Rating: 
Summary: They could have done a better job
Review: You should watch this movie before reading 'Into Thin Air'. Though the photography is nice (and I would imagine it must have taken a lot of effort and hardship to carry the photography equipments up there) the DVD lacks the details!!
They spent a lot of time talking about preparations and focusing on the lower camps and missed out the high camp and the summit.
(...)
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely incredible
Review: A masterpiece like no other!! Well done to the team on achieving what others can only dream of...
And now the team (Breashears, Viesturs) is back on Everest shooting a full length feature of "Into Thin Air)... an on location feature - INCREDIBLE!!!
While some may feel this is "unrealistic garbage, I assume that they have climbed Everest? Or one of the other 8000m peaks? Trying to stand is a challenge in its own... shooting a documentary of this quality or a feature film is just sheer brilliance!!!
Well done to the team... I wish to follow in your footsteps one day! IT WOULD BE AN HONOUR...
Rating: 
Summary: unrealistic garbage
Review: "Everest" is about the most contrived, unrealistic adventure film ever conceived. The actual Everest climb these people undertook was a dangerless walk-in-the-park, carrying no packs, and having every comfort, as well as having the trail prepared in advance for their every step by the 40 guides and sherpas who took them up. Every frame of this film was staged by a film director and "set up" by a crew. They should be ashamed of themselves for this. Taking people to the top of Everest has become an organized, high-tech industry for hundreds of people every year who have never even hiked a fourteener. What a joke. An honest film about THAT would have been a lot more interesting.
Rating:
Summary: How do they....DO that?
Review: Since reading "Into Thin Air", I have become a virtual Everest '96 hound, and this is my first quarry. The IMAX team's goal on Everest was to film David Breashear's expedition in that fateful year, focusing primarily on Ed Viesturs, a seasoned climber from the States, and Araceli Segarra, in her quest to be the first Spanish woman to reach the summit. A lot of attention, deservedly so, is paid as well to Jangbu Sherpa, son of Tenzing Sherpa who accompanied Sir Edmund Hilary in his premier trip to the summit. And watching these climbers was riveting--ascending sheer sheets of ice, yards high, that look as though they are leaning in towards the climber; crossing bottomless chasms by placing an aluminum work ladder from one side to the other, and using it as a bridge; and feeling (in part through the excellent cinematography) the pull the mountain exerts on them to continue on. But I was floored, completely, by the thought of the cinematic team following along, all the way to the top, regardless of the weight and awkwardness of the equipment. For example, in the aforementioned aluminum ladder scene, shots seem to be taken from each side of the chasm. Had they carried that heavy equipment accross that ladder? And, once they came down from such a difficult and draining climb, they still managed to piece together a marvelous film. The cinematography, once again, is gorgeous. Shots of the mountain convey not only its beauty, but its terrifying danger, as ice and whirling snow tower over the climbers, as a rescue helicopter wavers, uncertainly, as Liam Nelson explains the scientific impossibility of a helicopter to work in such thin air (it does). Seeing the Icefall alone, I think, was worth the price I paid for the video. Warning: If you get this movie expecting it to be a documentary covering the Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness Expeditions, chronicled in "Into Thin Air", you will be disappointed. The IMAX expedition was unrelated to the others, and of course the crew could not predict that those expeditions might yield more interesting, if tragic, results. But the teams do interact with each other when it becomes clear that members are facing unexpected danger. I enjoyed "meeting" many of the folks I had read about. Finally, "Everest", the film, stands on its own. With a terrific story in Araceli Segarra, wonderful images from Utah and Spain as well as Nepal, and a score assisted by George Harrison melodies, it provides a great armchair journey to the top of the world.
Rating:
Summary: Fatal Attraction
Review: The images in this film are absolutely stunning--crisp, colorful, and so real that they barely seem one-dimensional. The deadly beauty of Everest comes through loud and clear: sheer ice falls; huge chasms that must be crossed by way of precarious stepladders flung across them; avalanches; blizzards; subzero degree temperatures; sheer drops on either side of narrow, narrow trails. One can feels frozen and short of breath watching this film. But the beauty notwithstanding, what especially intrigues me about the film is the obsession that the mountaineers have to scale Everest. Part of the story of the film details the multiple deaths in a party trapped in a storm on Everest's slope. The leader of the party had a seven-month pregnant wife; all the other slain climbers had loved ones they left behind; the survivors placed rescuers--helicopter pilots and other mountaineers--in jeopardy. Is so much death and threat of death worthwhile? Isn't there a certain point where responsibility for others trumps a desire to stand on the "top of the world"? The film doesn't explore these questions, nor the issue of why so many people have such a compulsion to scale Everest. I wish it had, because I found myself both captivated by the mountain's beauty and angered by the wanton disregard for life displayed by the climbers.
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