Rating: 
Summary: STYLE WARS, history of Hip Hop culture.
Review: YOU MUST SEE IF YOU WANT TOO KNOW WHAT REAL HIP-HOP CULTURE IS ABOUT, HOW IT STARTS!
Graffiti, b-boy, DJ, Rappin, Breaks, Records all that!
Rating:
Summary: urban culture at its finest!
Review: Although I was three yrs old when the film was released, Style Wars captures an amazing moment in NYC when hip-hop/breakdancing/graffiti was at the cusp of a new movement. During my childhood growing up in Harlem, I used to love taking the subways (circa 86-89) around the city and partly one of the reasons I appreciate this film is the fact that it represents graffiti art and the culture surrounding it in an unique way. Style Wars brought back a plethora of childhood memories! Damn, I miss it. The two directors have done a superb job in giving a 'voice' to the people who experienced the lifestyle during a turbulent time in the ghettos of NYC: The Writers and B-boys. I, in my personal opinion, think that graffiti art is seen as an apparatuse (sp) of postmodernism in the way we live in a complicated and confusing society. Purchase this film for fans and lovers of hip-hop culture and its origin, graffiti art as a subculture, the beauty and essence of NYC urban life during the late 70's and early 80's and, equally significant, how these 'writers' detailed their story.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Hiphop history.
Review: Anyone who is avid about Hiphop, or just curious must see this movie. Henry and Tony didn't miss a beat when it comes, not only to the history of graffiti but the protocol of writers. Many surprises on this DVD package like KaySlay, Guru, Mare 149, and CapONE.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Viewing
Review: Film maker Tony Silver and graffiti photographer Henry Chalfant's PBS documentary took the world by storm in 1983. Over the course of an hour, it opened up New York City's train canvasses to the world, simultaneously marking the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end for underground graffiti and bombing culture. The selection of artists and scensters is impecabble, capturing most (if not all) of the prominent graffiti writers/artists of the time, including Dondi and Seen. Along the way it also provides a snapshot of the early development of other elements of hip hop culture (Rock Steady Crew for breakdancing, and the Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, and Rammellzee for rapping). The film went on to be the United States' entry into the Prix Italia competition, as well as winning prizes and critical acclaim at Films on Arts, the Athens International, Toronto, Sydney, Vancouver, and Houston film festivals. The version on this DVD is the directors cut (seventy minutes) before it was cut down to an hour for TV broadcast, and that's not even including the 23 minutes of deleted scenes which should have been included in the original film! Over the last two decades, this film has been rightfully revered as part of the holy canon of rap history, played at b-boy parties, in the background at hip hop concerts, used as a textbook by legions of young writers, and dissected by cultural studies students alike. The packaging, liner notes, and video and audio transfer done by Plexifilm are perfect. The deleted scenes and interviews on the second disc done twenty years later are simply amazing (including an interview with the legendary Rammellzee on his particular religion of the letter, some of which can also be found in his interview with The Wire, April 2004). Some of the bonus galleries can be tedious if you're not a huge graffiti fan, but the love and effort that has gone into photographing and presenting them can't be bettered. Henry Chalfant and Tony Silver's commentaries are insightful, and they acknowledge the great forturne both had at being in the right place at the right time, in being able to incoporate into the film the appearance on the scene of the bomber "Cap", and the final victory of the campaign to whitewash the trains by former New York City mayor (and now Republican reactionary) Ed Koch. Likewise the interviews with the editors Victor Kanefsky and Sam Pollard highlight the technical creativity that went into the cinematography. There are also interviews by some latter day personalities, such as Guru from Gang Starr and DJ Red Alert, on the legacy of the early '80's writing scene on them. The "Destroy All Lines" loop gallery (which lasts for 30 minutes) unfortunately has no sound (I believe it is meant to be used as a projection at parties), which is probably the only weakness of the bonuses. All in all though, a beautiful package. I have very little else to add to the comments people have already made below, and the legion of articles (and doctoral theses?) this documentary has probably inspired. It is a special piece of history for anybody interested in old school hip-hop, documentary film making, New York City, urban anthropology, or the mural arts. I'm presuming the almost universal five star ratings below (with the exception of the one star rating which neonx83's has decided to post in pentuplicate, thus sadly pulling the average down to four stars) will be enought to convince you to go and see this, because it really is perfect in every way.
Rating:
Summary: I feel old.....
