Let me preface this by saying that I’ve only seen Alien Workshop’s “Mindfield” once and it was at the premier so its been a minute and my judgments may not be totally sound. That said, Josh Kalis’ part was a low-point for me for one simple reason: the bulls**t-progressive-indie rap soundtrack was so bad that it was all I could think about. The rational part of my brain remembers some bad-ass big-spin/bluntslide combos but only kind of. One could argue that I could re-watch it with the sound off but the only thing worse than skating set to bad music is skating with no sound at all (for this reason I may never watch Forrest Kirby’s “Zoo York State of Mind” part again). (Update: I re-watched his “Mindfield” part and have this to say: the first verse totally ruins the part but second verse makes the beat tolerable. Still not a fan, though).
All of which adds up to this B-Roll footage from the DVD being a revelation for me. Kalis’ style clearly gets better with age and the solid ease with which he puts tricks down makes them almost look too easy (almost). He simply doesn’t look or skate like anybody else. The switch ollie up at 1:12 stands out as the best thing in this video for the speed and style. I’m fully down for the switch talents of Eli Reed and Torey Pudwill but they’re always doing some gross s**t with their arms on the way up; Kalis is clearly rolling switch but there’s nothing awkward about it. Not that I’m only jocking this clip for the ollies, there’s the nollie-bigspin to BS noseblunt in Barcelona, the fakie ollie FS noseblunt slide at 1:20 and the tre-flip manual across the loading dock gap at 1:43. Oh, and just how high he pops the bigspin that starts things off.
Kalis has said that he’s disappointed about how his Mindfield part turned out and the decisions AWS made about footage they edited out but I have to say that I wish his whole part was here.
Bonus:
Commentary: Josh Kalis Kalis provides commentary to his parts from Timecode, Sixth Sense and Peep This, plus his personal favorite part, Mike Carrol from Questionable.
