When I received my review copy of ‘The Final Flare’, I was slightly nervous. How the hell was I going do justice to a 3-disc special edition version of one of the best skate films ever?

If you’re looking for a breakdown of the main feature, then the first thing to do is to go back and re-read the original ‘Fully Flared’ review here on Trashfilter. The bonus material – we’re talking SIX hours’ worth! – in this special edition is well worth a completely separate review, so I’m going to briefly break down each of the three DVDs in this box one-by-one.

Let’s kick things off and set the scene with one of the official ‘Final Flare’ trailers:

Looks good, huh? Read on homebones…

Disc One (SD DVD)

Contents:

Original Fully Flared Release
Fully Flared Trailer #1
Fully Flared Trailer #2
Koston Speechless
Fully Fished

I’m not sure if there was anything on here that I hadn’t already seen, whether it was on the original release of ‘Fully Flared’, on Crailtap or on Lakai‘s site. That said, if you didn’t already purchase the original release, then you’ve got your money’s worth right here already: the two extra discs in the box are just icing on the cake. If you did buy the first release of ‘Flared’, then just stick this disc in, remind yourself that this is the best skate film since ‘Video Days’ and ‘Questionable’ and re-watch the main feature again.

Disc Two (SD DVD)

Contents:

The Final Flare Documentary
Unused Footage
Beware Of The Flare
Alternate Edits
Photo Galleries
Commercials and Video Vaults
Battle Commanders (Koston and Mariano)
All Blu-Ray Features (from Disc Three) Converted To SD
Australia Promo
Canada Promo… and a few other bits n’ pieces

As I already owned ‘Fully Flared’, for me, disc two is where the full value sits. There’s a hell of a lot of extra footage on this DVD. The ‘Unused Footage’ alone is almost 25 minutes long – and has a lot of sections you won’t have seen before. Watching this just re-emphasizes the effort and work that the team went to on this production. It might have been nice to see it grouped and arranged by skater perhaps, but that’s just a personal preference and being picky – this footage is better than most other skate companies would put out as their final edit.

Everything on here is worth watching (alternative edits have never really appealed to me, but I liked them here), but the two killers come in the form of ‘Beware Of The Flare’, which documents the team travelling through Europe over a period of three weeks in March and April of 2002. I’d seen this before, but it’s a great bonus feature to own here. Biebel and Johnson totally annihilate the continent, while the French Connection (and my fellow Londoners Jensen and Brady) do themselves proud.

‘The Final Flare Documentary’ is a sixty-minute extravaganza showing you the behind-the-scenes point of view. If you thought making a skate video was simple, then you should educate yourself. The amount of time, effort and money that went into making ‘Fully Flared’ is unbelievable: gruelling tour schedules (seriously), injuries and stress (let alone the amazing filming and editing)… It’s amazing and inspiring to hear the team talk about the pressure they felt on making this the best film ever. For me – and probably many other 30-something skaters out there – it was Guy Mariano’s ‘comeback’ that resonated the most. Guy talks openly and frankly about where he was in his life before deciding to pick up his board again. To hear how Rick Howard and the Lakai guys embraced his return and helped nurture his desire to be back at the forefront of skating again is genuinely heartwarming – and reminds you that the supportive and involving nature of skating is well and alive. An amazing film that everyone should see.

Disc Three (HD Blu-Ray Disc)

Contents:

New Full Length HD Feature
Weekend At Biebel’s
Guy Medical Leave Of Absence
Vincent Alvarez commercials and Chocolate Introduction
Fully Flared Intro
Fully Fished
TWS Awards Interviews
Photographer Photo Gallery

For those of us fortunate to own a PS3 or a regular Blu-Ray player, this is a great addition to your DVD library. All the juicy visuals and grading from the original feature are shown as they should be in glorious HD quality – but it’s not the original version of ‘Flared’. It’s extra unseen footage cut to different music. Unbelievable… Just how much footage did they manage to collect? The intro sequence viewed in this quality will blow you away, if you’ll pardon the pun. Brandon Biebel is definitely one of my favourite characters on the team and I really liked the ten-minute ‘Weekend At Biebel’s’ documentary that they put on here.
Guy talks about his injury and subsequent surgery without making you squirm too much and the Vincent Alvarez ‘Welcome To Chocolate’ commercials previously only seen as web-quality clips are here in HD, which looks great. A perfect end to the trilogy of discs.

Mike Mo’s Easter Egg footage and Carroll’s section from TWS’s epic ‘Modus Operandi’ are worth seeking out if you can find them (try ‘cleaning’ someone’s ear on the second disc’s menu…) and the bonus 46 page booklet that comes in the box is a great read, packed with all kinds of old ads and giving you a real idea of the production timeline.

The Lakai guys should feel proud of this contribution to skating. This special edition set surpassed all expectations, even after everyone had seen ‘Fully Flared’. That’s not the kind of goal most sane people would set themselves.

P.S. For anyone who was hoping to see the ‘Slow Motion In Regular Motion’ section from the second disc, which had to be axed after the packaging was printed due to lack of disc space, the Lakai guys have put it as a free download on iTunes via their site for all to see. Thanks dudes. Or you can simply watch it here on Trashfilter courtesy of the official Lakai YouTube channel.

It’s easy to get caught up in a nasty anachronistic frame of mind when you’re thinking back over your skating past. ‘They don’t make them like they used to’ might ring true for any older skaters, but it’s not really very constructive. I defy any ex-skater to watch ‘Fully Flared’ and say the production values are anything less than perfect and the skating isn’t incredible.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve see a lot of skate videos come and go. Watching the Lakai film made me think about some of my favourite sections of all time. I still have all of my VHS tapes that I bought – original copies of things like Blind’s ‘Video Days’, 101′s ‘Snuff’, Plan B’s ‘Questionable’… obscure stuff like Planet Earth’s ‘Cats Cradle’ or Sims’ ‘The 2nd Coming’… and I still occasionally give them an airing. A lot of them are probably worthless in the DVD age, but when I think back to the days of waiting in the skate shop for the delivery of ‘Tim & Henry’s Pack Of Lies’ to arrive I can remember how much me and my friends were into them. I remember watching the ‘Rubber Boys’ section in Powell’s ‘Public Domain’ and the skate session that happened afterwards. We weren’t any better for having watched it maybe, but in our heads we could do no-complies and 360 shove-its just like Ray Barbee. Same with watching H-Street’s ‘Next’ video: the resulting session at Fairfields was memorable for me. I thought the days of waiting anxiously for a company video to appear had long gone, but Lakai and Habitat have definitely rekindled that flame a little bit in the past year.

With everything uploaded to the ‘net straight away, it’s pretty easy to find something good to watch. I might own the originals to all of these, but it’s nice to take a few minutes during lunch in the office and watch a few of my personal favourite sections. Here’s a few of my favourites (including a few unlikely candidates alongside some expected gems) that I’d like to draw your attention to.

Guy Mariano ‘Mouse’ (Girl Skateboards 1996)

Mariano was always amazing, but this was his first full length section since ‘Video Days’, so it had a lot of high expectations. And, damn, it delivered… The line at the brick banks, his amazing switch skills… Not sure anyone could recreate this entire part even ten years on. If you haven’t already seen it, check his switch frontside shove-it to switch crooked on the handrail during the end credits of the film.

Mark Gonzales and Jason Lee ‘Video Days’ (Blind 1991)

Two of the best skaters ever, in the best skate video ever.
I was there when Gonz did his 180 to fakie 50-50 at the Shell Centre.

The Rubber Boys – Ray Barbee/Eric Sanderson/Steve Saiz and Chet Thomas ‘Public Domain’ (Powell Peralta 1988)

This is probably the best example of Stacy Peralta’s skill in tracking down ‘unknowns’ and presenting them to the world, along with the LA section in ‘Ban This’ (where the world was introduced to Guy Mariano, Rudy Johnson, Paulo Diaz and Gabriel Rodriguez).
This was at the time of no complies, frontside handrails and skaters taking tricks borrowed from freestyle (kickflips or gazelles, for example) and applying them to street riding.

