Dogtown and Z-Boys (Deluxe Edition)

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" is a documentary on the Z-Boys of Venice, California from the tough Dogtown neighborhood. The Z-Boys aka the Zephyr team literally revolutionized skateboarding with an aggressive in-your-face style that shredded the competition. Growing up in the 1970's, the documentary is blessed with old school footage (that is great quality compared to many surfing films that came out in the early 90's) that I just kept repeating... "sick". The documentary shows the kids skating as well as a few classic clips of other competitors of skateboarding in the 50's and 60's and how the Z-Boys just came in and shattered the image of what skateboarding was all about with their freestyle surfing way on a skateboard. Also, footage of the group skating in emptied pools brought upon the California drought. Also, how the friends became rivals as skateboard manufacturers started to offer contracts and get a hold of a Z-Boy and make money off them. Naturally, the talents of the kids of that time earned them great money but not all were able to overcome the limelight that introduced a few to drugs and hard tmes. From the awesome freestyle of Jay Adams, the competitor and uber talented Tony Alva (aka godfather of skateboarding) and talented Stacy Peralta (who gone on to create Powell-Peralta Skateboards, the Bones Brigade which led to some guy named Tony Hawk), we are reminded of what these three and other members of the Zephyr team brought to skateboarding. My favorite part of the film which I can't stop watching is the 1975 Del Mar Invitational where people saw the Zephyr team debut and saw a new style that no one has seen before. What makes it even more exciting was the footage of the skateboarding competitiors of that time and then the entrance of the Zephyr team and seeing how the competitors were frustrated by the Zephyr team. That was a definite, classic moment in my opinion from yesteryear and to see the footage today is just incredible. As for the video quality of this documentary, it was expected that certain footage (being very old) would be grainy and we would see some artifacts but a lot of those messes were cleaned up and look great on this DVD. As for the DVD, this is the second release of the DVD (Deluxe Edition) which features a sneak peak at the theatrical release of "Lords of Dogtown", two webisodes of "Lords of Dogtown", "Alternate Ending", Director and Editor commentary and extended raw footage. Footage includes Stacy Peralta visiting the original Zephyr store owner Jeff Ho shaping some surfboards in Hawaii and even Stacy Peralta and film crew skateboarding at an old Z-Boy hangout/skateboard spot. Awesome footage of the group and competitions combined with a cool soundtrack, cool interviews of most of Zephyr team and a lot of cool, in-depth information of the past and what happened to the members of the team now. Suffice to say that this film has done really well on the film festival circuit especially at Sundance and AFI and Stacey Peralta continues to show his talent as a director.

I'm not a skateboarder--I never have been. So my review of this film is from a truly "outsider" position. I'll skip making comments about the wonderful aspects of this film as a documentary about skateboarding, because to me what makes this a truly remarkable work of art has to do with being a documentary about life and truth and beauty and all that. This movie is about hope. It paints a picture of young kids growing up in an incredibly harsh environment (the film goes out of its way to portray Venice of the early '70's in practically post-apocalyptic images) who see in the concrete wasteland nothing but ocean waves of endless promise. They craft, as artists, a new ballet amidst the rubble. They are obsessed with skating the perfect run, not necessarily to be better than their friends, but just for the sake of perfection. In this pursuit of perfection, I see hope. I see a vision of a recreated world where there are no barriers based on class or empty swimming pools surrounded by fences and patrolled by police. But there's also an irony in the hope, in that the Zephyr boys have an exclusivity about them--they are fiercely elite in their rejection of conventionality. The story of one of the top two skateboarders, Jay Adams, provides the heart to this film. His story provides a balance to the narrative of corporate greed, which ultimately destroyed the Zephyr team (but which also made the film possible and the story relevent). He is shown as a very young and, though violent and utterly contemptous, innocent boy oozing with natural talent. He's interviewed several times as an adult who, we find out, is doing time for heroin-related charges in Hawaii. Next to the brilliance of the Jay Adams the boy, in Jay Adams the man we see a dark shell of regret and pain. His fellow riders lament the fact that Jay's life is so tragic and unfair--there's a sense of complete injustice "he should have had it all" "Jay's had the hardest life of anyone I know who's still alive" "you only get one shot at this...once it's gone it's gone." So within this movie about beauty and hope, we meet Jay Adams and see tragedy and injustice. There's an absolutely beautiful and haunting scene at the end of the Jay Adams excurses in which the beautiful young Jay, maybe 12 years old, with long sun-bleached hair, is skating in an empty pool and falls on his way down one side. His board continues through the bottom of the pool, up the other side, and straight up into the air about 10 or 15 feet. The scene is in slow motion and freezes the board mid-air. Then, there's a fade to a still of Jay at about 25 years old holding a picture of himself as a cute, innocent boy of about 7. Then another fade to Jay as a hard, broken man in his 30's, with a crew but, what seems to be a black eye and bruised nose, and tattoos running up his throat. Eyes like empty holes. This is the filmmaker's art at its finest. A scene like this says so much more than words ever could. Some of the reviews on this film have complained that the film was too short--that it left too many questions unanswered. I couldn't disagree more. This film is all about the questions, not the answers. As a Christian, I see this film as a commentary on humanity and our longing for beauty--our hope for a future that includes a recreated world where architecture is no longer purely utilitarian, where there are no longer divisions between north Malibu and the southern beaches. Where everyone has access to a perfect wave. A future in which greed no longer robs us of our innocence, and Jay Adams is once again that strikingly charismatic and beautiful blond-headed boy writing profound poetry with his skateboard, poetry that destroys the walls of violence and drugs and elitism, that opens his soul to ours and ours to him. In the words of U2, a future "where the streets have no name." Our souls groan for a better place, and this film captures that emotion as well as any I've ever seen. This is an amazing film!

