Globe World Cup Skateboarding 2004 (2004) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Sports	Main Menu Audio Additional Footage-Best Tricks Featurette-Skaterviews Featurette-Death Lens Cut Featurette-Australian Skateboarding Titles Additional Footage-Slams Featurette-Gallaz Skate Jam Trailer-Whyte House Productions - 7
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	44:59 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Mike Hill
Studio Distributor	Globe Stomp Visual	Starring	Dave Duncan Bob Burnquist Ronnie Creager Danny Way Mike Vallely
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Various

    If the terms foot plant, air walk, tail grab, nose slide, fakie, or front-side invert mean anything to you, there's a good chance that you'll be interested in Globe World Cup Skateboarding 2004. Many of the world's top pro-skaters gathered in Melbourne in February this year, to battle it out for cash. This DVD is the day's highlights of their blood, sweat, and tears.

    "Valentine's Day 2004. Melbourne Australia. The gnarliest line-up of pro skaters ever assembled took to one of the most insane street-styled contest courses ever created. A "sell-out" crowd descended upon Rod Laver Arena to witness the new face of jam-based competition skateboarding and one of the craziest street riots in the history of the sport."

    Set in a purpose-built, indoor skate-park in the Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, the Globe World Cup Skateboarding 2004 event consisted of a series of heats, involving 10 qualifiers, and 10 invited skaters (including many big-name skating veterans), competing for a $US20,000 first prize. The featured skaters in the "street riot" include Carlos Andrade, Bob Burnquist, Ronnie Creager, Rick McCrank, Andrew Reynolds, Bastien Salabanzi, Ryan Sheckler, Tony Trujillo, Danny Way, Mike Vallely, and Colt Cannon. Viewers are treated to a variety of styles over the same course, with plenty of old-school 80s moves, as well as all the latest technical tricks, including plenty of "sick", jumps, ramps, rail-riding, vertical walling, flipping it off the hip, and catching some serious air.

    Hosted by the large, Dave 'Double D' Duncan (I assume his nickname refers to his initials and not to his man-boobs), the DVD is squarely aimed at young skaters, with rapid, music video style editing, and plenty of uncontrolled skating action.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.29:1, which is disappointing. In today's world of widescreen digital sports broadcasts, a 1.29:1 transfer is pretty hokey and old fashioned - especially for a sport that strives to stay hip and cool.

    The sharpness is reasonable throughout, but the file footage can be a little blurry. The shadow detail for the interior scenes is fine, but the scenes shot outside with natural light can look a little harsh.

    The colour is excellent, but perhaps a tad over-saturated. I noticed the reds looked a little unnatural at times.

    Sadly, MPEG artefacts plague this DVD. There is pixelization throughout, and any paused images will reveal the blockiness of the image, for example at 22:39.

    Film-to-video artefacts appear in the form of aliasing. For example, there is a slight shimmer on the grille in the background at 13:45.

    Film artefacts were not a problem.

    There are no subtitles present on the DVD.

    This is a Dual-Layered disc, and I assume that the layer change is placed between the feature and the extras, as the entire feature is on one layer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only one audio option on this DVD: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are fine throughout.

    The musical score consists of a series of what I call suburban white-boy angst rock tracks and a few hip-hop flavoured tunes.

    As a Dolby Stereo track, there is no surround presence or LFE activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

   There are a few extras.

Menu

    A very simple menu with audio.

Best Tricks (4:08)

    As the title suggests, this is a compilation of the day's best tricks.

Skaterviews (13:31)

    Short interviews with some of the skaters.

Death Lens Cut (5:25)

    Another compilation of skating footage.

Australian Skateboarding Titles (5:59)

    Handy-Cam style footage of skaters in a variety of competitions around Australia, such as at Maroubra Park, NSW, Grindhouse, Qld, and City Skatepark, SA.

Slams (2:50)

    A compilation of skating mishaps from the day.

Gallaz Skate Jam (2:51)

    The girl's skate competition

Trailers for other Whyte House Productions

    Trailers for the following DVDs:

• Darkstar Battalion
• Somewhere, Anywhere, Everywhere
• Globe World Cup 2003
• Globe World Cup 2002
• Opinion
• Tic Tac 2 Heel Flip
• AKA: Girl Skater

Commercials

    Two television commercials for sponsors.

    Globe World Cup Skateboarding 2004 was released on DVD in Region 1 on July 20, 2004. From what little information I can find about this release, it seems that the releases are the same.

    Globe World Cup Skateboarding 2004 is an entertaining showcase of big-name skaters with all the latest tricks. At times, it did seem a little antiseptic due to the unnatural environment (as opposed to real street skating), but on the other hand, it was great to see the various styles across the same course.

    The video quality is slightly disappointing but still very watchable.

    The audio quality is acceptable.

    There are a few extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall