Not Guilty
Take it from someone who lives there--Wisconsin's winters are long, cold and exceptionally dull. The one upside to the endless downtime of an arctic winter is that it leaves motorcyclists plenty of time for projects--tricking out bikes, taking care of long-ignored maintenance or, in the case of the d-Aces' Cory Kufahl and Dan Urban, editing hours and hours of killer wheelie and stoppie loops into Not Guilty, the Wisconsin-based stunt duo's second DVD. Not Guilty doesn't break any new ground contentwise, it just serves up a solid hour of distraction-free motorcycle stunts. Save for a little fiddy action, a few seconds of BMX freestyle and a single wheelchair stunt, Not Guilty is straight-up streetbikes. Make that speedy streetbikes. Fans tired of slow-wheelie contests and the endless circles that dominate some stunt videos will no doubt find the d-Ace's straightforward focus on high-speed wheelies, stoppies and burnouts refreshing. As the video progresses, though, you can see Kufahl slowing his wheelies down and scraping the 12-bar. You get the idea that the d-Aces' third video release, No Mercy, which will drop later this spring, is going to highlight the duo's transition to the more technical slow-speed tricks Kufahl and Urban have been busting at recent comps. Don't let that diminish this effort, though; if nothing else, Not Guilty proves that the d-Aces didn't waste that last Wisconsin winter.
--Aaron P. Frank
Get On Up
Seven years of street freestyle videos before someone finally paired L.A. trickster Jason Britton with old-school funk music from the Godfather of Soul hisself, James Brown? Unbelievable. Thank god, then, for No Limit Extreme Entertainment, which finally put the two together on the new DVD Get On Up. The result is the rump-shakinest freestyle video to come down the pike in years, full of music that'll pack the dance floor and Britton's slicker-than-a-New-Orleans-pimp stunt moves. Filmed entirely on the Left Coast, Get On Up features the multitalented Britton (who also starred in the corner-carving classic All Twisted and Pucked Up) running his GSX-R750 through a rigorous repertoire of freestyle moves. Britton, known for his disciplined practice regimen, has it all on lockdown: high chairs, acrobatics, crossover endos and miles-long stand-ups, all performed with the perfection of a Hollywood stunt man (which Britton is). Rappers Ice-T and Ice Cube both chill and interview the B-Man during the DVD, and Britton is modest enough to include some emergency-room and crash footage proving that even the pros lose it once in a while. Britton is backed up on this vid by worthy counterparts Alex Flores and Darius Khashabi, a pair of seriously gifted no-handed wheelie masters, and the action is peppered with brief cheesecake shots of biker-rally beer girls to break things up when the freeway footage starts to drag. And that funkadelic soundtrack! To pinch one of the Godfather's famous lines, "Good God Ya'll!"
--Mike Seate
A Few Loose Screws
Make no mistake: Dan is the Man. If Dan Jackson's total domination of this year's XSBA National Championships (page 58) hasn't already convinced you of his serious street skills, his latest DVD, A Few Loose Screws, will seal the deal. A collection of his best on-bike performances from the past year coupled with some first-rate jackass footage makes this latest effort a 11/2-hour-long hoot. Jackson's one-of-a-kind competition tricks--unbelievable ankle stoppies, switchback burnouts, even an ill-advised switchback wheelie (no, he doesn't ride it out)--are spotlighted here, along with plenty of garden-variety high-speed wheelies, acrobatics and skitches. When the street action starts to fade the editors cut in some freestyle motocross footage (Jackson is also a highly skilled FMXer) or some sick 50cc racing from Jackson's backyard motocross track to underline Crazy Dan's extreme versatility. But as good as the on-bike action is, it's really Jackson and friends' jackass antics that set this DVD apart. Much of it is hilarious (rolling stoppies in a Toyota Corolla wagon, jumping 50s over a couch inside an apartment); some is cathartic (watching Jackson take a chainsaw to an uncooperative computer); and some is just plain crazy (Jackson skitching alongside his Ford F-250 at 80 mph with a trailer in tow and no one in the cab!). It all proves that stunters really do have more fun than the rest of us. And the best stunters have the most fun of all.
--Aaron P. Frank