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Adrift (DVD)

 [008] | Price: $24.95

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Traditional surf movie fare only in the sense that it's loosely documentarty, a drift is an opiate-paced glimpse into the world of (for lack of a more effective term) soul surfing. I don't think the cliché meter went off once in this baby (i.e. underwater opening shot, sappy slapstick, rock'n'roll/big wave scoring, etc). It has a signature all its own, and that's a tough trick to pull in a first offering.

While the waveriding alone is worth the price of admission, rewind on the interstitial segment intros: a still-life Duke portrait and a spinning wax platter; a time lapse of Australian clouds; a hyper-blue spinning cocktail that morphs into a hyper-blue spinning Pipeline tube (further frame-by-frame scansion will doubtless yield hidden messages) ... all scene stealing stage-setters for the best longboarding we've seen, bar none. Surfwise, it's Bonga at an Outer Island, Russ and Buff at home, and J.T. as smooth as you like in 0-10' waves from New York to Pipeline.

The score gets my vote for best soundtrack in a longtime: hazy Beastie Boys instrumentals from the rare The In Sound From Way Out! l.p. blended with blues, soul, slack-key, and a couple of hits from the Wolfgang Mozart tank. Pass the sophisto.

The editing is a goodly portion of the show with wicked dissolves the order of the day, and the simple use of a tree trunk as a recurring cut point is borderline brilliant. While the long shot of Central Park comes as a non sequitur in the Nat segment, it's haunting in a Koyannasquatsi kinda way. Slo-mo is taken down so far that it starts stuttering, offering a cool nod to sequence photography.

This short from filmmaker j brother is a quick trip to spiritual enrichment, and a wake-up call to the masses of Hi-8-toting pop-out artists.

Fundless kids are advised to build booster boxes from discarded cereal cartons and hit the local surf shops. Adults should try more traditional methods of procurement. However you choose to obtain a drift, take it home, close the blinds, take the phone off the hook, and prepare for therapy.
-Scott Hulet
Surfer's Journal