The New York Times...Still Stuck on Extreme

The New York Times seems to run a piece on "extreme" sports almost weekly, a far cry from the early days of skateboarding when any article about skateboarding in a mainstream publication was required to use the word "fad" in the same sentence.

The most current article is about how "extreme" sport films are no longer regulated to a straight to video release.

From the New York Times...

THE new documentary “Steep” takes viewers where only the most extreme athlete has dared to go: alongside skiers as an avalanche, which looks more like a river, nearly carries them away; watching another skier narrowly slicing his way through backcountry trees as if he’d sneaked onto a Christmas tree farm; in a helicopter as it approaches a snow-glazed mountain when one of the skiers deposited on it zips down an almost vertical slope.

Had it been made a decade ago, “Steep” would have been relegated to ESPN or the video sections of sports stores. Yet it is being released on Friday in actual theaters by Sony Pictures Classics. “Steep” is a sign of how legitimate so-called action sports have become, and the peculiar ways that this mainstream crossover manifests itself.

Films showcasing alternative sports have been around almost as long as the sports; the director Bruce Brown’s classic surfing documentary, “The Endless Summer,” dates to 1966. The current twist involves films that focus on the bastard children of surfing — skateboarding, snowboarding, freestyle BMX riding and extreme skiing — that can now be found at the multiplex. (continued)