Arts Movie Reviews

I had the distinct pleasure of actually viewing this work while it was on Broadway. It was presented with such grace and impressionism that the messages contained therein have remained lucid in my mind for over 20 years. I was a mere teen at the time, and in early adulthood, I finally read the book. I can remember my Mom reading it after me and remarking how if she'd known the language was so strong, she may not have allowed me to see it at the theatre. However, it has been my experience that strong individuals have to use only the strongest and effective means when communicating "the" message. Although I have not yet viewed the video, I am sure that the focus couldn't have diminished much from it's origin as impeccable works of art only get better with time. Hats off to Sister Shange for keeping it real...even way back then!!

this is a "must see" for every sister.

I enjoyed David Hedison's outstanding performance, and of course, he's a dream to look at.
But, the play was difficult for me to follow. It was supposed to be a comedy and a lot of it was, but I couldn't understand all of it except the story premise about a married woman having an affair (with lover Hedison)while still jealous of her husband's possible infidelity.
I'd say all Hedison fans should buy this dvd, as I said he was wonderful, and had quite a flair for comedy, but the story itself tried to hard and just wasn't very good.

I was really surprised to see this and immediately bought it. Some of the wrestlers included in this DVD are Cactus Jack (Mick Foley), Hayabusa, Terry Funk, Masato Tanaka, Wing Kanemura and Super Leather (Leatherface).This DVD includes 7 matches, one being a bonus match found in the "extras" section, the best being the Hayabusa & Tanaka vs Terry Funk & Mr.Pogo in a electric barbed wire match with weapons. Three of the matches unfortunetly are very boring in my opinion, two of them being women's matches and the other being the opening match between Nanjyo and Jason the Terrible which only lasts about 5 minutes. The english commentary hurts this DVD as well, the announcers frankly stink and try to hard to be funny. But, all in all, its not a bad DVD but could have been a lot better. Pick it up if you're interested in seeing some good wrestling action but if you already have a bunch of FMW tapes I would recommend saving your money.

One of the easiest ways in the US to get a taste of hardcore "garbage" Japanese wrestling. Not for the faint hearted - the best matches are the bloodiest. Painful matches include: a "Double Hell Barbed Wire Glass Crush Spider Net" deathmatchwith Cactus Jack vs. Kanemura, a "No Rope Exploding Double Hell Timebomb" deathmatch with Mr. Pogo, Terry Funk, Tanaka, and Hayabusa, and even a no-rope exploding barbed wire female wrestling match!

As with the other FMW tapes, the announcers try to imitate Insane Clown Posse's funny wrestling tapes, and fail pretty miserably at it. The DVD is recommended since you can turn the announcers off, and you get one pretty good bonus match to boot.

Note this is NOT the IWA "King of the Deathmatch" tournament that made Cactus Jack and Terry Funk famous.

Jason The Terrible vs. some FMW Mid-Carder
Mid-Carder got some offense but Jason beat ...him and pinned him after a Snowplow variation. 5.5/10 worst match. each match is bloody and more violent as the tape progressed after this match.

Mad Dog vs. Shark
Bloody women's match with blades and fire. Mad Dog makes Shark submit. 7/10

FMW Six Man tag team Street Fight titles
Mike"Gladiator"Awesome,Horace"CPA"Boulder(Hogan)and Hiskatsu Ooya vs. Leather Face and the Headhunters.
Oh my ..., what a match this is. Awesome showing his toughness by beating ...them with one bad knee. Leather Face pins Horace after a bloody encounter. 8.5/10

Barbwire and Glass Death Match.
W*ng Kanemura vs. Cactus Jack
Awesome. Both these guys unrelenting and I loved each and every minute of it. Cactus Jack pins Kanemura. 8.5/10

Barbwire ropes Death match
Combat Toyota vs. Megumi Kudo
This was without a shadow of a doubt, the most violent womans match I have ever seen. Combat Toyota's final match and they did not dissapiont. Shows how tough both of them are. 9/10

Tag Team Exploding barbwire match
Terry Funk and Mr. POGO vs. Hayabusa and Masato Tanaka
The most brutal match I have ever seen. POGO and Funk win after a Double Piledriver on Hayabusa. After they use POGO's sickle to literary rip Hayabusa's match off. This makes HIAC'98 (KOTR)and ECW look like a walk in the park. 9.5/10

This is not for anybody who thinks ECW is too brutal for tv. This takes extreme to the extreme. I liked it a lot.

