I had totally forgotten about the Warren Miller ski movies. The last time I saw one, all the skiers had shag haircuts (no hats or helmets), bright orange, yellow and red flared pant leg ski suits, and muttonchops - lots of muttonchops. Back in the early seventies, if the sport wasn't baseball, basketball or football, ABC's Wide World of Sports was about the only place you could catch it. Winter sports were big back then (skiing was finally becoming more affordable for most people), and once a year, if you were lucky, your local TV station might run a Warren Miller film on a snowy Sunday afternoon.

Miller, a long-time filmmaker and ski enthusiast, invented the ski film subgenre, taking his "home movies" of his friends and professional athletes around to lecture halls and ski lodges, developing a fan base with his awesome photography and quick wit narration. Soon, the latest Warren Miller ski film premiere became for many people the unofficial start of the ski season; with his relaxed, sly delivery and his fun, sometimes acerbic humor, he got you in the mood to go skiing - even if you had never skied in your life.

Evidently, Warren Miller is no longer actively involved in the company that bears his name. In the Collector's Edition Deluxe four-disc box set Warren Miller's No Boundaries, Miller is credited with writing and narrating the first film in the set: Impact, from 2004. However, the other two films in the set - Higher Ground from 2005 and Off the Grid from 2006 - only feature a few lifted audio clips from previous Miller narrations. Being admittedly partial to Miller's style and delivery, I obviously enjoyed Impact more than the other two films included in the Warren Miller's No Boundaries box set, but all three films do sport phenomenal footage of skiers and snowboarders in action, set to a driving, hyped-up soundtrack, that will please practitioners of the sport - as well as armchair enthusiasts who wouldn't be caught dead on one of those insanely steep mountains.

The focus of these Warren Miller films is usually quite similar: cameramen travel all over the world to capture skiers and snowboards in spectacular, dangerous locations, performing spectacular, highly dangerous athletics. They're not stunt shows, however (or at least, their main purpose isn't to "create" stunts); these are true athletes doing amazing maneuvers on snow and ice that you and I can only dream of accomplishing. Of course, the highlights of each film are the seemingly impossible jumps, slaloms, and tricks on ski and board, usually performed on daunting, frequently terrifying sheer slopes or sickeningly jagged, deadly long rails that look like they could split you in two if you hit them the wrong way.

What I enjoyed as a boy about the old Warren Miller films is still evident in 2004's Impact: the conveying of a subculture of athletes who seem to live by a different set of rules than you or I have. The cliché back in the 1960s and 1970s was the "ski bum," who traveled from slope to slope by day, hitting on "snow bunnies" at the ski lodges by night. But in the films of Warren Miller, I always remember a certain picture of pragmatic, centered, laid-back, essentially happy individuals who viewed skiing (and now snowboarding) as an extension of how they lived their lives. They were in tune with their surroundings; they had learned how to master the seemingly impossible conditions, and they liked nothing better than getting out into the wilds, cutting new tracks in fresh powder. It always seemed like a marvelous kind of fresh, healthy dream world, which no doubt aided the popularity of the sport.

That seems to still be the kind of athlete featured in these newer films, particularly Impact. Laid-back would best describe most of the men and women here, or perhaps more accurately: peaceful. They all seem pretty happy to be doing what they do for a living (I assume they make money doing this through sponsorships and prize money?). What they do for money is what they do for enjoyment; it seems that skiing and snowboarding are essential activities for both mind and body (try asking a CPA if he or she feels that same way). These films create a special atmosphere, a seductive world of faraway places where endless powder is only a helicopter ride away. Obviously, very few of us are going to our lives that way, but that's what's so much fun about these films - you don't even have to ski or snowboard to enjoy them. It's escapist entertainment, and who knows: it just might get you to try skiing or boarding just once.

Lest you think by my description that these films are philosophical noodles, fear not. 99 percent of each film consists of kick-ass, hard-core skiing and boarding, expertly filmed and assembled with a sweet soundtrack that you can definitely groove on without thinking. Once you get into the rhythm of these films, they can have an almost hypnotic effect, with endless shots of skiers and boarders flying through the air and over the snow, in slow motion and crystal clarity. They're really quite beautiful to watch, regardless of whether or not you ever plan on hitting the slopes.

