Nontraditional movie awards, Part 1

Though there are some backcountry elements here, courtesy of "best female" fan-vote nominee Annie Boulanger and Hana Beaman, most of the shredding in this movie is of the urban variety. And no, the level of rail-trick technicality here is not as high as it is in some of the "all-dude" urban-focused snowboard flicks. But you know what? I'm not going to bomb drop off of two-story buildings, or gap to roof slide or nose-press down high-consequence handrails anytime soon, and neither are you. It doesn't have to be Jed Anderson-level crazy to be inspiring to watch.

There is often a big disconnect between the images of women that you see in magazine ads -- some have termed them "Skittle-color" snowboarders -- and what you see with your eyes when mixed-gender snowboard posses roll by you on the hill and in the streets. What makes "Winter Wars" so great is that, in showing the trials and tribulations of this particular crew of tough-as-nails ladies, it feels almost as much like a documentary as it does a snowboard movie.

It beautifully achieves the Peep Show mission statement that, "We are not filmmakers who snowboard, we are snowboarders who film." And it masterfully combines cover-the-mouth-while-screaming-"Oh my God" moments of gnarliness with a kind of smoothed-out film-grain otherworldliness vibe that is distinctly feminine, while at the same time being very raw, and incredibly real. If a young Sofia Coppola made a snowboard movie, it might look and feel like this.

The best thing about this movie, however, is some little girl somewhere is going to see it and think, "I can do that," and when she does it, she's going to do it better. This is how progression happens, and putting an uncompromising vision out into the world that's going to push the next generation definitely deserves its own reward.

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