FMW's "War of Attrition" is in NOT the classic FMW video you're looking for. All the matches save one have been edited for the benefit of showing the most outrageous, most audacious spots throughout a considerable period of FMW's history (somewhere between 1999 and 2000). Sadly, this editing strips many stars of their presence (I can name many wrestlers here whose potential graces are cut from our sights). Worse, the story is confused once Fuyuki arrives into the scene after supposedly being kicked out.

Highlights

Many ECW stars are featured in this video. The most prominent of them is Balls Mahoney, everyone's favorite chair-swinging freak. Mahoney has been an ECW tag team champ with FMW's own Masato Tanaka, so no wonder he is so highly respected among FMW. Other stars include Tajiri and Super Crazy (who are sadly not shown here in full), Pitbull #1 (who's disappeared from America's ECW since 1998), and even Paul Heyman, the big boss of ECW. Sorry, but Tommy Dreamer and RVD are nowhere to be found.

The top FMW stars are H, Ganosuke and Masato Tanaka. Tanaka plays the big heel who is jealous of H and Ganosuke's friendship and respect. So, Tanaka begins wreacking havoc on FMW by joining ECW. Lots of bloodshed, acrobatics, and smashed noggins abound. This video is definitely for Tanaka fans, since he stars in at least 4 matches in this tape.

H is the legendary man FMW knows best as Hayabusa, except he is unmasked, looking like a Japanese version of Spike from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". He knows many many moves, from Fame-Asser to Rockbottom to the Firebird Splash (not all these moves are named, though). Fans of H and Hayabusa will be pleased that both versions of the aerial master can be seen here several times over.

You like tables? Well, in almost every match, someone falls down a table. Sorry, no ladders.

My favorite scene happens close to the end of the tape. In a match where H and Ganosuke are set to fight Tanaka and Mahoney, Mahoney grabs H and spike piledrives him off the ropes! The driver is so effective that H can't get up, and Mahoney is holding his head in utter shock! Mahoney's white expression is priceless, and so is the next scene, where someone carries an unconscious H over his shoulder. This is absurdity at its very best.

Dan Lovranski and John Watanabe, the so-called infamously bad announcers of FMW, do a much better job calling the shots than any other tape I've seen. It's too bad this isn't the best video from FMW.

"War of Attrition" lacks "Rule the Asylum's" complete matches and "The Enforcer's" flowing narrative style, and should best be worth a rent for wrestling fans. Other people, beware.

Here we have another of Tokyo Pop's endless FMW releases - War of Attrition. The wrestling, announce and production quality of this series has been sort of hit and miss, and that is exactly how I would rate the bottom line on this offering as well.

First the good - the wrestling is actually hard worked and exciting. While some may criticize Tokyo Pop for editing the slow points of the matches, I think what's left is all we really want to see and keeps the action moving. One match in particular - H & Mr. Ganosuke vs. Masato Tanaka & Tetsuhiro Kuroda being an exceptional standout worth the price of admission alone. That match is high spot heaven, trust me...

Now, on to the inevitable bad. This series took an big step forward and another one back when they changed the announce teamed with Dan "The Mouth" Lovranski (forward step FYI) and then saw fit to take away the original Japanese track (umm... that was the backwards part). Tokyo Pop, hear my words - choice is good. Worse yet, in this release Lovranski and John Watanabe spend an inordinate amount of time bickering back and forth in support of the baby face (John takes this duty) or the heel (Dan's got that covered). I thought this wrestling announce routine went out with Jesse Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon. It just seems so rehearsed and unnecessary; the people making these production decisions need to realize it's target audience - and respect them.

Again as I have in the past I will recommend this series, if only by default. In a country where there is a severe lack of choice in Pro Wrestling product, any alternatives from the mainstream are welcome. And in this particular release - War of Attrition, the wrestling stands on it's own merits quite well indeed. Now if some North American publisher would just secure the rights to release All Japan, New Japan or Noah Pro Wrestling on DVD - I would be the first to pre-order it. Honest!!!

I have watched this DvD and must say that for anyone who is a fan of TRUE Hardcore wrestling they should get this. For those unfamiliar with FMW, it is the TRUE Originator in Hardcore, Extreme Wrestling. It was the first to have the King of the Deathmathc Tournamet. It originated using lightbulbs, electrified barbwire, and EXPLOSIVES!!! The matches on the tape are some of the most extreme I have ever witnessed and I have been watching and following wrestling for 20 years. If you like Extreme and want to see the Real Mick Foley, AKA CACTUS JACK, and witness one the greatest wrestlers in the world before his injury, HAYABUSA, then Get this tape because if you don't then you are truly missing out.