Here are the three films included in the four-disc, collector's edition deluxe box set, Warren Miller's No Boundaries, as described on their hardshell DVD cases:

Impact
The king of snowy adventure brings you his most eye-popping film to date: Impact. Watch as Jeremy Nobis, aka "Psycho Nobi," tackles the classic steeps of Chamonix, France. Check out sexy skiers Ingrid Backstrom, Charlotte Moats and Jenn Berg float through deep powder after a megastorm in Utah. See gold-medalist snowboarder Kelly Clark log major air time heli-boarding in Blue River, Canada. And Gene Plake waterskis in a Speedo. From daring first descents to hilarious misadventures, it's all here and more in the best footage shot around the world.

Higher Ground
Warren Miller's Higher Ground chronicles a dedicated band of the world's most acclaimed winter sports athletes as they crisscross the globe in search of new and more thrilling ways to experience the ride. For extreme sports athlete Dave Barlia this meant flying 10 feet off the ground at 130 miles per hour, over the slopes of Chamonix. World Cup mogul champion and Olympian Jeremy Bloom had a "life-changing experience" when he went heli-skiing for the first time in the wild backcountry of British Columbia. Set against an adrenaline-pumping soundtrack, legendary athletes - such as big mountain skiers Jeremy Nobis and Seth Morrison, ski-base jumping innovator Sjhane McConkey, and the sport's hog-dogging icon, Glen Plake - take us with them on their never-ending quest to reach Higher Ground.

Off the Grid
Off the Grid - narrated by World Champion mogul skier Jeremy Bloom - presents the world's best winter sports athletes embarking on a global mission to discover the deepest snow, the steepest mountains and the world's gnarliest snowball fight. Shot on film around the world, this film demonstrates the true Off the Grid experience, exposing the undiscovered side of winter from Kashmir, India, to Kicking Horse, Canada. Olympic 2006 medalist Toby Dawson and X-Games Gold medalists Zach and Reggie Crist pack the notable cast of this adrenaline-filled film that takes viewers out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.

The DVD:

The Video:
Impact is presented at full frame, 1.33:1, while Higher Ground and Off the Grid are anamorphically enhanced at 1.78:1. All transfers sport crystal clarity (with original elements sometimes causing video noise or grain)) and true color values.

The Audio:
All the films in Warren Miller's No Boundaries feature sensation Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround audio mixes, which is perfect, mixing the swooshing skies with the eclectic rock and hip-hop soundtrack selections. Subtitles or close-captioning options are not available.

The Extras:
There are quite a few extras included on the three films in Warren Miller's No Boundaries. First, for the Impact disc, there's a five minute Behind the Scenes in Bulgaria, which features the skiers' rather colorful adventures there. Next, some short deleted scenes are included: Alligator; Swear-a-Thon (where a cameraman has comic difficulties with his equipment); and Opening Bloopers. Perhaps my favorite extra in the entire box set is the 31-minute TV Fireplace, where you can enjoy a toasty, crackling fire on your box if you don't have a fireplace. It continuously loops, so you can just let it play and play (I admit I put it on, and left it on for hours - pretty surreal, and fun!).

On the Higher Ground disc, there's Glen Plake Through the Ages: From the 50s to the Present, where the skier looks at the trends, equipment and clothes from each decade - with lots of vintage Warren Miller footage. There's also a collection of Warren Miller trailers. On the second disc of the Higher Ground set, you get All Access: Behind the Scenes of Warren Miller's Higher Ground, a 53-minute "making of" featurette looking at how technically complicated it is to produce such a film.

And on the Off the Grid disc, you get a complete episode of Epic Conditions, a series produced by Warren Miller Entertainment for The Weather Channel. This episode is entitled Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In addition, you get short, brief sneak peeks at other Epic Conditions episodes, including Chesapeake Sailing, Hawaii Big Wave Surfing, Idaho Rafting, Moab Mountain Biking, Ouray Ice Climbing, and Sierra Nevada Skiing.

Final Thoughts:
Spectacular photography and pulsating soundtracks make the Warren Miller ski and snowboarding films a subgenre unto themselves. The skiing and boarding subculture is beguilingly conveyed, and even if you never plan on hitting the slopes, Warren Miller's No Boundaries is an excellent way to marvel at these tremendous athletes. I highly recommend Warren Miller's No Boundaries.