Taking Woodstock
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Actor: Demetri Martin, Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber, Pippa PearthreeBrand: NBC Universal
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-12-15
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Taking Woodstock
DVD Review: Stardust . . .Turning Into Butterflies Above Our Nation
Summary: 4 Stars
In "Taking Woodstock," director Ang Lee sweetly adapts Elliot Tiber's memoir of the same name to tell a small coming-of-age tale amidst the larger backdrop of the behind the scenes coming together of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival at Yasgur's farm in upstate New York after town residents of the original venue in Wallkill passed a law banning the gathering of over 5000 people without the appropriate permit. Possessing a permit to sponsor a small music and arts festival at the site of his parents' rundown motel, El Monaco, Tiber a.k.a Teichberg, immediately contacted concert organizers Michael Lang and Artie Kornfield and the rest, as they say, is history.
Billed as "three days of peace and music" meant to heal a nation suffering from the ongoing effects of the Vietnam War and the aftershock of the assignations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Woodstock historically served its purpose for the hundreds of thousands that participated. Like America of that time period, Lee's main character Elliot (an unassuming and quickly forgotten Demetri Martin), hears a clarion call of his own; after living openly in Greenwich Village as a gay male, he must hide his sexual orientation from his Holocaust survivor parents when he moves back to Bethel, New York to save their motel. Now he must bite the bullet, rebuke the excuse of handling his parents and their issues and find a life of his own. He is the butterfly of the story, emerging from his cocoon, transforming into the stardust of the famous Woodstock song by Joni Mitchell.
Lee's theme toys with different ideas of freedom whose apt anthem is the opening concert piece by Richie Havens. For Elliot's mother (played with an almost Gestapo intensity by Imelda Staunton,) it materializes in the form of thousands of hoarded banknotes signifying the security of which she has always dreamed. The senior Teichberg (Henry Goodman) finds enjoyment in a newfound energy generated by the `young people' that invade the town, listen to his life stories and applaud his functional gravitas. The preparation, three days and aftermath heal lost Vietnam vet Billy (Emile Hirsch), allow Marine cross-dresser Vilma (Liev Schreiber) to control his confused life for a limited amount of time while assuming an oracle role to the other misfits this film brings together, and provide the westward-ho direction for a newly enlightened and empowered Elliot. Once again, it takes a village . . .
. . . of which some of its inhabitants border on the stereotypical or add nothing to the film other than to provide an entire entourage of sixties characters complete with an Oh! Calcutta! type theatre group that revels in their nudity, a couple of acid droppers in a old VW bus decorated with requisite kaleidoscopic ceiling graphics and angry burgeoning feminists intent on a ritual bra-burning. All of which add layer upon layer onto a fairly satisfying 40 year old glimpse of reality that Lee obviously took pains to achieve.
All of the extras look as if they are from that era with their emphasis on untamed manes of hair (shades of Hair) free of any of the meticulous grooming products so prevalent now--the skinny dipping scenes emphasis this most of all with their blatant display of non-depilatoried body hair suggesting the feral freedom of Rousseau's noble savage so prevalent to that mindset.
Concentrating wholeheartedly on reconstructing his main character's microcosm, Lee steers the storyline away from an emphasis on the concert itself, offering only a hilltop vantage point of the stage with its undulating sea of people that pulses and glows from the perspective of an acid trip. Healing, indeed as are other signs of the time--peace signs, tie dye, fringed vests, floppy leather hats, tokes of maryjane and gobbles of hash brownies.
Bottom line: Ang Lee does a nice job of depicting upstate New York in the late sixties when Woodstock came to town. Instead of concentrating on the concert and its music, he tells a smaller tale of family salvation fueled by the material wealth the festival brought with it and the Age of Aquarian ideals that bespoke a new millennium of desired peace and the main character's self-acceptance. Some stereotypes reign along with a rather weak lead by Demetri Martin, but Lee pulls it off like the pro he is, recreating a nice facsimile of the venue and its time. Many of the film's references (i.e. organizer Lang's hopeful plans to head to San Francisco refer to the role he played in putting together the Altamont Music Festival where the a chapter of Hell's Angels hired to run security ended up stabbing and killing someone and beating up a lot of hippies with pool cues and the Judy Garland record played in the El Monaco bar supposedly refers to the Stonewall riots in Greenwich village, heralding the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement) needed at least textual explanations for those unfamiliar with the era and its incendiary history. Recommended--however, if you want to hear the music, buy the CD, Music from the Original Soundtrack and More: Woodstock or watch the documentary Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director's Cut (40th Anniversary Two-Disc Special Edition).
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
Description of Taking Woodstock
A generation began in his backyard?From Academy AwardŽ-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) comes Taking Woodstock, the comedy inspired by the true story of Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was. When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers thinking he could drum up some much-needed business for his parents' run-down motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor?s farm in White Lake, New York, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life?and American culture?forever.Bestsellers in DVD
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