Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Cliche "Cle" Review (and a couple other clips)


I got the new Cliche video "Cle" last week. They call it "a live and unplugged video," I assume because there is some live music used in it instead of all pre-recorded songs (though there are some like that). Overall it was good, not great for a Cliche video, but good nonetheless.

I loved the opening shot with the camera moving around the city blocks with Dany LeBron playing the guitar. It kinda reminded me of that shot Ty did a while back with Vincent Alvarez. Here it is. The live music was great and made for an interesting change of pace for the video, however, I was disappointed in JB Gillet and Lucas Puig sharing a part. I understand that filming for Fully Flared probably affected Lucas' part, but he has enough good footage scattered through other sections to justify a full part alone. Either way, the skating on both Lucas and JB's part was very good...which is mostly why I felt like I needed more. Flo Mirtain (not to be confused with Flo Marfaing) is the new guy on Cliche and he had the second part. Flo has a nice, clean style and definitely fits in with the rest of the team's smooth skating. I especially liked his big flips. As expected, when given the opportunity to thrown down for the Cliche video, the flow riders put it down hard. Javier Mendizabal is the most underrated skater on the team. I could have done without that line where he pushes switch mongo the whole time, but his ender ollie into that gnarly banks was ridiculous. Ricardo Fonseca had some good footage, but it seems like it was over when it started (it was short) and I feel like I have seen most of Cale Nuske's footage somewhere before (maybe I did).

As for Joey (the American), I respect the patience it must have taken to land a lot of those manuals, but there was to much switch mongo pushing and he skated pretty slow. I did like that bank to bank transfer he did on those yellow curb cut looking things and the nose manny to backside tailslide on the next ledge up. It was a decent part, but it wasn't up there with his Hello Jojo part, for sure. The second to last part went to Charles Collet. Honestly, his music stressed me out (a band called Duracell). And who's idea was it to make the first 1/3 of his part all slams?! When he finally did get to skating, it was good, but it was not one of the best parts. They should have cut out all the slams and let him share a part with JB, giving Lucas a full part. Last part when to the soon-to-turn-pro Andrew Brophy. I like Brophy's skating a lot. He has big snaps to get on high obstacles and can take his ollies the distance. My favorite part was when he skated that bent I-beam sticking out of the ground. It is also apparent that he has blunts on lock. His part was sick, but it was a bit short.

Placed in the mix within the video were two tour sections. While they both had some proper skating, they seemed too much like bonus featured that were just dropped into the mix to make the video longer. The Discover Oz Tour was a bit better than The Wheel of Fortune Tour. In the Oz Tour I was stoked on the flyouts to grass rides a lot. These sections are where Lucas had enough good footage to have justified a full part. Also scattered about where Easter Eggs with other bonus features. I hate Easter Eggs. I don't want to interrupt my viewing experience to watch something else and I don't want to have to go through the video again to find them. I wish they would have just placed them all in a bonus section of the menu with the tour sections.

Overall, the video was 51 minutes (including the credits). That is quite long, but it could have been easily consolidated to half that time. The video was good, but as held to the bar of other Cliche videos, it didn't quite measure up. At $16, it was appropriately price and definitely worth the money...however, add $5-10 to the price and that is another story.


On another note, check out the Pusher Wheels Promo for a lot of Philly and NYC footage. Also, get weird with William "The Mile High Ninja" Spencer's new part:

1 comment:

jorge said...

I didn't like the video, I was expecting more Cale footage, his part on eSpecial was also very short. Puig's part is also short, not a good video, can't be compared to Bon Appetit.