Michael Osadciw
Screenwriter
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- Michael Osadciw
FROST BITE
Studio: 20th Century Fox Television
Film Year: 2004
U.S. Rating: R
Canadian Rating: 14A
Film Length: 83 minutes
Genre: Comedy
Aspect Ratio:[*] 1.78:1 widescreen enhanced[*] 1.33:1 full screen
Colour/B&W: Colour
Audio:[*] English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Closed Captioned: Yes
SLP: US $27.98
Release Date: NOW
Entertainment Rating: :star: 1/2 / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Starring: Adam Grimes (Billy Wagstaff), Traci Lords (Naomi Bucks), Carmen Nicole (Casey), Peter Jason (Colonel Jaffe), Baelyn Neff (Winter), Oliver Macready (Brandt), Phil Morris (JP)
Directed by: Jonathan Schartz
Written by: Paul Miller, Steve Rogers & Kevin Rooney
Snowboarding has never been this HOT!
Billy Wagstaff is pot-smokin’ carefree surfin’ dude in California looking for a break from the sun and a way to hit the pipe with his snowboard. After getting his letter of acceptance to an “elite” school of snowboarding, both he and his girl “friend” decide to change course in life and head for the snow.
They arrive into the little town called Sh*tville, just outside of the school’s doors. They don’t receive the warmest of welcome from the townspeople. Billy’s first day of school doesn’t turn out good either; he’s ridiculed in class by his egocentric classmates, and has the hammer come down unreasonably faster on him from the coach (or Colonel, as he prefers it), who seems to prefer another student over Billy – even though Billy snowboards better.
Billy gets caught up with his status at his elite school known where the people are known as “the richies.” The townspeople are referred to as the “poories.” Billy doesn’t want to be a “poorie” despite his financial status. He has his eye on the Colonel’s daughter, the sexy snow bunny Winter. He begins to turn his back on the “poories” including his own girl “friend” – a girl next door who is far more gorgeous (in my opinion) than the slutty Winter who he’s trying to win heart with.
Billy will have to choose between the people he identifies with and the one who he really loves or the “richie” crowd who doesn’t care about him at all. Billy’s decision will ultimately start a race to the finish line between the richies and the poories and save the mountain from snobs and corruption!
Frost Bite reminds me of a film from 1991 called Ski School. Lots of girls, lots of breasts, sexual innuendos and lots of snow. This movie seemed to head in that kind of direction but then just truly showed its low budget, poor writing, over acting, and crude humour. Frost Bite is not even close to as entertaining as Ski School was to me many years back; I honestly felt like I just wasted 83 minutes of my life watching this flick – save a few minutes here or there for some good lines or oddly entertaining moments.
The cast is extremely small and its main attraction is Traci Lords – a famous (young) porn star of the ‘80s who has been fairly successful crossing over into more mainstream films and TV. Her role is very small in this film, yet she gets the big title on the cover. There are very few girls in this film and no hot action as you may be inclined to think judging by the cover. The jokes are also pretty lame…some are good lines, but the sexual jokes, the crude humour just got tiring after a while.
Still, I sat through it. I’m even brave enough to write about this movie. I did think Adam Grimes (who played Billy) did a great job in his role. He was enlightening all of the way through and provided most of the comic relief (I think I’ve seen him on a commercial recently). Of course, Carmen Nicole as Billy’s girl friend was a treat to watch. She has a charming sweetness to her that makes the movie worth watching again. At last, I will mention Phil Morris as JB, a disgruntled African-American who hangs out the local bar and serves as Billy’s mentor. He was entertaining to watch too at times…although it’s too bad his character gets caught up into racist comments every once and a while. I’m tired hearing racist comments in movies. They aren’t funny; they’re old, tiring, and uninteresting. A note to the writers: Move on.
VIDEO QUALITY :star: :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
The video quality is alright in this movie. It’s presented in 1.78:1 and was shot with HD cameras. The image is soft and not what I would expect for a new film using HD cams. There is nothing objectionable about the colours or contrast, although in some scenes the black level could have been a little deeper. Film grain is apparent on scenes showing snowboarders whipping out on the hills. I’m assuming this footage was taken from somewhere else and not by the filmmakers here, and then edited into this movie. Overall, the image is fairly clean from distracting artefacts except from minor ones from compression artefacts. The only objectionable artefact is edge enhancement. It doesn’t look pretty up against that white snow.
A 1.33 full frame presentation is available on Side B of the disc.
AUDIO QUALITY :star: :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Most of the dialogue and effects come out of the center channel. The only noises coming from the rest of the channels is the trademark rock sound of snowboarding music (is there a real name for this “sound”?) and wind. The surrounds levels are very subtle in their approach to creating a full circle of sound in this Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. As expected, LFE is pretty quiet. Most of the bass was coming from front-left front-right channels.
SPECIAL FEATURES :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
I felt ripped off when I accessed the four “unrated” deleted scenes. Of course, the word “unrated” is the new marketing term implying something explicit when there really isn’t. What unrated really means is that it hasn’t been sent to the review board for a rating. So in the case of Frost Bite, a movie that claims to be hot and sexy, why on earth would they delete these seemingly sexy “unrated” scenes? Answer: because they aren’t sexy. They’re just scene extensions of dialogue scenes in the film cut for length. I’m glad they were cut too. They would have made the movie seven minutes longer of old jokes.
There is also a short featurette on Side B (yes, DVD special features are split between Side A and B) called ”The Making-Of” Frost Bite. It’s about seven minutes too and was probably about as entertaining as the movie itself.
IN THE END…
I feel bad when I have to put down a film. I know people have worked hard to make their vision a reality only to face tough criticism. I guess that comes along with movie making or anything we do in life. In the case of Frost Bite, it seems to be the writers’ first project and the director’s second. So I won’t say this movie was horrible, it just needed some work. But I can see this movie becoming a past favourite of future fans of the writers and director once they move on to bigger and better things. Besides, some of us don’t mind a little crude humour once in a while.
Michael Osadciw
05.03.03
