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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and wild, co-starring Heath Ledger, February 1, 2008
After slowly getting over the news of Heath Ledger's death, I wanted to watch him again in one of his movies. Although I like Brokeback Mountain, I prefer this one.
It's the story of the Z-Boys, four teenage surfer friends who in the mid seventies take up skate boarding and thus change the world of sports forever.
Heath is "Far Out!" Skip, a surfer and surf store owner who is the first to recognize the kids' talents. He pushes them (calling him a manager would be a little too much), and makes them grow into what they are to become.
More or less drunk for most of the time and always open for yet another trick to spin off a little cash for himself on the side, he cannot hold them once the success and fame hits.
Big managers' promises of fast cars, the prettiest girls and cash in adundance pull the boys out of his loose grip.
Their friendship starts breaking apart as ambition, jealousy, girls and greedy managers take over.
It is only when one of them (who got left behind) falls seriously ill, that the boys get back together and rediscover what their friendship is all about.
Starring Emile Hirsch as the enigmatic and anger driven Jay, Victor Rasuk as the ambitious Tony Alva and John Robinson as Stacy Peralta (who also wrote the screenplay).
Great camerawork, both on and off the skates, terrific acting, solid directing and wonderful production and set design.
The film and the actors do a great job in transmitting the fun and thrill of skating.
My favorite scene is Tyson, The Wonder Dog, the fun loving skating bulldog who simply can't get enough of the sport(also as an extended scene in the special features - he was not trained to do this but took up skating by himself!).
The dvd's picture quality is good, even in the dark and during the rides.
The extended cut has four minutes more. The only reason these were cut were probably the use of too many four letter words, but I wouldn't want to miss them.
Great movie with a wonderful sad and funny Heath Ledger.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The trailers for this movie were misleading..., November 1, 2005
Dogtown and Z-Boys was a hugely successful documentary chronicling a group of wild skateboarders in Venice Beach, California in 1970s. Naturally, Hollywood got interested and wanted to make a fictional version (because hey, no one watches docs, right?) with Fred Dirst (of Limp Bizkit fame) directing and David Fincher producing. Fortunately, someone came to their senses and Dirst was out with Fincher taking over but the budget for his vision was too large. So, the studio opted for a low budget take with independent film darling Catherine Hardwicke, fresh from the success of Thirteen, taking over as director. In an effort to keep it real, Stacy Peralta, who made the Z-Boys doc, wrote the screenplay for Lords of Dogtown and worked closely with Hardwicke in order to remain true to what he and his friends went through all those years ago.
Thankfully, the film's producers didn't raid the WB cabinet for the young cast. Instead, they got Hirsch (from The Girl Next Door), Victor Rasuk (from indie fave Raising Victor Vargas) and John Robinson (from Gus Van Sant's Elephant) who have some actual acting chops but not a high enough profile so as to distract. They disappear into their roles as does, surprisingly, high profile actor, Heath Ledger. He does an excellent job of becoming his character, one of the Zephyr skate shop owners who is a burnt out drunk but has vision and tries to protect his team of young skaters.
The trailers for this movie totally misrepresented it as an over-processed, heavily-edited piece of lunchmeat. Instead, Lords of Dogtown perfectly evokes the times it depicts with unerring authenticity. It portrays skaters as they were back then - stylish and below the radar, just before the sport took off to the wildly popular institution that it is now.
Lords of Dogtown shows how fame eventually broke up the Z-Boys. It was inevitable. These kids came from nothing and were suddenly thrust into the spotlight and thrown all kinds of money at them. Alva and Peralta became hugely popular and went corporate, constantly competing with each other while Adams stayed true to his roots and walked away from it all because he was in it for the love of skating and the thrill of the ride. This film will bring back a lot of memories for people who grew up and skated during these years, making this movie more than just a simple retread of the Z-Boys documentary.
There is an audio commentary by director Catherine Hardwicke and actors John Robinson, Victor Rasuk and Emile Hirsch. The actors dish all kinds of good anecdotes about filming in this engaging and informative track.
Also included is an additional commentary with original Z-Boys Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva. The movie is clearly a trip down memory lane for these guys as they share all sorts of memories and stories from that time in their lives. This is a laid-back, engaging track by guys who were actually there back in the day.
