Take a subject I didn't know much about and make it exciting, why don't you? It so happens that back about 1979, director Robert Altman said that he didn't believe he had ever made a real movie and that he expected that one of these kids riding skateboards--if he doesn't break his neck--will make the first movie. Well, I wouldn't put such an expectation on Stacy Peralta, but he is a skateboarder who has made a good movie. Of course, he was forced by the nature of the film he was making to use existing footage, and it is certainly a good thing that so much archival footage existed. Peralta edited it together well with not-your-usual talking head shots of his erstwhile colleagues as they are today. The whole effect is post-modern in the best sense, but that has been done. Altman's prediction hasn't quite come true. What Peralta has done, however, is capture enough of the energy of those heady days that we can appreciate what it must have been like when modern skateboarding was invented by the Z-Boys. This is all good. I highly recommend "Dogtown."