Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

It has taken me some time (almost 2 months) to get around to writing my review on the United By Fate Episode 2 that was released on August 17th. I was both excited tired for this release since it has been 5 months from the last release and that was quite a bit of time. I almost forgot about the release of episode that's how bad it was. They should work out on definite release dates earlier, so people would have a count down set up for it, but that's just my opinion.

UBF Episode 2 is the second installment of Globes online series and it was just as satisfying as the last Episode. This episode was centered on Chris Haslam and it continues the artistic post modern camera work as the last episode. The episode opens up to the somewhat mystical van that was introduced in the first episode, however it doesn't seem to play that big a role in this episode. We then go to an empty warehouse setting where we see Chris Haslam is going through an obstacle course of ramps, quarter pipes and other transitions. A little added bonus in this episode was footage of Shane Cross who passed away in March at the age of 20.

Another great thing about this episode that differs from the last is that it doesn't go all over the place with team skaters and the main skateboarder of interest. What they did was establish the skateboarder that we're suppose to focus around, Chris Haslam, then scope out to other team skateboarders in a team montage and the rest of the episode is on Chris. It felt more structured than Episode 1 in that aspect. I like how they put footage of David Gonzalez in this one because I did bring this to attention in the last review how he was almost none existent. He only had to shots in episode 1, him attempting a trick and then him landing one, so it was great that they gave the little guy some space in this video.

When we're brought back to Chris Haslam we're hit with classy reintroduction piece with the same artsy b/w theme. We see him skateboarding a quarter pipes, but we're quickly moved to him emerging from some concrete structure that was placed in a forest where we see the van come and pick him up. After that we get straight to business, the skateboarding. He skates much like how this video was filmed, with creativity and artistic quality. We seem him pull off some crazy tech tricks like a Boardslide Kickflip out, 5-0 to FS Nose Slide & FS Bluntslide to BS Nose Grind to Fakie just to name a few. He goes on to do many more double grind/slide tricks, but what really makes this video a gem is his abilities to do amazing tricks on any setting. You seem him doing incredibly difficult tricks on transitions, street and park. I would like to make a trick list of all the killer tricks he does, but that would be a lengthy list and I don't want to fill review with trick contents of this Episode.

After watching this video I was amazed to say the least. I witnessed tricks that I've never seen before and I was only able to say that about Rodney Mullen's skateboarding until now. Chris Haslam has developed into a skateboarder that is truly taking skateboarding into a new more technical era. 10 years ago he wasn't that impressive and I considered him an average pro-skateboarder, but now he's easily going to be one of the greatest. In my opinion this is easily the best video in the series so far. The next video will be center around Mark Appleyard. The Filming already stared before the release of Episode 2 so hopefully they'll have it edited and ready for release sooner than how long it took to release Episode 1 and 2.