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The Vice Guide to Travel: Review, Competition
What do you think of Vice Magazine, readers? Do you like it or hate it?
We here at Torontoist really like Vice Magazine. Sure, it might be equal parts irritating and excellent, offensive and thought-provoking, but that, if anything is what makes it good. Along those lines, they’ve got some interesting stuff in the works, not least Vice Broadcasting Systems, an internet TV channel coming sometime in early 2007. They’re perhaps testing the water, but they’ve just released the Vice Guide to Travel, a DVD and book combination in which correspondents from Vice were dispatched around the world to visit the planet’s “most dangerous and weird destinations.”
We’ve reviewed it all after the jump, but first, we have 2 passes to the Toronto screening of the Vice Guide to Travel (Screening as part of RESfest), at The Royal Theatre (608 College St.) on Sunday 3rd Dec. at 9pm, and a copy of the DVD to give away. To win, just tell us:
The most dangerous or weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you when traveling.
Edit: The competition is now closed.
But what do we think of the set? Well, it’s taken us several weeks to attempt to review it, as we’re rather conflicted on it. Aesthetically the DVD and book set is great. But on watching the DVD we realized something. You see, what makes Vice Magazine fun (the sometimes very educational, if conservative articles juxtaposed with very idiotic, stupid and offensive articles) is only fun because you don’t have to see the god awful scumbag hipsters that are writing it. You just read it in the (undoubtedly pleasant) voice in your head.
Vice co-founder Shane Smith, the presenter of the first two (of seven) segments on the DVD makes us want to kill him with an axe. And Toronto’s Derrick Beckles doesn’t fare much better in his segment, coming across almost exactly like Richard Ayoade’s character from UK TV series Nathan Barley (which was, literally, a show almost entirely about how much the writers hate Vice Magazine).
The fact is, each of the docs is very short, which in the case of Shane Smith’s is a blessing, as they clearly didn’t get enough footage and the guy is insufferable (not least because he doesn’t even bother to get his facts right; the firemen at Chernobyl didn’t survive because they were drunk, they died, horribly, of radiation burns) but in other cases is actually a little sad, with Suroosh Alvi’s trip to a Pakistan gun market a particular highlight. Indeed, one of the extras (featuring David Cross in China) is practically as long as one of the main documentaries and blows the rest of the DVD out of the water by being funny and interesting, which sadly most of the DVD doesn’t manage.
In the end, the DVD just comes across as being for, and by, rich hipsters who like to sit around in their comfortable apartments and moan and complain about how horrible the world is for people who aren’t in their position. And then, you know, not actually do anything about it. However, at points it is an interesting attempt to do something different, so if you’re a fan of Vice Magazine it’s well worth checking it out when it plays at the Royal. Just don’t expect to buy the DVD and cherish it forever. Unless you particularly love David Cross (because that bit is really good).