Welcome to the Hood1 is the second offering, after the well-received The Schengen Files, from Paul Robinson and Alex Kahn’s PRAK Media. WTTH follows Robinson, Daniel Woods, Guntram Jörg and Anthony Gullsten to various European hotspots. And much like The Schengen Files, WTTH was more or less filmed, edited and packaged for sale by the climbers themselves. Since climbing movie reviews are notoriously difficult to write, I will try to keep this pretty simple.
What it isn’t
WTTH is not a climbing movie with a story nor is it a movie with a varied soundtrack. While the movie is ostensibly framed around a motif of the four climbers climbing in their “hood”, this is done so very loosely. Since I believe it is important to know what to expect when sitting down to watch a climbing movie, know that, though the footage is well-done and the climbs are hard, this movie likely will not be thrilling to the casual climbing audiences in the way other movies may be.
What it is
WTTH, however, is top notch climbing porn with almost 40 minutes of non-stop action. You have four of the world’s best climbers climbing some of world’s most difficult boulder problems, several of which have not been seen before in this quality. The movie includes great footage, highlights of which are Robinson on the FA of The Traphouse (V14), Gullsten repeating Anam Cara (V14), Jorg repeating Big Paw (V14/15) and Woods’ relatively effortless looking flash of Entlinge (V14/15). These guys are great climbers and it shows throughout WTTH.
Details
Trailer
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/36618541 w=575]
How long is it?
~40 minutes
When is it released?
Midnight GMT on April 2nd
Where you can get it and for how much?
HD Download ($10.99) | DVD ($19.99 w/ free worldwide shipping)
- WTTH from here on out ↩
Thanks Narc 🙂
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I’ve had this release on my calendar since the trailer came out, glad to see a review up!
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Sweet, I’ll have to download this tomorrow.
Thumbs up for climbing porn btw, screw the casual audience! 🙂
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It won’t be available for download until next week
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Boooo! Just noticed that trying to find the download.
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Want to buy my copy?? 😉
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Now there’s an endorsement
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– Does Daniel climb Entlinge with the upside-down toehook beta?
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Yes he does if I remember right. Saw the film a few days ago, but I guess I got a memory like a goldfish.
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Paul came to my gym and showed the video and I have to say I was not impressed. The whole “Hood” thing seemed quite corny to me, and the bloopers in the end seemed to show that some of the climbers thought it was dumb as well. For most of the climbs you hear nothing about the beta, or the area’s the are climbing in. When I watch full-feature type climbing video I expect to be taken to the climb with these descriptions. I could go on youtube if I just wanted to watch videos of people sending boulder problems. I also got sick of the smoky font thing they had for every single climb and the lack of music variety was monotonous. Now of course this is all just my opinion, take it as you will.
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The whole concept of welcome to the hood qualifies as ‘climbing porn’ in my book.
Full of action, void of (genuine) emotion,
and a big splattering finish.
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