X-Dance Film Festival Opens

The X-Dance Film Festival features 44 films from over 200 entries this year starring some of the biggest names in action sports. Travis Pastrana's "199 Lives" is a biographical story on the motocross star. "Across the Grain" features Tara Dakides and her rollercoaster of a ride through the world of snowboarding. Tony Hawk also has a film that will be shown.

The festival has gotten so big, it had to move from Park City to Salt Lake City. It runs from January 19-23 at the Off-Broadway Theater. Visit the X-Dance site.

An Impressionistic History of Skateboarding, Part 1

My morning ramblings around the web led me to this interesting piece on the history of skateboarding. Through the use of text, photos and video clips the author has created a compelling look at skateboarding's history.

Take a look.

Lords of Dogtown Actress Rebecca De Mornay Rocked with DUI Charges

She played Jay Adam's mom in Lords of Dogtown.

It's the night before Halloween that continues to haunt Rebecca De Mornay. The 48-year-old actress was charged Thursday with driving under the influence in connection with her Oct. 30 bust following a traffic stop, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. De Mornay is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on counts of DUI and driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent or above, both misdemeanors. She does not have to appear in person. More here.

Don’t Look Down - Shaun White Documentary Opens at Mountainfilm

It even started like a movie.

Brothers Charlie and Willie Ebersol stood in a pricey souvenir store in Turino, Italy, as Willie contemplated buying “an overpriced Turino jacket,” as Charlie tells it, in the midst of the 2006 Winter Olympics. “Just buy it,” Charlie told him, as a woman standing nearby chimed in.

“I’m buying it,” she said. “My son just won the gold medal!”

Within 24 hours, the two Ebersols, whose father, Dick, is chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, were forging their now-epic friendship with the then-19-year-old Olympic gold medalist Shaun White (and his older brother, Jesse, a designer for Burton) in a back row of one of the two NBC jets that travel daily between New York City and the Olympics. Complete article here.

Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park Opens December 26th

Why do indie film-makers love skateboarders so much? Steve Rose on Gus Van Sant's new slacker thriller.

As Larry Clark once put it: "There is more life in a skateboarder skating down the street than in a hundred Hollywood actors." No matter that said skater is likely to be an inarticulate white middle-class stoner in baggy jeans - for a certain brand of film-maker, skateboarders embody the soul of young America like nobody else. There are plenty of reasons: they are the quintessential urban tribe; they are romantic radicals on the edge of society; and they are generally photogenic teenagers. Their sport has never been uncool; Avril Lavigne's Sk8er Boi notwithstanding, it's possibly cooler now than ever. And, occasionally, they get out of the house and do something cinematic.

On December 26th we get another skate movie, Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park. It received a special prize at this year's Cannes film festival, and continues along the path Van Sant has been hacking out with previous movies Elephant and Last Days: studying America's disaffected youth with an artful, non-judgmental eye. Article continues.