neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Dogtown and Z-Boys
	Stacy Peralta Sean Penn, Jay Adams, Tony Alva 2001		A super-charged documentary depicting the rise of the granddaddy of extreme sports, skateboarding, in Southern California during the '70s. Befitting the gritty, scraped-flesh vibe of the pursuit and its adherents, there's a frantic cut-and-paste quality to the film, enhanced by a hard-rocking soundtrack with songs from the era. Some of the major figures from the original scene, including Jay Adams and Tony Alva, are still around. They offer their current perspectives as annotation to home-movie footage of their early escapades. Along the way, "Dogtown and Z-Boys" shows how and why some misfits from the So-Cal surf culture mutated into skateboarders and eventually spawned an entire culture. With his bad-boy reputation and his memorable surfer-boy role in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," actor Sean Penn was an obvious choice as narrator. You can almost see Penn's Jeff Spicoli character from "Fast Times..." getting ready to join Adams and Alva in the half-pipe.