Getting ready for ‘Survivor’

If you’ve ever thought about auditioning for a “Survivor”-type reality show, you might consider this video series as the perfect training material. With an almost Zen-like approach to surviving in the wilderness, the “Art of Nothing” revels in the experience of living off the land the way our ancestors did, using an absolute minimum of tools.

With only stone knives and a companion dog, host Thomas Elpel and cousin Melvin head for Montana’s hills in “Mountain Meadows.” Their seminar includes instruction in how to use broken glass to make a knife, snack on ant eggs and construct a forest floor debris shelter. Dinner? How about freshly roasted ground squirrel cooked on hot rocks with a side of musk thistle stems.

Primitive and fascinating, the art of nothing also applies to the production values on these tapes, with jump edits and gyrating audio levels providing more than a minimalist distraction from the presentation.

-- Michael Koehn