Review of Book of Cool, The: Volume 1

Introduction

Do you want to be cool? The annoying show off down the pub who can do lots of pool tricks, card tricks, wacky shuffling and more? Perhaps the Book of Cool is for you.

The book of cool is indeed a book, with 300 pages of tricks and tips accompanied by a 3 DVD set with over 9 hours of footage on how to be cool. You can read about and watch how to perform the following skills:-

Ropes and Whips
Bar flairing (you too can be Tom Cruise in Cocktail)
Pistol spinning (probably more relevant to American viewers)
Pool (from the simple break to masse shots to impress your friends)
Pen spinning (honestly)
Breakdancing (the 80s are cool again)
Card skills (dealing, shuffling, spotting cheats)
Football
Skate & blade
Golf (with Seve`s brother)
Footbag
Yo yo
Baton (you too can be a majorette in the Doncaster Spinners)
Frisbee (tm)
Rugby
Juggling (don`t try the chainsaws at home though)
BMX (the 80s again!)

and more....

Video

All of the footage is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic and it all looks ok. You can see the skills being demonstrated to you, and that`s really all there is to it. Some of the footage looks better than other bits, but you`re not going to sit and watch all 9 hours at once and start comparing quality.

Audio

A functional DD2.0 soundtrack. You can hear everything they are telling you and that`s it. There are some clips in the Pool section where the sound is rubbish, but they do preface these with a disclaimer screen apologising and advising you to turn the sound up.

Conclusion

It`s hard to know quite what to say about this.

On the one hand, there`s some great tricks on display here, and also some useful ones if you`re into cards and pool (which I am). I can`t imagine I`ll be trying out the pistol spinning or the breakdancing any time soon though.

On the other hand, what`s the point of owning 7 or so hours of tricks that you`re not interested in learning? It might be fun to watch a man juggling chainsaws, but if you don`t fancy juggling at all, then you`ll ignore that bit.

I also have one or two little niggles. Like the fact that you can`t "Play All" within a disc or a particular skill section. So if you were to watch the entire thing, you`d have to keep navigating and pressing play on each individual clip (varying from a minute to over 10). This is over 200 clips!

The clips themselves are usually helpful and informative, although I thought there would be a few more slow motion replays mixed in. And some of the time the camera is looking in the wrong place.

On the whole, a commendable effort, and it would certainly make a good gift for someone who was into a few of the activities listed. A very different DVD, and a reasonable idea that has been pretty well executed. And it`s all backed up with a book to reinforce what you`ve learned from the DVD.