Review: For every person into whatever is being passed off as 'hip hop' these days, this DVD should be required viewing.Before 'bling bling' and Cristal - there was hip hop for those who truly had a passion for it.As one writer's mother sums her son's interest in graffiti up....'He's part of a whole miserable subculure.'These are the pioneers, who set the stage for things to come.Back when these guys were really were 'making the subways beautiful', by painting those rusted monsters.A true piece of American history, as most of what we see and hear today, was influenced by what these guys did 20+ years ago. This film is also the manual by which all graffiti writers lived.Cant recommend it enough. VOS CREW
Rating:
Summary: Easily the greatest documentary, if not film, i've ever seen
Review: Ha ha, get it, ever SEEN? Ya like that, huh? I thought I'd just throw a little old-school flava in my title there homeboy. But what is so amazing about this American masterpiece, and the fact that it has now been white-gloved and digitized and supplemented with the most essential added features of any DVD in American movie history is that, despite the fact that we see the writers in their late 30's on the second disk (or 40's, or in the case of BLADE, maybe 50's?), is that they will ALWAYS be 15 or 16-year old Gods, armed to the teeth with Weapons Of Mass Destruction Of The Aerosol Variety, freelancing around the chaotic 80's dump that was Koch-era New York, unattended and unbowed, creating an urban wonderland of their own out of the most disorderly mass of circumstances hell could ever create. If anyone views this film, and dares to argue that either (a) hip-hop is not a legitimate art-form, or (b) these studs are and always will be sincere and breathtakingly genius by-products of their unfortunate environment, then they are condemned to ignorance eternally. I was a writer. What my role in the whole story was is (sort of) irrelevant. But if not for this movie, my life, my entire being would be so drastically different from who I am today, a mellow guy reaching his forties, still remembering MIN and his funny hat, and CAP and his iconoclastic arrogance, and SEEN and his vicious parlance, and SKEME and his thrilling irreverence, and DONDI (RIP) and his magnificent, soaring desire to overcome and elevate humankind through an art form heretofore unseen by millions. But thanks to "Style Wars" ALL of them triumph, placing New York subway graffiti alongside cultural explosions like 1950's beatnik poetry and jazz and 1930's ragtime and even transcendentalist poetry and theory of the 1800's as legitimate expressions of the human condition. But enough of that. History will judge these folk not by the millions of buffed burners that lie in soaking messes on the ground amidst Bernie Jacobs' "graffiti removal solution". Nor will we judge them by fantastic and otherworldly pseudo-psychedelic philosophical ramblings like Rammellzee's funk, or the price tags on canvases. Nor will we judge 'em by the stacks of Henry Chalfant's neagtives, which we are blessed for their mere existence. The value and worth of this movement, and by default this film, is in the never-ending influence the veterans of these style wars have had on us today, or on myself specifically. It is immeasurable.
Rating:
Summary: Brings back memories.....A very good documentary...
Review: I first saw this on PBS when I was in grade school and it blew my mind. I remember seeing these kids in the inner city showing off their art-forms with pride and the admiration and respect they received from the other kids was something I really dreamed of having one day. The doc is well done, and is an excellent display of the graffiti (hip hop) scene close to the time of it's birth. Even if you are not or never have been into graffiti, even if you think it's vandalism, at least you can get a little glimpse of why graffiti had the impact it did on so many kids in the inner cities and all over..
Rating:
Summary: Buy This DVD!!!!
Review: I have been bombing since 1995 and i have never found another Graff movie this good. It shows all the Original Bombers like, ... Seen, Cap, Lee, Kel, Dondi, Mare. The list goes on. Just crazy amounts of Graff history.
This Flick is a must have for all real BOMBERS and PEICERS!!!
Vote 'FE ONE' for Mayor.
Rating:
Summary: Simply amazing... and ya don't stop!!
Review: I pride myself on being knowledgable about hip hop. I am officially embarrased by having NOT seen this great work of art when it was first released. It's informative, concise, clear, and doesn't hold back. You want to know the where/how/when/why of graf and what it meant to those who LIVED it, then get Style Wars. Style Wars IS truly a work of art... equally as beautiful as the graf it displays.
Rating: 
Summary: How Pathetic!
Review: I've already written a review for this piece of garbage, and made my viewpoints, and the truth, quite clear. It saddens me to see that nobody agrees with me. There can be no uncertainty that in the last 30 years, lower-class inner-city culture has demolished much of what was once great about this country. Apparently those who read my review and disagreed with me are simply so brainwashed that they can't see the truth. How pathetic!
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