Tuesday, August 22

Tube 2000: As wild as X Games

By Alex Kaminskas
Special to EXPN.com

Judge winners:
Seth: The Hard Way Number one movie overall
September Sessions Best highlights for action
Billy's Balloon Recklessly funny and unbelievably dark animation
Miracle Boy and Nyquist Com Choice Audience Award
Good Video Captured Aug 21st "Seth," jumps and wipeouts; "Bam" skateboarding harassment; "Universe" unicycling advanced; Bitchen wakeboarding

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tube 2000, the action sports film festival was sick, twisted and satisfying. "It was awesome," the crowd guarantees, "right on!"

ESPN, Adobe, and EXPN co-sponsored the X Games film event. Skateboarding, BMX bicycling, snowboarding, and motorcycling shared the stage with insane cliff parachute jumps, unicycling intensity, and explosive cartoons. The two-night event contained twenty-six movies chosen from the over 70 original entries.

"Seth: The Hard Way," by 4 Leaf Entertainment, won the judges' No. 1 vote. Seth's motorcycling in epic dunes, intense cliffs, and wild man-made jump ramps beat out BMX ripping, skydiving insanity, and animation madness. The judges highlight award went to the surfing star world in "September Sessions," by Jack Johnson. The Animation award went to cult filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt's "Billy Balloon," the story about a little boy and his twisted toy. The Tube 2000 Film Festival contained the sports we know and love, new sports that push our limits, and outtasight drawing artworks. The great movies about our favorite sports won the awards. New antics few have ever seen expanded our thoughts.

"Base jumpers rule," says Marshall Hattori, surf documentarian. "Pure, not fame or fortune, so pure mate" were Hattori's words he used to describe the Finnish epic 1st Base. A Finnish team filmed folks throwing themselves off of spectacular cliffs in Norway, pulling flips and carving away from the earth in death defying fun.

"Yea!" the crowd applauded as they learned about new advancements in performance unicycling. Big hops, full spinning, and hard core eats extend the old circus favorite into a new century. "How exciting was that," says Elena Scheibel , one of the judges. "Seeing high performance unicycling in skateparks was really entertaining."

"Seth was awesome," many spectators cheered, "right on!" In his starring role Seth Enslow cleared great distances with huge airtime on his motocross bike. Uncontrollable motorcycling skills and merrious crowd wipeouts landed the merry man ahead of all the other filmmakers.

Miracle Boy and Nyquist won the Com Choice audience favorite. The BMX revolutionaries blew apart half pipes and street parks. The documentary showed how the two brought their sport to the masses and how they have made money. As groms they ripped. Now older, the two still control the crowds.

September Sessions won the judge's award for highlights. Stars of the surfing world, including Kelly Slater and Rob Machado, took apart perfection found off the coast of Indonesia. Long tubes are accented with a-plus lippers. Body surfing was Shane Dorian's addition.

Animated antics of the artistic films drew into the crowd's eager craving for wild adventures. Strange watches, an ancient boy who created snow, and other lost to Billy's Balloon in the judges award for the festival's animated features. The addictive concepts put out many of the festivals real life inhabitors.

Skateboarding won no prizes but the efforts of our street bound heroes do deserve much respect. Movies like Bam Margera and his friends, "Bam Questions Authority," documented their adventures of getting kicked out of every place they skate. The audience enjoyed it especially when every skater's classic problem was thrown at they by such unbelievably uncool security. "Skateboarding Saved My Life" inspects further the impacts of every skater's freedom of expression that attracted him or her to the sport in the first place.