Fruit of the Vine is a brilliant doco about the pool skating scene in California and the pioneers who are still doing it today. I enjoyed the other movie by Coam Nichols and Rick Charmoski called Northwest which was also a super 8 movie.

This is truly an inspirational movie with the guys who have been doing this for 20 years or more. Steve Alba, Tony Alva and the rest of the crew make their way around the arid deserts of California, raiding the empty pools of yesteryear, redefining the purpose for which they were built.

Essentially pool skaters would have to be some of the most determined hardcore skaters you would come across. Remember, the thing they like to carve it up in, is usually someone else's private property! Dedication to their sport goes right to the point of actually draining some pools in order to skate them when the owners are on holidays or even just away for a couple of days. This documentary covers the abandoned or empty pool scene, where for the most part the only inhabitants are the poor and impoverished who in some cases are more than happy to have these guys sweep the pools out and skate them.

Possibly the gnarliest part of the DVD was when they hit the Gonzalez Pool and were trying to drop into the pool which was actually over vert! So to drop in and not slam you had to actually force in further than what you would on a normal vert ramp. It wasn't so much spectacular but admiration for the guys who persisted in doing it.

Another fascinating part of this disc is that they talk about Burnside, one of the most famous parks in the world now thanks to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video games. It was actually built without anyone's permission! The guys who laid all the concrete would do it a bit at a time until eventually this huge park was there.

I've actually pool skated once myself many many years ago, there just isn't an abundance of them here and it is certainly great fun. Watching these guys carve the pool up and over lights and death boxes was brilliant and inspirational.

This is one of those discs that if you fancy yourself to be even slightly interested in skating this is a must buy.

A variety of sources were used to film this feature along with a number of different techniques during the editing process, or so it seems. I absolutely loved it, from some of the old fashioned sections in black and white all the way through to some of the clearer imagery, the super 8 just gives it that special touch that makes this flick so memorable. The transition from black and white to colour also rocked in my opinion.

Audio is clear and very serviceable. The sounds of skating are ever so clear, god bless them! Soundtrack has some sweet tunes, many of them bands worth checking out if you haven't heard them before. Some of the spoken word pieces are sensational, especially around the end of the film with the guys talking smack about the world of pool riding!