Okay, I like a nice scenic view as much as the next guy, but what kind of psychopath would want to go and climb Mount Everest? Edmund Hillary hired Tenzing Norgay to drag his sorry Kiwi ass to the top as some sort of romantic nod to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, but after that, well, who was the last guy on the moon? After two hundred successful summit attempts, the novelty's gone flat as two week old Swiss cream soda. Cheap thrills? Think of all the stupid human tricks you could perform for $65,000 and get back to me. Man against the mountain? The oxygen levels at Everest's summit won't sustain human life (no plants or animals in the photos either). Sherpas, residing thousands of feet above sea level can sometimes climb without supplemental oxygen canisters but it's rare for flat landers like you and me. So much for mano y monto. Is it a sure thing? Every year you hear about hapless hikers, skiers and climbers being plucked off one mountain or another by a helicopter rescue team. That dog won't hunt on Everest. The air's too thin to give propellers lift. Precisely because it takes some kind of a loony to make the climb and the physical experience could never be remotely construed as fun, Everest makes for an ideal arm chair experience. Combining the top of the world with the honking huge frames of Imax film makes the movie Everest immensely appealing. The circumstance of the filming coinciding with the worst disaster in Everest's history, documented in the books, "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer and "The Climb" by Anatoli Boukreev, makes it historic. Ed Viesturs "Everest" doesn't dwell on the death of eight climbers but the affect of those deaths on the expedition led by veteran climber Ed Viesters is integral to the story. At half the length of an average feature, this documentary never seems padded or rushed. It has a place for Buddhist spirituality as well as spectacle, shedding light on the people who live at the foot of this singular place.

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