Le Parkour: A Film Stock Special

Is it just me or are the Olympics especially boring this year?

Those phony "guts and glory" athlete profiles that NBC has included as part of its spotty, fragmented coverage of the games are nauseating. And so many of the athletes they've been promoting have bombed or acted deplorably.

That's why I was so excited to discover my new favorite spectator sport on the Internet a few weeks ago. You can't really see it on your TV much yet (Gil Scott Heron was right), but it's widely available on the Internet.

It's called Le Parkour and it's a new sport that developed in the concrete canyons and deserted urban structures of the modern housing projects on the outskirts of Paris and quickly spread to other similar places in Europe and throughout the world.

It's part gymnastics, part martial arts, part performance art, part modern dance, part philosophy. The basic idea is that the human being should decide where he/she would like to go and not be guided by modern concrete and metal barriers. The object of Le Parkour--or l'art du deplacement as they say--is to overcome such barriers as quickly, as elegantly and as gracefully as possible. It's way interesting and totally thrilling to watch. (It doesn't hurt, either, that most of the great traceurs, as practitioners of Parkour are called, are totally gorgeous, even standing still).

If you're as bored with the Olympics as I've been, watch some really thrilling sport with our special Film Stock ParkourVision below. (The video may take a sec to load. If your connection is slow hit pause and give it a few moments to load the video before hitting play again.)



For more Parkour videos go here.

Or read about the sport at this site.