Daewon Song ‘New World Order’ (World Industries 1993)

Taking what he’d shown in the ‘Love Child’ video and pushing it further, Daewon’s section here is pretty much flawless. Nollie bigspin heelflip on the Beryl school banks? Oof! “He’s the best in the world!”.

Jeremy Wray ‘Second Hand Smoke’/'The Revolution’ and ‘Color’ (Plan B and Color 1994/1995 and 1994)

One of the most underrated skaters of all time, surely. Perfect solid landings, flip tricks down huge sets of stairs, phenomenal pop, amazing style… Watch his frontside 360 roof-to-roof ollie in ‘The Revolution’. Watch the opening line at Carlsbad High in ‘Second Hand Smoke’. Even the opening ollie of his section in ‘Color’ (with a very young-looking Jason Dill in the background) is amazing. Each of these sections is still incredible 15 years later.

‘Second Hand Smoke’

‘The Revolution’

‘Color’

Peter Smolik ‘Fulfill The Dream’ (Shorty’s 1998)

Love or hate his uber-gangsta posturing, you can’t deny that this guy has skills. Some of the stuff he pulled in this section was jaw-droppingly good for the time. Oh, and the track by Mike Czech was nice too.

Henry Sanchez ‘Tim & Henry’s Pack Of Lies’ (Blind 1992)

If you ever skated ledges, you owe this guy some respect. ’92′s Blind video might’ve only been 8 minutes long, but damn it was good. On a sidenote, I’d love to see some more of the ‘lost’ Brian Lotti footage.

Adam McNatt ‘Still Life’ (Evol 1996)

Controversial maybe, but McNatt did some stuff that was way ahead of his time in his video sections. Aside from upsetting loads of people in his Transworld Magazine interview and dragging jump ramps up to handrails, he was also a ninja. Gotta score some extra points for that.

Various 411 Video Magazine sections

411 was an amazing addition to skating. The concept of video magazines was unique at this point and although several other similar projects appeared over the years, 411 owned this genre. The downfall may have began with the advent of streaming video online, but with so many skate companies pushing out free films, people just stopped wanting to pay for these things and dropping £15 every two months just wasn’t going to cut it in this day and age. It’s still around, as a freebie, but it’s the old issues that most of us remember.
Hard to pick just one section to sum up how great it was, so here’s a few of my favourites.

Geoff Rowley, Andy Scott, Rune Glifberg and Tom Penny ‘Flip Industry’ section (411 1995)

‘World Park’ section (411 no.3)

I could go on and on and on… but I’ll leave it for further discussion.
I have missed out way too many other fantastic sections, but this was a spontaneous piece as opposed to a carefully-planned epic. Dig out some of the old videos and see them for yourself.

I’m a sucker for any Evan Hecox artwork, so this series of Chocolate boards caught my eye straight away. I’m guessing that this set was designed as a follow-up to one of the best series of graphics of all time: the ‘City Series One’, released in 1997:

(Image pilfered from www.bobshirt.com)

The new set has five boards that piece together, from five of Chocolate’s pro riders: Kenny Anderson, Devine Calloway, Marc Johnson, Gino Iannucci and Anthony Pappalardo. As always, the Hecox illustrations are spot on: nice tri-tone washes, bold pen outlines and slick attention to detail. Oh, and the ever-important Chocolate logo joins the decks nicely in the form of a hoarding above the stores.

Yeah, skateboards are for riding, but I needed a set of these to grace the walls in my house before they disappeared. You’ll be lucky to find them now, but if you see a set pick ‘em up. A good investment (I doubled up and sold my spare set for nearly £2k a month after buying them off eBay for $300), but most-importantly they look fantastic. I invested the profits into buying a couple more Hecox prints – and an extra Calloway model to use for its intended purpose. Nice.