Return2Sender – Awards
Winner Best Climbing Film at the 2005 Banff Mountain Film Festival
Winner Best Climbing Film at the 2005 Kendal Mountain Film Festival
Winner Special Jury Award at the 2005 Telluride Mountain Film Festival
Winner Best Climbing Film at the 2005 Taos Mountain Film Festival
Winner of three awards (including Best Adventure FIlm) at the 2005 Boulder Adventure Film Festival
Reviews
Climb Magazine (UK)
By Colin Wells
US climber-filmmaker Peter Mortimer's often-astonishing film undoubtedly represents the film of 2005. Mortimer is the man to catch; Return2Sender shows he's on fire. His latest offering is a major advance on his already impressive previous hit Front Range Freaks. It’s populated with a cast of characters who are articulate, entertaining and talented and, as befits someone with a Masters degree in Film, there's a real intelligence behind the lens and its direction. As a celebration of Indian Creek crack climbing, slack lining, pre-pubescent bouldering and base-jumping, Return2Sender simply raises the bar for documentary-style climbing film. The quality of cinematography and snappy editing is outstanding, much of the action is gripping and inspiring and, best of all, it's frequently very amusing. Not only do most of the individual films comprising this bumper DVD have a tale to tell, but you actually learn things as well. Sad to say, it makes a lot of recent British offerings look pretty amateur by comparison.
In particular Mortimer uses the talents of US climbing's answer to Jim Carrey - the off-the-wall Timmy O'Neil - to perfection. Like Carrey, O'Neil, a gifted improvisational extrovert, can easily overwhelm a film if not reigned in and directed competently. Mortimer successfully restrains O'Neil's tendency towards Jackass-style idiocy, curbing his enthusiasm and rationing him cunningly to provide a kind of comedic glue sticking together a series of mini-films. A vibrant momentum is thereby maintained as the pace changes throughout the DVD depending on the subject matter.
Parallelojams, the Banff- and Kendal- conquering documentary about Indian Creek opens the DVD and is a magical celebration of the region's climbing and its climbers. By turns funny (O'Neil again doing his 'Indian Creek beat-boxing' act), gripping (Eric Decaria's sketchy repeat of the sick hard 5.13R Air Swedin is on a par with Seb Grieve's Meshuga performance in Hard Grit) and simply gorgeous to watch, it's as fine a piece of climbing film as there's been in the last five years. But Return2 Sender must also be one of the best value DVDs out there, for that's just the hors d'oeuvre. There's some fantastic aerial and head-cam filming of Timmy O'Neil slacklining between sandstone towers; a film profile of the amazing embryonic bouldering genius Cicada Jenerik ("I have lots of goals - like to climb my age; V10 when I'm 10" - she does as well); some of the most vivid basejumping sequences ever filmed; the return of the rock-climbing Jack Russell terriers from Front Range Freaks; even a totally watchable Greenland expedition film - surely a first for Mountain Film.
The result is that Return2 Sender is one of those rare films that can allow outsiders an insight into what makes the activity it depicts so addictive. It's a wonderful celebration of climbing that manages to capture those fleeting moments of elation and joie de vivre that keep us all going through the miserable failures.
It would be nice to think that Mortimer’s film might turn out to be one of those landmarks, like Stone Monkey and Hard Grit, which prove hugely influential and change the way climbing film is shot. UK directors have arguably held the lead in innovation during the past decade - with the Mortimer phenomenon it's beginning to look like the centre of gravity might be slipping across The Pond.
FILM TALK By Alison Osius
Rock and Ice 143, July 2005
The first climber we see lob from Air Swedin (5.13- R) in Indian Creek, Utah, goes for 35 feet. And never do viewers of Return2Sender grow inured to the repeat whips that follow.
Still, it is even more involving to watch the soft-spoken Eric Decaria struggle to gain ground on this new-school testpiece. We honestly understand his efforts to gut out every inch.
R2S, filmed by Peter Mortimer (director of Front Range Freaks) and hosted by Timmy O’Neill is rich with characters and stunning moments, especially in “IC”: Vera Schulte-Pelkum gunning up the testy Broken Brain (5.12) on-sight; the sardonic Jin Donini giving a mouthy O’Neill a look (and then cruising the beautiful Think Pink); Renan Ozturk scaring you silly (even if you happen to have spotted him placidly drinking coffee that morning, and so have reason to believe he will live) on sight soloing the exposed 5.11- Lightning Bolt Cracks, on North Six Shooter Peak. Or O’Neill, viewed from a helicopter magically floating on a slackline between the Bridger Jacks Tower. A small camera on a 14-inch extender fastened to O’Neill’s shoulder peers down at his legs bowing out as he tries, in gusty winds, to stabilize. Elsewhere, O’Neill does a hilarious beat-box pantomime.
