Almost Round Three Video Review

Almost Round Three features footage of the Almost team including: Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song, Ryan Sheckler, Chris Haslam, Cooper Wilt, Greg Lutzka and William Patrick. Almost Round 3 has a running time of 30 min.

Where can I start with this video? I'll start at the beginning. For those new to this series of videos Almost began this series a while back featuring a competition between Daewon Song and Rodney Mullen. Now they're doing it again with Almost Round Three. The video contains footage of Daewon and Rodney doing what they do best but also has plenty of footage of the rest of the Almost team. The video opens with an amazing credit sequence using cool animation and the song "Any Way You Want It" by Journey. This is not like anything I've ever seen before and is really incredible. Then we get Chris Haslam's footage which is awesome. This dude seems to be one of the best skaters out there doing everything (rails, ledges, banks) at a higher level. I loved the part where he rides a skateboard using the tail of his own board. You have to see this to understand what I mean. It'll put a smile on your face.

Other great parts in the video include Cooper Wilt, Greg Lutzka, Ryan Sheckler and William Patrick. Sheckler is really pushing the limits at a very young age. I can see why people are amazed by him. And of course, there's Daewon Song vs. Rodney Mullen. There really is no "winner" in the Daewon/Rodney competition. They're both incredible. Rodney shows his technical wizardry with crazy variations (flips and more flips to primo slides to flips etc...) and Daewon tests his courage by trying tech tricks in really sketchy places (like 20 feet off the ground in some cases. Like between the roofs of 18 wheeler trucks!).

Another thing I also loved about this video is the song selection for each skater's part. You get to hear everything from The Cure to The Cardigans to The Killers to Jimi Hendrix. Really nice. This video is serious candy for the ears and eyes. It's really easy to watch and goes by as quick and smooth as Sheckler's long board slide during his part. Almost Round Three also uses some cool camera effects during the skate footage which I really enjoyed watching. For example, at one point the camera looks at the the moon and then the moon turns into the headlights of a car.

This may not be the right video for people interested in raw footage or people who like a rawer edge to their videos. In other words, this is not underground stuff. If you like that type of video more, there are probably better videos in that style. This video has a lot of cool things about it which some people might think takes attention away from the skating. On the other hand, that's the style for this video. Finally, Almost Round Three is o.k. for all ages to watch. There isn't any swearing or crazy stunts (apart from the skating). I think anyone will love watching it. I know I did.

I downloaded Almost Round Three from the TotalVid website. TotalVid is a website that has all sorts of extreme sport videos for download (wakeboarding, surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding etc...). At first, I had some difficulty downloading the video because of my internet browser and media player but Steve (skateboarding guide at About) and the tech team at TotalVid were very helpful and cleared up the problems quickly. I was able to watch the video on my computer without trouble. I would recommend the site to anyone who wants to get skate videos.