Boy does this movie take me back! As a So. Cal. surf rat growing up in the 70's, the Z-Boys represented everything my friends and I were shooting for. Not exactly what you would call ideal role models, especially as far as my parents were concerned. Never the less, they carried themselves with such style and mystique that we were all spellbound by thier mere presence. My mother read an interview with Tony Alva in on of my issues of "Skateboarder" sometime around 76 or 77, and her response was - and I'll never forget this - "He is sickening. He makes me sick to my stomach". Ha! I'd found my new hero! When we went to the skateparks, if any of these guys were there, we'd all just step back and consider class to be in session. They were the guys who started it all, and they did it better than anybody - period. This movie is an outstanding document of an amazing slice of American history. The editing, the sountrack, the narration - it's all there. Stacy Peralta has put together his interpretation of his early life with stellar results. I'm sure there is way more left out than what made it into the final edit, but outside of living it yourself, you can never know the whole story anyway. It's interesting to note the ego's of thier youth vs. where they all stand today. Biniack appears to be "happy with himself". Alva seems to be letting his history do his bidding for him. Red Dog and Wentzle seem to have humbled over the years, without forgetting anything about how they became who they are. And Jay Adams, well, a sad story to be sure, but one that is thankfully still in progress. (welcome back, Jay!) Hopefully he will keep it together and show us what it's all really about once again. To all of those criticizing this movie for being too "self-congratulatory", well, all I can say is you sure missed the friggin' point! If you can't see the impact these guys have had on modern pop culture, you are as blind as a bat. You may say "they're just skateboarders", but if you look around, you'll see that they have dealt a sturdy hand in just about every corner of this country, if not the world. No one makes movies about people who stand back and say "shucks", nor does anybody want to watch one. Where does that leave us? Observing what some might think of as mindless egomaniacs beating on thier chests, but consider this: These guys are interesting, dynamic athletes that defied and rewrote the rules and conventions of organized sports. X-games anyone? I doubt they'd exist if not for the trail blazed by the Z-Boys. Thier achievments seem rediculously obvious to me. They changed the world that I like to live in. That takes ego, balls, and of course, STYLE! As I watched the film, and they detailed their youthful and sometimes criminal exploits, I never once got the feeling that they felt they were ever doing anything other than being themselves. The notariety seemed to be an afterthought for the most part. It would be so disapointing if they felt the need to apolgize for that. The Dogtown nay-sayers can talk all they want. Fact is, the Z-Boys don't give a rats hiney. You have to have done something pretty great to get people talking about you to anywhere near the extent of the rhetoric surrounding the almost mythical achievments attained by these guys. Good or bad - it doesn't matter. They made a movie about them. They write books about them. Apparently, we still care, because we see the movies and read the books. Love 'em or hate 'em, deep down inside, we all know why they are still important all these years later, right?

Great condition !

