Legs Of Steel - Nothing Else Matters

With the IF3 film festival just over and the UK premier of Warren Miller's Like There No Tomorrow in Leicester Square next week, it is ski film season!  As if you need any more inspiration to pack in your jobs and quit the early, rainy nights of grey cities to head for the mountains, our friends with edit suites and cameras have put together a smorgasbord of water-crystal-based delights.  The latest to have come across my radar is Legs Of Steel - Nothing Else Matters. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/31067789] It features everything you'd expect from a good ski film: big mountain lines, urban jibbing, back-country kickers and park magnificence; humour, banter, mistakes and out-takes.  The smooth tracking shot and varied focus has become standard in ski films of late, but interesting angles, particularly during jibbing or park sequences with multiple skiers, keeps the creative eye interested here.  The final park shot involving 13 riders and brilliant camera-work is worthy of any top-end production.

This film isn't made with the huge budgets of TGR, Matchstick or Warren Miller, but its about the chemistry, friendship and skiing of just 4 friends: Paddy Graham, Tobi Reindl, Thomas Hlawitschka and Benedikt Mayr.  This adds a level of accessibility and fun that will be familiar to those of us that love backcountry days or road-trips with our mates, but aren't quite ready for the FWT or X Games.  Their passion for skiing and creating great sequences comes through in the film.  All 5 participants (skiers and film-maker) quote either Pep Fujas' Sessions 1242 or Tanner Hall's Believe as their favourite ski film, and you can see that in the locations, tricks and shots.  Park sequences, jibbing, back-country and aerial tricks are the life-blood of this film, which shows the backgrounds of the skiers, such as Paddy Graham's Sheffield origins.  Film-maker Andre Nutini is an upcoming Canadian film-maker, and if Nothing Else Matters is anything to go by, he has a good future ahead of him.

Legs of Steel comes in at a run-time of just over 20 minutes and its available to watch, for free, on Vimeo, so you've got no excuse to miss it.  Its a great example of a bunch of mates taking their skiing enjoyment and creating something for us all to enjoy, whilst showing that great ski movies don't need huge budgets - just passion.