Wild Style (25th Anniversary Edition) in September
Metrodome Group have announced the UK DVD release of Wild Style (25th Anniversary Edition) on 10th September 2007 priced at £17.99. A movie whose influences cannot be underestimated and hailed as the most inspirational hip-hop movie of all time, Wild Style explores the birth of an underground hip-hop scene about to explode around the world changing the face of music, fashion and a way of life forever.
Without a doubt the most important hip hop feature film of all time, but I'd make as much a case for Style Wars in the documentary category, which was released on American Public Television that same year (1982), and included a lot of the same participants.
As anyone who's seen either, or viewed any of Martha Cooper or Henry Chalfant's photography knows, this film captures that magic era when the scene was pure and before anyone in the film had experienced any real success. Virtually everyone in the film (aside from Patti Astor, who was more of a scenester in the Manhattan art scene) in now regarded as a legend in hop hop and graffiti history - Lee Quinones, Zephyr, Crash, Lady Pink. Fab 5 Freddy, the Cold Crush Brothers, the Fantastic Five, Busy Bee, The Rocksteady Crew, Grandmaster Flash..and Blondie did all the instrumental scoring! I remember seeing this at the Orson Welles independent cinema one autumn afternoon in 1982 and having my mind blown. Two years later Hollywood tried to have a crack at the scene, but I wasn't having any of it - I'd become a hip hop purist at the tender age of 13.
Okay, so the acting is pretty sub-par and the plotline's pretty hokey. And I often wonder what people viewing it for the first time will make of it, as I doubt it could have anywhere near the same impact it once had. But maybe none of that's important. What this is is a document of a scene captured, luckily, before it was (arguably) spoiled for good. We're just lucky the cameras and recorders were rolling.
I'm really hoping this new Metrodome is definitive. The extra material gives the impression that Charlie Ahearn was involved, and hopefully there's been a new transfer from the 16mm original negs - previous versions have been transfers from 35mm blowup prints and as a result colours have been washed out, detail lost and grain somewhat forced.
One sticking point about both the old Rhino and Editions Montparnasse editions - the rights were never cleared to feature Bob James' classic "Take it to the Mardi Gras" during the scene when GM Flash cuts up breaks in his kitchen. This had been replaced by some unremarkable overdubbed break-beat thing that's out of synch with Flash's cutting and in my opinion ruins the old school magic of this sequence. Hopefully this has been sorted out for this release and the film is complete.