First, major kudos to the first reviewer of this DVD, Henry "BAD H" Hester. For those of you who weren't part of the 1970s skateboard wave, the heroes of which are documented in this movie, you may not know him. A pro slalom racing legend. Rode one of the first skatecars (which have evolved into the luges we see on the x-games today), and the founder of the Hester Pro Bowl series (which if I've heard it right is was purchased by Tony Hawk's dad in the 80's and was THE definitive skateboarding competition). He also had his own model of Road Rider Wheel: The Henry Hester Slalom wheel. I was totally pumped to see a true celebrity review on here! Henry's worth a movie his own self, but he's not from Santa Monica so not featured in this great movie, Dogtown and Z-Boys! Now, about the movie. This is about the guys and gals who made skateboarding what it is today. Typical ruffians from Santa Monica (aka "Dogtown"). These were ones who thought about bringing surf moves to the street on a skateboard. The ones who thought about taking a skateboard onto a transition/vertical surface (today's half-pipes and bowls). The ones who pioneered getting a person, and a skateboard to go so fast that they could both leave the bowl and get "air." NO ONE DID IT BEFORE THEM. These are the pioneers of extreme sports, and they did it all with incredible style. My friends and I in Bellevue, WA would scour every issue of Skateboarder Magazine to see what these guys were up to, and do all we could to emulate their moves. They did a great job in this movie, IMHO, of showing the impact of the choices we all have make. Several of the greats profiled went on to HUGE success (e.g. Stacey Peralta), some went on to prison, some went on to do "normal things." I used it as an opportunity to discuss these issues with my kids. Regardless of where they are now, though, the fact remains that they started a ball rolling beyond just skateboarding, but all of extreme sports. Good job of narrating by Sean Penn, interviews are solid, music ROCKS, the video editing was a little jumpy ("MTVish") for me, but hey, I'm just an old skater who still listens to Jethro Tull. This is a great movie, and if I were part of the Motion Picture Academy, it'd get my vote for best documentary of the year. Watch it if you're an old skater, you'll jump back on a board quicker than you can say "bert revert." Watch it if you're a new skater, it'll teach you that style and soul is as important as trying a rail grind/heal flip mutant and not landing it 9 out of 10 times. Carl Kincaid

I'm a teacher at college in Japan; I'm no skateborder, and will never be. I bought this video simply because one of students in my English class said how cool the film was, and I just checked it out to see if I can use the film in my class. The result turned out more engaging than I expected, and "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is pretty awesome documentary for those who are interested in the hot summer of 1970s. "Dogtown" follows the rise of local youth, hanging around the beach of Santa Monica in the 70s. Around that time, once prospered amusement park by the seaside had been long deserted, and the seaside area had become a place for local surfers. They made the rule of "only locals" which means, you cannot mess around the place, just coming from outside the town. And after their dangerously exciting surfing in the sea (among the ruined piles), they spent time doing another thing: skateboarding. While doing that for fun, they gradually developed the style, making it their own. Finally, taking advantage of unused swimming pools (that means, trespassing, of course), the boys (though, actually, the original members include a girl) went on to set a new style, using the edge of the pool, which, according to the film, led to today's vertical ride of skateboarding. They become famous; they become cultural icons. (One of them appears as a cameo in original TV series "Charlie's Angels" as, who else, a skateboarder; this brief scene is also included in the film.) In short, they set the style. You must face it; the film sounds like self-advertizing at times. But still, "Z-Boys" gives very interesting information on skateboarding, which by the end of the 20th century has become one of the independent category of sports (you will see, for instance, the difference between skateboarding in Jan and Dean era, and the Boys' own style). The original skatebording footages are also noteworthy, which, with all its faded color and shaky camerawork, telescope the free spirits of the 70s into the exciting moments of their skateboarding practice or contests. The film is also unusual in that the director himself appears before the camera, giving his own interview of the film. This kind of attitude would invite criticism of the film's taking unbalanced view. But they somehow get away with it, probably because it is clear that they love the sports, and really want to say something about it. "Dogtown and Z-Boys" lets you look at the world of street culture of the 70s West Coast in a quite unique way, and anyone who is interested in this sort of thing should watch it, whether or not he/she has ever experienced skateboarding. The film ends with the reports of the original members' life today, many of whom seem to have settled down, and leading a family life. That is most interesting, you might say. Sean Penn (who was one of the fans of the "Boys") provides narration, but I wish he too gave his own account of the boys. And it seems some part of the film is missing -- I want to know whether or not they ever got injured; what they were doing in the 80s and 90s, and so on, but perhaps it is not our business after all. Still, I enjoyed watching the film.

