Play Misty For Me
Longer
A video from j brother
$29.95; 35 minutes; surf shops or www.jbrother.com
Click here to order movie(s)

   Not since the days of Phil and David or Gerry and Wayne, have you seen better longboarding, longer noserides or more stylish tuberiding.
   According to Leonard Liebowitz of NYU's New School of Film , "Jack McCoy's Green Iguana-era productions were so tight you could bounce quarters off them; Taylor Steele played to the cheap seats, resulting in Himalayan gross returns; Andrew Kidman's Litmus articulated the scruffy sophisto of the surfing hobo; Thomas Campbell's The Seedling came smoking out of the gate with the most distinctive visual thumbprint of the decade. Yet it was j brother's 1995 ultra-short longboard flick, a drift, that quietly influenced the face of surf cinema-perhaps more than any other single title of the 1990s."
Hey, who am I to argue?
   Especially with a Cahiers du Cinema review by Ethan Coen laying down the following: "Longer, a new American surf movie (focusing on a certain Joel Tudor) is the vision of a masterful new eye. The poignancy of de Sica's The Bicycle Thief echoes in his scoring of the opening segment with Getz/Gilberto's 'Desafinado.' As you know, 'desafinado' translates from the Portugese to 'out of tune.' It is clear that this Joel Tudor is surfing 'out of tune' as he keeps prancing up and down his surfing board to maintain equilibrium. The use of Errol Gardner's 'Misty' further cements my thesis; it is clear that Joel is in a mournful state over the loss of a lover, as seen in the recondite but ultimately impenetrable transitions." Well, touché, D'Artagnon. I'd add my two cents by saying that you'd be hard pressed to find someone with a keener sense of surfing subtleties than j brother, particularly when it comes to his pal, Tudor. Longer captures Mr. T on discs, eggs, guns, and tanks at spots around the globe. The footage, gathered over several years, offers a unique look at joel's growth as a surfer and his choice of equipment and the wave quality have not been seen like this before. All the usual suspects will enjoy this true-to-form follow-up of a drift.
-Scott Hulet
Surfer's Journal

a drift "a look at surfing"
A video from j brother
$29.95; 35 minutes; surf shops or www.jbrother.com
Click here to order movie(s)

New greetings from the House of Lap Dissolve.   Traditional surf movie fare only in the sense that it's loosely documentarty, a drift is an opiate-paced glimpse into the world of (for lack of a more effective term) soul surfing. I don't think the cliché meter went off once in this baby (i.e. underwater opening shot, sappy slapstick, rock'n'roll/big wave scoring, etc). It has a signature all its own, and that's a tough trick to pull in a first offering.
   While the waveriding alone is worth the price of admission, rewind on the interstitial segment intros: a still-life Duke portrait and a spinning wax platter; a time lapse of Australian clouds; a hyper-blue spinning cocktail that morphs into a hyper-blue spinning Pipeline tube (further frame-by-frame scansion will doubtless yield hidden messages) ... all scene stealing stage-setters for the best longboarding we've seen, bar none. Surfwise, it's Bonga at an Outer Island, Russ and Buff at home, and J.T. as smooth as you like in 0-10' waves from New York to Pipeline.
   The score gets my vote for best soundtrack in a longtime: hazy Beastie Boys instrumentals from the rare The In Sound From Way Out! l.p. blended with blues, soul, slack-key, and a couple of hits from the Wolfgang Mozart tank. Pass the sophisto.
   The editing is a goodly portion of the show with wicked dissolves the order of the day, and the simple use of a tree trunk as a recurring cut point is borderline brilliant. While the long shot of Central Park comes as a non sequitur in the Nat segment, it's haunting in a Koyannasquatsi kinda way. Slo-mo is taken down so far that it starts stuttering, offering a cool nod to sequence photography.
   This short from filmmaker j brother is a quick trip to spiritual enrichment, and a wake-up call to the masses of Hi-8-toting pop-out artists.
   Fundless kids are advised to build booster boxes from discarded cereal cartons and hit the local surf shops. Adults should try more traditional methods of procurement. However you choose to obtain a drift, take it home, close the blinds, take the phone off the hook, and prepare for therapy.
-Scott Hulet
Surfer's Journal

   In a nutshell, a drift is a worthwhile little video, not so much for its fairly decent collection of longboard action ranging from small wave antics to Pipe tubes which features Donald, Tudor, Bonga and other top artist (Kevin Conelley, Nat Young, Buffalo Keaulana, Rusty, Rell Sunn, Dino Miranda, Joey Valentine and Lance Ho'okano) of the day (in California, Hawaii, Australia and New York), but for its slick packaging, editing, imaginative sound track and overall panache. This is a chicken salad folks - but in this case, presentation is everything and the meat is the backup. Finally, here's someone who understands that surfing goes over great over blues, classical and Hawaiian music. On that basis alone, a drift earns my "buy" rating. (I just coined the scale: don't bother, sketchy - but own it for the sake of completeness, buy - absolute must buy.)
-Steve Pezman
Surfer's Journal