HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

What: “Keep Your Eyes Open” DVD.

Producer: Leisure Time.

Distributor: Artisan Home Entertainment.

Price: $19.98.

The X Games have come and gone, but action sports remain readily available in various forms. This newly released, 1-hour 18-minute DVD offers some tremendous photography mixed in with some corny and questionable production. Maybe you have to be an under-25 dude to find some of this stuff cool.

For one thing, everything is presented in quick snippets, apparently aimed at those with short attention spans. Blink and you might miss something. It even says this in a press release.

Somewhat out of place is a silly skit involving skateboarders Eric Koston and Steve Berra and actors Spike Jonz and Mike D of the Beastie Boys, who play campus security guards at a Los Angeles college campus. One of the guards allows the two skateboarders access to the campus to do their thing, but along comes an older guard who decides that the two guards should get in their car and chase down the “intruders.”

This drama plays out as viewers get to meet some top action-sports athletes and see them in action. The action footage is the highlight of the DVD. Featured are snowboarders Mike and Tina Basich (who are brother and sister), BMX competitor Mat Hoffman, motocross rider Travis Pastrana, surfers Sunny Garcia and Bruce and Andy Irons and skier Seth Morrison.

Morrison has green hair and a pierced eyebrow. Pastrana talks about being the only child in a family on “the crazy side of the envelope.” His dad put him on a motorcycle when he was 4. Hoffman talks about, as a youngster, trying such things as jumping off his house while hoping an umbrella might break his fall.

The silly skit with the skateboarders is interspersed throughout. The skit ends with the skateboarders getting killed and being buried by the security guards. We said it was silly. But maybe this is what kids like. They will like the action footage. That’s a certainty.

-- Larry Stewart