roots' I mean the riding is all about chilled and fun with no big stunts or show offs. Right from the start with the first section from Raph Fest held at the Flying Squirrel's jib park. The riding is all about people having fun and enjoying the roll. If you were going to show anyone a DVD showing how fun and accessible mountainboarding is, this would be it.

That's not to say there aren't any big tricks on the DVD. Along side the sections from Out to Grass and Emmeline and Shane out and about freeriding. There is also a good round up of footage from the ATBA-UK series, where if you feeling nerdy, you can sit and play guess the centre and the round. To top things off nice there is sweet section from the last years Battle of Bugs which adds a nice level inspiration of how big and impressive you can go on a mountainboard.

To round things up it's a wicked DVD and a great intro into the sport. It's all put together with the love and care you would expect from a homemade cake and come complete in orange paper envelope.

Now if you want to get hold of copy the chances are you going to be out luck, unless you are lucky enough to bump into Emmeline or Shane and they have few in their sky rocket. The only way to get a look is to head to the FatBoys page on youtube. While you are there don't forget to check out Emmeline's new project Tricky Media for all her latest releases or if you can't drag yourself away from youtube. Here's Tricky Media's youtube channel.

Next up (better late than never, reviewing stuff you probably can't get hold of)

We have We'll Apologise Later
from the those cheeky chaps from the BFC.

We got our first look way back at the 2009 Cream Tea's at Knockhill MBC. Back then it wasn't really mastered and it was missing a couple of sections, so to get our grubby mitts on the finished DVD in ?????? brought a certain amount of expectation as we loaded the disk into the player. Despite already knowing what the film was like, the finished version of ‘We'll Apologise Later' had a lot to live up to, given how good the first BFC films were. Is it going to be the tricky third album?

The opening titles are pretty slick with pretty cool animated intros, then it cuts to DC and Rhys in a car somewhere in the rain.

Well the film starts with super-cool motion graphics by Craig Hellen you know you're gonna be in for a treat. 'We'll Apologise Later' didn't disappoint. Halfway between 'Like This' and 'Something Else' (which is also on the DVD), 'We'll Apologise Later' is a mix of documentary film-making, with Rhys and Dave telling the story of the trip from the inside a car in the rain, interesting? Video style of mountainboard videos showing the riding around Scotland, Winterberg, Wanyi, Compeigne, and BugsBoarding.

'WAL', as we like to call it for short, shows the BFC's usual approach of chilling, riding and having fun, and should inspire you all to get out they with your mates and do something similar, like road tripping or pulling a corked 5. And this is how you do it: Get yourself a Jack Johnston behind the camera to get now-expected-level-of-awesomeness shots, especially ones like the close-up of DC bailing in Scotland, the entire crew carving down the grass piste at Winterberg, and Jed's trademark slo-mo laid-out backflips at Compeigne. Then have yourself some sick sessions involving lots of flips, spins, slides, grinds, ramp-hole-making from Jed, tweaks out over the quarter in the woods from Dave, frontflips from Simon Andrews and 5's off the drop at Bugs from Martyn James. Make sure your Jack also captures how much fun the crew are having with Steve and Jed sleeping out in the rain and Dave's philosophising about camping, and throw in some clips like jumping off bridges, and Slater hanging ten. Now all is left is for you to add a soundtrack to the riding that is made up of the kind of chilled tracks you'd want to listen to while you're watching mountainboarding and you've definitely got yourself a DVD that people will want in their collection, and you'll have nothing to be sorry about.

If you are lucky there might still be some copies knocking about in centres, or you could win one with remolition, just keep eyes peeled on all channels.
Just incase you are wondering what it looks like or want a quick trip back to 2008, Here's the teaser.

Lastly breaking with tradition, We have got a bit of review of an actual product. And it's orange!

The Roam watch from Breo. (Which is the most orange).
Why are we reviewing this? well honestly this is more for those mountainboarders who spend some of their boarding time in the water. Because like most watches I don't think it'd stand up to a dry, rocky, dusty mountainboarding environment. It's stretchy wrist strap means you could probably wear it at the end of wrist guard without to much of a problem. It'd probably last a while being so small & light with a smaller surface area: it'd be better than those massive chunky 'rugged' out-doors style watches for sure.

And it's the rubber stretchy wrist strap that makes it is so good for surfing. Means it will easly fit over a wetsuit. Plus the way the watch is designed so that screen is moulded into the strap ensures there are no sharp edges and the whole thing isn't much bigger than one of those rubber Charity bracelet thingy's. Which you don't even notice you are wearing it.

It does come with one slightly odd warning though, even though the watch is water proof, it doesn't like warm water and can effect it's time keeping. So like a mountainboarder it's doesn't like hot showers!

All in all it is a stylish looking product which might stop you getting in trouble with your girlfriend for being late when a surf session has over run.

No doubt if anything else ends up being stuffed into our racksack for a review we will bring it to you... Even if it's not orange.


Cheers!