During segments filmed in various locations, the youngest cast member, Cicada Jenerik, 10, says earnestly, “Good climbers do believe. I believe." Then she yowls like a grown-up as she slaps down v10. Michael Reardon solos stacks of hard routes, gut-wrenching to watch.
Innovation flourishes. Mortimer duct-taped a camera lens to a stick for shots taken from within cracks, looking out. The fine, often moody score is mostly original (much is by Nick Pavey).
The IC segment is gemlike, unified in theme and quality. The rest, while ambitious, varies in subject and relevance, with some sparks but other parts feeling long. Still, this is one of the best climbing films ever made, and for reasons that go beyond the climbing. O’Neill’s antics throughout pull it all together. Mortimer’s editing and direction provide terrific changing perspectives, and the ultimate insider’s point of view. R2S made me want to go climbing.
Q & A with director Peter Mortimer
WHICH WAS THE MOST DIFFICULT SECTION TO FILM?
The helicopter shots. People spent days riggin the Six Shooter abnd the highline on Bridger Jacks. Then the weather crapped out, and we tried to call off the shoot, but it was too late … The wind was howling, and we were flying around the highline with our pilot, who had one eye, buzzing circles all around Timmy, who had barely had a chance to practice. His first six or seven efforts, he fell. Then amazingly, he did it. Total clutch performance.
DID ANY PART OF THE PROCESS SCARE YOU?
The scariest was when four people went out for a second time to film Renana soloing the Six Shooter. They came back really late, and Timmy and I had worked ourseleves into a tizzy, worried that the worst had happened. We donned headlamps and drove for the rescue, but we passed them on the road.
WHAT IS YOUR GOAL IN YOUR CLIMBING FILMS?
I want to make fun, inspirational movies…delving into the personalities of passionate and eccentric climbers. I like the freaks.
DAILY CAMERA
Cordell: Crack climbing
February 17, 2005
"I have a climbing confession: I have a problem with cracks. I've been attending group therapy sessions in Eldorado Springs Canyon to deal with some of my issues, but scraping, pasting and eeking my way upgrimy rock crevices still falls outside my definition of "fun."
Not so for the stars of Peter Mortimer's new film "Parallelojams." The 30-minute film, debuting in April as a segment on Mortimer's DVD "Return2Sender," features some of climbing's top athletes playing in the crack-climbing mecca of Indian Creek, Utah.
Boulder's own Timmy O'Neill hosts the short, which showcases superstars Eric Decaria, Topher Donahue and Vera Schulte-Pelkum (to name a few) grunting, groaning and floating up some of Indian Creek's hardest cracks.
Crack carnage in the form of grotesquely torn tips and gashed limbs gives the film a "not while you're eating" rating but certainly adds some "color" (namely blood red) to the flick.
As a novice — and nervous — crack climber, O'Neill and company's gory depictions of gnarly crack climbing techniques like handjamming, fingerstacking and ringlocking were film highlights. Seeing Schulte-Pelkum climb the super-sick "Broken Brain" (rated 5.12 on a 5 to 5.14 scale) after the boys fell off came in a close second, though.
The film also offers a long peek-through-your fingers moment when O'Neill tiptoes across a slackline (like a tightrope) several stories above the desert floor. That he's wearing a harness didn't reduce the gooseflesh factor much.
The fright ingredient hardly comes as a surprise from filmmaker Mortimer, who gave us, among others, the award-winning "Front Range Freaks," where O'Neill took free soloing (climbing without a rope) to an urban level by scaling many Boulder buildings, including Williams Village and the Daily Camera sans rope.
"Parallelojams" will be supported by several other shorts on "Return2Sender," including pieces on 10-year-old climbing prodigy Cicada Jenerik, top American soloist Michael Reardon and Biscuit the climbing dog (who also appeared in "Front Range Freaks").
Crack climber or no, I still like a good show."
FRONT RANGE BOULDERING.COM
"...some of the greatest, most gripping climbing footage I have ever seen... The routes climbed were so wickedly bold and gnarly that I actually found watching the footage to be physically stressful. I was genuinely scared at times. Mortimer is brilliant at placing the viewer right up close and personal on sick routes..."