"The Making of Lords of Dogtown" is a 30 minute look at how this film came together. Best of all, we get to see footage of the three lead actors learning how to surf and skate. They spent over two months training before filming any scenes.
"Dogtown Cameos" showcases all the real people from back in the day that Hardwicke snuck into the backgrounds of scenes or even gave speaking parts. This featurette identifies where they are in the movie, who they are and then lets them talk about their experiences back then and now.
There are nine deleted and extended scenes totaling 19 minutes. This includes more footage of the Zephyr shop and additional bits of Sid and Stacy's home lives.
Also included are seven featurettes that provide additional insights into the filmmaking process, including many of the scrapes and spills the cast and their stunt doubles endured. There is more excellent skating footage that was cut out and make-up tests for the cast and their stunt doubles.
"Gag Reel" features standard footage of the cast goofing around on set.
There are "Storyboard Comparisons" for three scenes from the movie. They cut back and forth from the drawings to the finished product so you can see how close they resemble each other.
Finally, there is a music video for "Nervous Breakdown" by Rise Against that features the band playing with clips from the movie included.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A fun sports movie about skateboard pioneers, June 21, 2005
When I was nine the neighbors behind us built a half-pipe under the maple tree in their backyard, an ugly, wooden ark that bore hours and hours (and hours) of skateboard traffic in the summer. Most nights the low grumbling of wheels, interrupted by the occasional crash of bodies, kept me up after midnight. Just those two noises - you couldn't hear voices in the dark over that monotonous grumble. That fall we moved, and I slept.
"Lords of Dogtown" is about the boys who started the skateboard movement in Venice, Calfornia in the late 1970s, a movement that has morphed into an entire culture with its own Olympics (The X-Games), royalty (Tony Hawk) and pop ingenue (Avril Lavigne). Whatever else you want to say about the sport - I find it repetitive and arbitrary, like most "judged" competitions - the movie makes us understand these pioneering boys were counterculture athletes, with an unorthodox coach from a surf shop who nevertheless understood a little about motivation and button-pushing.
The trio best known in the skating world is Jay Adams, Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta, the last of whom made a documentary about the subject a few years ago, and writes the screenplay here. The strength of Peralta's script, and Catherine Hardwicke's direction is that it creates three distinct personas, each with their own charms and faults, although we connect best with best with the troubled Jay, maybe because Emile Hirsch is a better actor than John Robinson and Victor Rasuk, who play Stacy and Tony, maybe because Jay seems the biggest risk-taker of the bunch, both in life and on the skateboard.
Heath Ledger plays the coach, Skip, as if he asked himself how Val Kilmer would tackle the role. He's funny, though - a burned-out jerk, but loyal. Vince Lombardi called his troops "son." Skip calls his "Z-Boys" - named after his Zephyr surf shop - "bro."
The movie takes on a familiar pattern of most sports movies: The beginning spark, the rise, the interlude where jealousy, cash and women get in the way, the fallout, and the bittersweet conclusion. Hardwicke uses a few camera tricks - one involves mounting the camera behind the back left wheel of the board as it's being ridden, to give us some idea of the skill involved. But "Lords of Dogtown" doesn't overload us with technicalities. It focuses more on the personalities.
Stacy's the sweet, pretty one, the long blond hair flowing with his calculated, aesthetically pleasing moves. Tony's the speed demon with ambition and charisma. Jay's the maverick most willing to take flight. By now we know the story of these skaters using pools drained during the drought as the original half-pipes, how many young skaters got rich quick with world tours and sponsors, how drugs were basically around for the taking.
Peralta and Hardwicke don't dwell too long on that last point, and just as well, for"Lords of Dogtown" is as much a celebration of the culture and sport as it is an examination of its roots. The movie loses some of its energy once the team disbands and Skip's surf shop begins to fail, and it might have been more interesting had it touched upon Stacy's later discovery of Hawk, who isn't the founder, but is the godfather. But there is a grungy beauty to the movie, especially in the way Hardwicke uses shots at dawn and dusk to punctuate that it's California, at the ocean, in the 70s, and there are far worse ways to go through life.
3 1/2 stars
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