In reply to Durbs:
I downloaded this from the Big Up website and watched it last night.
The download process was pretty painless and, most importantly, cheaper. 20 bucks works out at 12-13 pounds which I think is good value. Most importantly I could do the whole thing from the confort of my own home, and without having to wait 3 days for delivery of a DVD. I had a couple of issue with the audio streams using VLC, but nothing too bad. I'm not bothered by missing out DVD extras, they're not included in the main film for a reason. The quality of the HD output is noticably better than DVD, some of footage is breathtaking in it's clarity.
Suffice to say that if all climbing films were released like this, I would happily never buy a DVD (or any disk) ever again.
Right, so, onto the actual content. The film itself 90 minutes long, which is very long for a climbing film. The first 45 minutes are, frankly, superb. Sharma as always is incredibly camera friendly, as is Tommy Caldwell, who makes up for the annoying teenagers in the main bouldering section. It is at least as good as the best bits of King Lines or Dosage 4, and better than anything in Dosage 5.
Unfortunately after the half way mark the film starts to lose its way. The section following Kevin Jorgeson and crew, first on the grit and then in Bishop, feels like a separate story and doesn't segue well with the rest of the film - that's not to say that it's not good, it just sit right. Things only pick up again as we continue with the initial story and return to Sharma, this time in California.
I can't help feeling that they could have cut the middle section out and used it as a separate film. The remaining 60 minutes on their own, featuring Sharma and Caldwell as the leads, would have been much stronger film.
All in all it is a film that makes a strong case for the use of narrative in such films, and for "less is more". One can't complain about 90 minutes of excellent climbing footage for just over a tenner, but would it have been even better as two (or even three) short films, released separately for a fiver each?