This movie is a love letter to a sport that to those of us who've never skated, helped us understand the passion these people feel for it. With it's absolutely breath-taking visuals, very artistic still photography, and killer sound track, who could resist but be a bit envious of these sunshine golden-boys and their awesome talent? Learning the history behind each person's humble beginnings, and how their passion for a fading trend, helped launch a counter-culture extreme sport is exhilirating to watch. I have a lot of skater friends, and none of them are getting any younger, knees have been ravaged and bones are weary. This film allows those folks, who grew up in this era, and equally loved to skate, relive the reasons that drew them to skating in the first place. To see someone's eyes light up, and catch a glimpse of the sparkle in them, that this awesome sport incites is really beautiful to behold. And the movie definately shows we "non-skaters" why these guys have so much love for their boards! The movie truly is a work of art, beautifully filmed, with actual footage from the era, still photograghy that any world-reknowned photgragher would envy....watching it will make you want to go and grab a board and at least TRY and feel the love!! I just had tickets to Tony Hawk's Boom-Boom Huck Jam exhibition, and seeing this film, showed me he may be the Michael Jordan of the skate world, but he is simply carrying the torch, in a sport where it's founding fathers were all plain old kids from middle-class neighborhoods, who loved something enough, to help turn the sport into what it is today!!!! A MUST see movie!!!!!!!

Watched this movie with my wife and my ten-year-old son, who has been developing his interest in skateboarding, and we all enjoyed it. It engaged us both with the information on skateboarding's history and the personalities of the Z-Boys who brought the sport to the verge of becoming what it would become really in the past 20 to 30 years. My wife and I had previously enjoyed Lords of Dogtown, and so it was great to finally see this movie and compare it to that. Highly recommend this movie both for fans of skateboarding and fans of documentaries. And the music rocks, too, though a bit more punk would have better fit with my personal memories of skaters back in the day (admittedly that was in the 80s and early 90s so well after the time in the movie).

In qualità di skater, questo documentario NON poteva mancare

In diesem Film erzählt Stacey Peralta die unglaubliche Geschichte der Typen, die die Welt des vert skating entdeckten. Skateboarding, zur Beginn der Z-Boys-Era in den 60/70s eher als uncool angesehen (wird verglichen u.a. mit Hula-Hoop), erlebt einen plötzlichen, erneuten Boom: Die Z-Boys entdecken in den leer gepumpten, eingetrockneten kalifornischen Swimming Pools erstmals die Möglichkeit die Lüfte zu erklimmen: VERT SKATING! Wir sehen in dem Film also die Anfänge modernen Street-Skateboardings in liebevoll aufbereiteten Originalbildern. Pioniere der Lüfte - revolutionäre Moves immer am Rand des Machbaren. Dazu schöne Bilder von downhill cruises auf Longboards und waghalsige Surfmanöver. Der Soundtrack umfasst einen grandiosen Mixmax aus SurfPunkGarageGlamRockIndependentElektroSound. Sean Penn spricht die Stimme aus dem Off und die Original Z-Boys kommen auch viel zu Wort. Alles in allem DER Skaterfilm - nicht nur für Oldschooler - und auch für Nichtskater sehenswert! Kein Wunder, dass er bei einigen independent film festivals mehrfach abgesahnt hat.

Great if you like documentary’s. I’ve watched the movie dog town long before ever discovering this and if you don’t own the movie either I recommend buying as watching the doc only made me want to watch the movie over again... movie came in on time and in mint condition.

watch an average street and the trend in skating and skateboard fashion is obvious. Its just cool. but theres so much more depth to the sport than that. this film makes it clear exactly when skating crossed the line from athletic aftersurf balance training to a life of its own, to the speed and agression that inspires us today. You see, Alva, Adams, Peralta and the like didnt just start modern skating. they started modern youth culture.And they did it without trying, or even realising. After watching this film, you'll believe that a handfull of men can redirect music, fashion and the minds of generations. Sure they're arrogant, loud, crude and aggressive. So's the world today. They're also something that everyone wants to be- new, fresh, cool and very, very talented. Watch the film, get on board. And to those kids who are already on boards, watch it too. Itll teach you about your roots and it'll teach you about style. Its simply a very thought-provoking, downright cool film.

Ce serait beaucoup sous titré en Français sous-titrage proposé Anglais et Indien Bravo pour la présentation précisée sur le site!!!!!!dommage o