Rick: Hey folks, the 50/50 boys are back with two more videos you should put your peepers on. For those who missed our last entry, I’m Rick and I like skateboarding and skate videos. But at the same time, I don’t know shit about skateboarding. Evan, on the other hand, has encyclopedic skateboarding knowledge. So each review has some in depth observations (Evan) along with the perspective of the average dingus (Rick).
Jante – 11:00
Evan: Jante - 11:00 is the fifth installment in a series of short skate videos by Fritte Söderström, a filmer based in Sweden. Those of you who watched or read our review of The Sour Solution III will likely notice some familiar names and faces in this video.
Rick: What’s that you say!? Our previous review focused on Swedish skaters too!? Well, you can talk to Evan about that.
Evan: I know I know, two Swedish skate video reviews in a row. I felt that this one deserves some of its own shine, though, mainly because the Jante videos are filmed in such a unique way. The skating in Jante - 11:00 is worth talking about, but Söderström’s filming technique is the real star of the show.
Right out of the gate, in the first five clips, we’re treated to some of the most masterful skate filming ever. When filming lines, Söderström spends the majority of his time directly in front of the skater. There’s a reason you rarely see skating filmed this way. It’s fucking hard! If you’re filming someone from the side or behind, you can look where you’re going and pay attention to the person you’re filming. If you’re filming from in front, you have to throw one of those two conveniences out the window. Söderström somehow manages to weave through narrow alleyways and treacherous terrain all while beautifully capturing high-speed, technical skating from an angle that most filmers wouldn’t risk trying on their best days. The dude has eyes in the back of his head.
Okay onto the skating.
Rick: The video starts off with Simon Hallberg and Eric Hedberg bombing alleyways and hitting spots on the way down. We see one of them—which one is he, Evan?—fly up a bump in an ancient-looking skate park, and the organ in the song kicks in. It’s pretty sweet.
Evan: I’m also not sure who is who in the first section with Hallberg and Hedberg, but each of them has a clip where they do a super unexpected 360 out of a grind or slide. The ride on 50-50 grind on the long rail to backside 360 out is particularly mind-blowing.
Rick: Ville Rockäng ollies over bushes and a gate and stair combo. I make it sound boring but it’s pretty impressive.
Evan: I agree, Rick. Referring to the switch flip over the bushes and the fakie heelflip over the gate as ollies does make it sound boring.
Rick: How did I miss the fakie heelflip? I even know what that trick looks like! Kind of.
Axel Berggren skates to some goofy little song and launches over some rubble. Josef Scott Jatta skates and Hannes Edvinsson did not give me any “wow” moments.
Evan: Axel Berggren and Josef Scott Jatta both skate super fast and have wild, out-of-control styles. Their aggressive approach to skating juxtaposed with a song that sounds like it could be from a Swedish children’s TV show works so much better than it should. It makes me laugh, and it’s probably my favorite section in the video.
Rick: Vincent Huhta pole jams off a bank into a parking lot. That’s it. That’s all I got.
There’s so much to love about Vincent Huhta! He skates like a wacky inflatable tube man.
Evan: That’s all you got?! There’s so much to love about Vincent Huhta! He skates like a wacky inflatable tube man, and I can’t get enough of it. He has a line in this where he does a nose manual nollie shuv-it, and then lands with his feet perfectly set up to nollie shuv-it again into another nose manual. It looks like a happy accident. Actually, almost everything he does looks like a happy accident.
Rick: Look how nicely worded Evan’s part is? I’m definitely riding his coattails for these reviews. Anywho, Nisse Ingemarsson has the most impressive part. There’s this blue thing and a hippy jump off a bench.
Evan: It’s difficult for me to write about Nisse Ingemarsson without sounding biased. He’s one of my all-time favorites. His style on a skateboard just oozes coolness, and the filming in this video makes it look even cooler.
Rick: Gustav Tønnesen transfers a tail slide from one ledge to another and does a whole lotta flip tricks.