I was really disappointed with this video. The main reason for my disappoitment is the stupid highlight videos (instant replays)that kept on popping up during the matches. I hated these highlight videos because they ruined the flow of the match. It wasn't like they showed the videos while the wrestlers were laying exhausted on the floor doing nothing (like after a wrestler hits a plancha and then rests on the arena floor for a little while). They would do these instant replays during the middle of heated action. I remember even missing a 2 count (u could hear the ref counting to 2 in the background) due to one of the instant replays. What made it even worse was that the same instant replays that were shown during the matches, were also shown after the conclusions of the matches. What was the point of showing the same clip twice? I really hope that FMW will get rid of the instant replays for the next tape it produces.

Backstory

The card all of this footage comes from took place sometime in '97 (they mention the date on the tape, though I don't recall it), and we get three "complete" matches in addition to highlights from some of the undercard. The DVD version allegedly has a couple more full matches, but I haven't made the commitment to that level of technology yet.

According to our Tokyo Pop announce team, the entire show was revolved around the final match of FMW's top lady Megumi Kudo and managed to sell out Yokohama Stadium...the first time a predominantly male promotion had even tried something like this with a female main event.

The Commentary

I thought I'd throw in a segment about the announcing since early releases by Tokyo Pop caught some heat for theirs. The first set of videos in the series featured what I here were some pretty cheesy scripts where writers gave the announcers fictitious backstories to put over and lame jokes to go along with them. That's gone now.

In its place are "Straight Up" John Watanabe and Dan "The Mouth" Lovranski who call the action and set up matches from a nice little studio set. Their commentary is a bizarre mix of in and out of kayfabe, and that aspect of it really doesn't work. Hearing the guys using phrases like "babyface" and "angle" one second and then hearing them trying to put over the action in the ring as legit is just outright odd.

Once they do slip in to kayfabe mode, however, things really aren't too bad. Watanabe has the obnoxious JR "call every move three times" habit, but they do a good job of bringing up history and attempting to educate the fans to various aspects of the product (angles, what a guy's finisher is, etc). Particularly good is the calling of the main event, as they actually have time to spread things out instead of trying to crowd everything in to a two minute highlight package.

Match #1 (Highlights): Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Hayato Nanjyo vs. Crypt Keeper & Flying Kid Ichihara

There's probably no more than a minute of stuff here, so I can't really form an opinion on it one way or another. Ichihara wins with a moonsault, if I remember correctly. Seems like, if nothing else, this was just thrown on the video so viewers could get acquainted with some more of the FMW roster.

Match #2 (Highlights): Kaori Nakayama, Michika Oomukai, Chikako Shiratori, Mizuki Endo and Yoko Ikeda vs. Lioness Asyka, Eagle Sawai, Crusher Maedomari, Michiko Nagashima and Miss Mongol (Ten Woman Tag Team Match)

This gets more time than the previous match, but the clips are pretty much turned in to nothing more than an exhibition of Nakayama's offense, presumably to establish her as something of a star to the folks watching at home. If nothing else, this segment's notable for the announce team making fun of North American women's wrestling in comparison to this match.

Match #3 (Highlights): Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Super Leather

The WWF pasts of both men are mentioned, though commentator Dan Lovranski flubs a bit and says Shinzaki's WWF feud (as Hakushi) with Bret Hart was for the IC Title. Unfortunately, they don't mention Mike Kirschner choking out Vince McMahon. Pretty much just a compilation of Shinzaki's key spots with Leather getting in something here and there. I'd assume we have this on the tape to a.) utilize whatever name recognition Jinsei still might have left with a US audience and b.) play up a relationship between Shinzaki and Hayabusa, explaining Jinsei making the save for H later on the show.

Match #4 (Highlights): Kodo Fuyuki, Jado and Gedo vs. Hisakatsu Ooya and The Head Hunters

I'm glad they didn't give us a full Fuyuki match, 'cuz I've heard some not so nice things about him. The primary focus is the Headhunters' high flying ability. We get shots of a missile dropkick, swandive headbutt, and moonsault (the finish) from the big boys. It'd be pretty impressive to watch this if you hadn't seen the Hunters in action before...but, other than that, it seemed to serve no purpose.

