Sports Realm

1. Cliffhanger

Whilst crossing a ledge, 4000 feet above the earth, Gabe’s (played by Sylvestor Stalone) friend’s equipment fails to work and she slips out of his hand, falling to the ground. Almost a year later, Gabe is asked to go back to the same mountain range and rescue a group of ’stranded’ people. The only catch is that these so called ’stranded’ people are infact looking for three boxes filled with $100,000,000 and they need a mountain ranger to lead them to them!!

2. XXX

In 1985, two adventurous young mountaineers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, set off to climb the treacherous west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. They were experienced climbers, and climbed “Alpine-style,” climbing the mountain in “one great push,” without setting up ropes or base camps ahead of time. After dealing with a snowstorm and some dangerous climbing over powder formations, they reached the summit (about 21,000 feet) on the third day. The climb down proved to be far more difficult. Simpson fell and broke his leg badly. Yates decided to try to lower Simpson down the mountain, one 300-foot section of rope at a time. The climbers had run out of gas to melt snow, so they couldn’t risk stopping as night came, and a violent snowstorm began. Their plodding, painful journey hit a snag when Yates inadvertently lowered Simpson over the edge of a cliff. In the storm, the men couldn’t hear each other’s cries, and, Yates, uncertain as to Simpson’s position, and gradually sliding down the slope himself, decided to cut the rope that connected them, sending Simpson plummeting to certain death. Miraculously, Simpson survived the fall, and was faced with the prospect of getting off the mountain alone with no food, no water, and a broken leg. In Touching the Void, filmmaker Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September) tells their story, based on Simpson’s book, using contemporary interviews with the two men, and a reenactment of their climb and descent, featuring Brendan Mackey as Simpson and Nicholas Aaron as Yates. Touching the Void was shown at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival.

3. BMX Bandits

The film follows the exploits of two young BMX experts, P.J. (Angelo D’Angelo) and Goose (James Lugton), and their friend Judy (Nicole Kidman) after stumbling upon a box of police-band walkie talkies. A small group of incompetent bank robbers were hoping to use the walkie talkies to snoop on police traffic and they will now do anything to get them back. The film boils down to a cartoonish chase across opportunistic sites around Sydney, including a memorable escape down the Manly Waterworks water slides, complete with BMX bikes.

4. Blue Crush

Move over, Gidget – a new breed of female surfers with style, guts and attitude hit the screen in this feature, which combines romance with a sports drama. Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) is a young woman living in Hawaii who has been surfing since she was a little girl, and over the past year has been training for the prestigious Pipe Masters surfing competition. But Anne Marie is still dealing with emotional baggage that’s holding her back – her mother abandoned her years ago, leaving her to raise her younger sister Penny (Mika Boorem) while having to guide herself through adolescence, and Anne Marie nearly drowned while trying to surf the famous Maui Pipeline three years ago, and has yet to shake the anxieties of this traumatic event. Anne Marie and Penny share a house with Anne Marie’s friends Lena (Sanoe Lake) and Eden (Michelle Rodriguez), both fellow surf enthusiasts, and the three friends work as maids at a hotel, a job which offers them flexible hours for riding the waves. When a pro football team checks into the hotel, Anne Marie meets Matt (Matthew Davis), a promising quarterback who has his eye on her. Anne Marie is just as attracted to Matt as he is to her, but will Anne Marie have to choose between the man of her dreams and the recognition as a surfer she’s worked for years to receive? Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake did all their own surfing in Blue Crush; Bosworth and Rodriguez went into training to learn the sport before shooting began, while Lake, a native Hawaiian, was already a confirmed surf enthusiast.

5. Extreme

EXTREME combines incredible extreme sport action with narration from the athletes and an eclectic, contemporary soundtrack as it explores the paradox of human nature: facing fear from the edge of life. EXTREME shares an understanding of those who have made their passion a lifestyle and provides a unique glimpse into the relationship between nature and humanity – of an earth at its most surreal and athletes who continuously strive to feel her magnanimous, powerful shapes.

Learn more about Extreme Sports. Stop by James Summers’s site where you can find out all about Extreme Sport.