Search - Vice Guide to Travel on DVD

Great idea. Terrible execution.

Amazon Reviewer | Chicago | 11/17/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Save your twenty bucks. While the idea behind this movie is good, the effort they put into it is lacking. They barely scratch the surface on any of their topics and don't get behind the stories they're covering. It would seem that they come up with a concept and then immediately jump on a plane to a far-off / dangerous place. They arrive knowing very little about the location, people, history or politics only to ask the locals stupid and uniformed questions and make broad quasi-political / social pronouncements that are often incorrect. Further, the people they talk to / interview are equally ignornant: "Who is Hezbollah?" - Spike Jonze. (?!) Wow.
The segments are too brief and superficial to give you any real sense of how 'dangerous' these places are. It feels like they did these things just for their trophy value ... standing still long enough to take a snapshot and then jumping on a plane back to NYC. Rather than cramming 8 segments into 90 minutes, they'd be better advised to spread these out into 30 - 40 minutes pieces each over multiple releases. I'm not looking for Frontline-type production on this, just something with a little more depth than "See what I did?"."

Vice Guide to Ridiculous

B. Angus | Florida | 10/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am continuously amazed that these people are still alive. After years of covering the stupidest and sometimes heavily dangerous topics in the magazine now they've moved onto video...Although the magazine is free this actually was a really great purchase. The DVD rules and the book that comes with it is excellent. The David Cross material is G-O-L-D-E-N."

Well done bit of work

Old School Fool | 07/21/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Contrary to a bunch of reviews posted already, I thought this was really well done. The scenes and shorts are *not* at all like what you see on the supposedly "imbedded" journalism and "true-to-life" stuff on pbs, cnn, etc. You just don't get clips like this of people speaking candidly, with real shots inside homes and villages, on television. And the editors and journalists did a good job picking truly interesting scenarios to involve themselves in. Yes, the pieces are short, but so is the modern attention span. I don't think that was necessarily a bad choice. It's not meant to be exhaustive journalism. It's more revelatory, I think, than anything else. Fascinating, really. And it definitely is journalism. What amazed me, the several times I've seen this (rented it, then bought it), is what a good piece of investigative journalism it turned out to be, without undue effort to be "scholarly" or "academic." The book is a cool addition to the dvd, with some interesting stories that don't turn up in the film-work. Filming and editing, music, etc. are spot-on, if a bit dark at times. In addition to showing clips that would never make it on to tv, I think the pieces probably also turn out well due to the nature of the reporters, and Vice, themselves-- due to an artistic inclination, I think. if you ask interesting questions-- if you yourself are interesting, and interested, you're more likely to get interesting results-- which they do.
Highly recommended.

Also, plugging: To Cook is Divine, Italian, Filipino, and Southern-style Vegetarian Recipes from Outside the Box for a bit of culture.

* The "PLO Boyscout" camp footage is unlike anything you will see in the mainstream or "left" media, but extremely insightful. I wish everyone would watch this who forms an opinion on the conflict in the middle-East and *then* form their opinion."