Video Package: Recap of the Hayabusa vs. Mr. Gannosuke feud

Not being an FMW follower, I don't know all of the ins and outs of the angle myself...but the package does seem to present something that's compelling and actually well thought out, involving much deeper emotion than what's normally involved in American storylines. Torn between his friendship with Gannosuke and loyalty to FMW, Hayabusa actually breaks down and cries at one point, something that we'd probably never see on Raw.

(And, for you anime fan boys who actually care about this sort of thing, the wrestlers' speaking parts during the video packages are subtitled, not dubbed.)

Match #5: Hayabusa vs. Mr. Gannosuke (Hair vs. Mask Match)

This is treated as being a full match by the announcers, but I have this feeling that it's been clipped down a good deal. Regardless, it's still five minutes plus, so it's not quite in the "highlights" category. It seems like just a collection of spots, however, with Hayabusa flying around like a madman and Gannosuke really doing nothing of note save the occasional powerbomb. Hayabusa eventually takes the win with a particularly brutal Falcon Arrow, which dropped 'Suke on the top of his head instead of providing the normal suplex-style release I'm used to seeing.

Though Hayabusa's stuff was pretty sweetly executed (except for the Lionsault that saw his face colliding with Gannosuke's knee), there was no flow, and the match really did nothing for me. If the match really consisted only of what was shown, we'll call it about *.

Gannosuke/Hayabusa Post-Match Hyjinx

This being a hair vs. mask match, we'd expect some shaving now...right? Nah. Hayabusa gets on the mic and gives his friend one last chance to side with him. As you can probably all imagine, Gannosuke doesn't take it and instead pummels the H-man. We also get an unmasking, despite the fact that Hayabusa won the match. As if THAT weren't enough, Gannosuke attempts to set his former best friend on fire...but Jinsei Shinzaki makes the save, as foreshadowed above. Pretty darn good angle advancement in my book, if not rather predictable angle advancement.

Highlights: Cactus Jack vs. WING Kanemura (Some form of Deathmatch involving lots o' barbed wire)

This match not only allegedly sets up the next fight, but is ALSO featured on the Tokyo Pop release FMW: King of the Deathmatch. WHAT A HAPPY COINCIDENCE! If you've seen Mick Foley falling in to barbed wire before (And who hasn't?), there's nothing new here.

Cactus Jack, Mike "Gladiator" Awesome, and Terry Funk vs. WING Kanemura, Masato Tanaka, and Atushi Onita (Six-Man Texas Tornado Street Fight)

Historical Significance Factor (?): Lovranski mentions this is the last match Foley wrestled as Cactus Jack before he revived the character in WWF rings.

Do you want lame weapons shots? Do you want use of barbed wire that obviously tears away a man's shirt and leaves his body unscathed? Do you want something that's too damn hard to follow because there's twenty things going on at once? This'd be the match for you. Forget Crash TV, it's Crash Ringwork! Onita does eat a rather large fireball courtesy of Funk, but, other than that, the only real redeeming quality of the match is watching Awesome nail a few particularly wicked powerbombs, as well as he and Tanaka trying to out-tope each other. I recall Team Onita winning, though I don't exactly recall how...it was that forgettable. 1/4* for Gladiator and Masato.

Video Package: Recap of Megumi Kudo's career and feud with Shark Tsuchiya

Kudo gets the big babyface treatment, as a speech about her retirement is show, as well as Tsuchiya getting the win in a previous match. Geez, the only way they could make the result to this thing any more obvious would be if they threw in an injury angle on top of it.

Megumi Kudo vs. Shark Tsuchiya (No-Rope Explosive, Electrified Barbed Wire Match, Kudo's Retirement Match)

Ring setup: There's barbed wire replacing the ropes on two sides of the ring, and nothing at all on the other two. However, on those sides, the floor is covered in barbed wire. There's allegedly 160 explosives in said wire.

You know, for barbed wire that's electrified, they really don't sell it like there's current....some twitching would be nice.

That, however, is my only complaint about what was otherwise a pretty good little match. Teases of the big tosses in to the wire were strong, and they managed to work some nice wrestling in there too, despite being limited by the lack of any ropes. A sickle was introduced, and it resulted in Kudo doing the best blade job I'd ever seen from a woman. In total, there were five trips to the wire...three for Kudo, one for Shark (result of a very sweet reversal sequence), and one double shot.