This is my viewing pleasure this evening. Been looking forward to this for a while. Looks like they have an Australian cinema tour coming up as well. Got this sent over by the NZ crew. Looks insane

I can drop it off for you when we do the beer garden board swap

Sounds good. Will get it to you soon.

Sadly hasn't got any use lately.

Ted the Kiwi said...
There is a more updated version of this movie trailer - make sure you get a copy - its unreal !!! Some great footage from across the globe but mainly just a bunch of mad men living life to the edge !! Will bring back some memories fellas !!

Nearly all of the trailer was WA!

and one more for good measure !! Anyone would think I was pushing this for the kiwi brotherhood ! This one is much better I promise

Stu from Swellnet just gave it a good review - sums it up nicely

Last Paradise
Who knew, eh?

Who knew that a Kiwi sheep farmer invented the jet boat? Or that the science of surf forecasting was developed in New Zealand? Or that a plucky group of Auckland kids, including Allan Byrne, invented skurfing, which would later become wakeboarding?

They're just a few of the bugger me moments to be found in Clive Neeson's new film, Last Paradise. Haven't heard of Clive? Well, neither had I but the old fella has lived a Forrest Gump life which found him at ground zero for many of surfing's, and other extreme sport's, important moments. He's had that many incredible experiences he could write a book, but fortunately ol' Clive had the prescience to film them all so rather than a book we have this film.

For Last Paradise Clive blew the dust off his old cannisters, some of them near half a century old. Being a New Zealander he simply rang up the production team from Lord Of The Rings and got them to help restore the footage to digital quality.

It's a long and winding story but the embarkation point is when a Californian surfer named Mike Dora ? some of you may have heard of him? - rolled into Raglan, the town where Clive and his brother John grew up. Dora had been travelling the world looking for another pre-Gidget Malibu. Somewhere isolated and unspoilt by the hands of man. He told the Neeson's of perfect waves and encroaching development on far flung coasts. Dora's advice? Go and see it now before it's gone.

And so they did: Petacalco before the dam went in; uncrowded Mundaka; Noosa with Greenough; Bali with Lopez and McCabe; Gnarloo with no-one. Clive filmed it all, and his footage in this section of the film is worth the price of admission alone. Anyone who cares about the history of our sport will be enthralled as it's the first time this footage has been seen.

The narrative of unspoilt wilderness and treading softly continues as the film wends its way back to New Zealand. The brothers and their friends seek sustainable living arrangements and short of modern luxuries invent their own technologies. Always the inventing. It fans out into other extreme sports, that if not invented in New Zealand certainly reached full bloom there: bungy jumping; snowboarding; hang gliding; hang gliding in the snow; hand gliding in the snow above a glacier; hang gliding in the snow above a glacier with an avalanche erupting. It's adventure first and some of the imagery Clive captured makes today's digital GoPro footage seem positively limp.

Clive packs 102 minutes worth of it into the film, while also threading a theme for environmental awareness through the story. There's a lot to see and absorb. But for mine the film's lasting effect was this: Surfing's history is far richer than I ever thought.

Who knew, eh?