Evan: Here we go again with everyone’s favorite magic carpet-turned-human, Gustav Tønnesen. Other than Söderström’s filming, if there was only one reason to hit play on Jante - 11:00, it would be to watch Tønnesen’s handful of clips. His skating is so easy on the eyes that it makes you lose track of the unreal tricks he’s doing. I could watch the switch frontside flip manual to frontside 180 out on an endless loop for hours.
Rick: Filip Almqvist lands some tricks that seem scientifically impossible.
Evan: I’ve never heard of Filip Almqvist, but he does a 360 out of a Suski grind in this that made me an instant fan.
Rick: Martin Sandberg is the ender and does some tail slides that seem pleasant along with this whistle anthem playing.
Evan: Sandberg closes things out with some of the heaviest tricks in the video, sealing the deal with a 30-foot-long frontside bluntslide on a ledge over some crusty cobblestone.
I think Jante - 11:00 requires two viewings to really take everything in. Watch it once for the skating, and then run it back a second time just to focus on the filming. This is a video I know I’ll keep going back to for a quick watch before going skating. I can’t recommend it enough.
Lima Kaos (Hensley)
Lima Kaos is a hectic skate video. Unlike Jante - 11:00, there’s no real creative vision here, just a bunch of skaters who are seemingly unafraid of death and love smoking weed. It’s great!
Rick: We thought we would save the best for last. Lima Kaos is a fourteen-minute video that delivers exactly what the title says! It’s put together by folks who work at Bar Hensley in Lima, Peru. The proprietor is seen several times in the video hanging out in various spots.
Evan: I’m glad we paired these two videos together because they are so different from each other. Lima Kaos is a hectic skate video. Unlike Jante - 11:00, there’s no real creative vision here, just a bunch of skaters who are seemingly unafraid of death and love smoking weed. It’s great!
Rick: The video doesn’t really have sections of certain skaters and is just lots of wild-ass tricks done in wild-ass locations. We see folks roll on frames of bridges, a dirt ditch lined with cardboard, a half-pipe with barely any flat ground, on top of an observatory, some extremely sketchy gravel roads, and my favorite—a halfpipe built upon a half destroyed building.
Evan: A handful of clips in this video made me laugh out loud. One of these is a drone shot of a dude at the top of a narrow overpass bridge frame popping an ollie before rolling down into the street. Rolling in on that thing is stupid enough, but the ollie is probably the most high risk/low reward thing anyone has ever done with a skateboard.
Rick: It features lots of fast hardcore songs, weed smoking, spray painting, and a general disrespect of law enforcement. It’s ten minutes that rolls by really fast and ends on a little loving tribute to Ronald Gonzales.
Evan: Most of the skating in this video involves some sort of risk of dying. It’s full of handrail slams and mega-crusty spots. This isn’t the standard Midwest crust that I grew up skating and complaining about. Multiple spots in this video seemed to require at least four or five pieces of plywood to roll away from.
The filming in Lima Kaos is equally as jarring as the skating. The video is a mix of drone footage and clips filmed with various camera setups, including what might as well be a potato with a fisheye lens attached to it. In a lot of the video you can’t hear the skating, which bothers me a little.
Rick: Now, when I said that we saved the “best” for last, I mean this was the most fun video for me to watch. The tricks are by no means comparable to the magic in 11:00, but damn, I’ve watched this video at least five times and I’ve passed it on to a dozen friends.
Evan:Lima Kaos is around twelve minutes of chaotic and crusty skating with two minutes of excessive weed smoking clips sprinkled throughout. While it’s clearly a hastily scraped together skate vid, it’s a super fun watch with some jaw-dropping skating.
Rick: That’s it for now. Join us next time when we review Spike, a North Texas-centered video by Bleach.
Evan Spradling is a filmer/photographer/skater from Bloomington, Ind. instagram.com/sahbrahtoothtiger
Rick V. draws comics and does punk things. Itsmerickv.com