Warren Miller - Children of Winter

Warren Miller Productions' latest film “Children of Winter” has an allstar line-up, but will it live up to the fame of it's past films? Well, for a start, the film is no longer directed or influenced in any manner by the legendary Warren Miller. The company has been bought up and is now narrated by Jonny Moseley rather than Warren Miller.

Immediately when the film begins you get a feeling that this film will be entertaining. With it's almost teaser-like introduction showing all aspects of skiing, except urban, you sense that this will be an exhilarating all-round film.

It shoots off into it's Alaska segment, and this is where things tend to go a bit downhill. A noticeable aspect of the segment is that the filler shots, shots of snow falling or talking segments and so forth, take precedence over skiing. Also, there seems to be a lot of talking and in particular name-dropping of a particular heli-ski operation, which is just a shame. There are some fairly good skiing and snowboarding lines but the rest of the segment just makes it all seem as if you're watching some commercial for a heli-ski operation. Furthermore, the fact that they go to Alaska but don't show a riders' full line is rather disappointing. The fact that Max Bervy (director) enjoys to have snapshots of people skiing rather than showing their whole lines is perhaps one of the major negatives of the film.

After the disappointing Alaska segment the film goes on to places as Vermont, Austria, and Utah. The latter is really the only notable one to talk about with some nice powder shots and big-mountain skiing. Unfortunately, the shots you see are too similar in style and the fact that it is just a series of fragmented ten-second clips means that the originally great material goes to waste.

Nonetheless, the film begins to enter the park aspect of skiing with various park shots from both boarders and skiers alike. Probably my favourite part of the film was the Hatveit brothers segment and their incredible follow cams in the park. Sadly they show more footage of them two talking than doing what they do best, skiing.

One thing which is clear is that “Children of Winter” has a lot of talking material, interviews, insights and so forth. Although this is at times entertaining and interesting it tends to get a bit tedious after a while and you often ask yourself when they will finally show some skiing or snowboarding.

There are many other segments of skiers all around the world but due to how the film is pieced together they all look alike. What the viewer constantly sees is the clich? shot of the skier or boarder spraying snow over the camera. It is a shame seeing as they had a great array of locations and riders to their disposal.

However, there was another segment which was pretty interesting. Namely the ski jousting one in Colorado, which gave you a nice refreshing insight into a different snowsport. Sadly, the positiveness of this segment is negated by the mountain-bike one. It just seems that they had aimed to hit a specific runtime, and thus, just filled the film with poor footage.

Despite all of this, the cinematography is amazing. The scenic shots are great, the soundtrack is very modern and overly isn't too bad. The film has great promise to be great but due to the length of the film, the poor filler footage and the fact that there is so little skiing in it for a 90 minute long film means it's just overly disappointing. It's almost as if the new owners of Warren Miller Productions are putting a bad name to Warren Miller. If you want a film full of talking, name-dropping, cheesy-lines and atrocious editing then “Children of Winter” is the film for you.