Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut)
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Movie Reviews of Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut)
Movie Review: Historical Flashback
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this DVD at my husband's request. He had viewed it has a young man, and wanted to revisit it after 30+ years. I had never previously seen the film. We were both impressed by the film quality and also had a "groovy" time reaching back through the years to the time of our youth. This film is excellent quality and a great historical record, worth the viewing for all. Far out!! Movie Review: woodstock
Summary: 5 Stars
I found the director cut to be not as good as the theater version doesn't have the same flow.Movie Review: An interesting view of times of the past, how a big concert can be peacful.
Summary: 4 Stars
Although it was before my time, as a big music fan I took the opportunity to pick this film up when I saw it on sale. I can see why they tried to re-create the feeling of these times by staging woodstock 94 and 99, unfortunate that 99 ruined a great thing. If you like music from that era, this film is a definite must have. The who, Hendrix, Joe Cocker to name a few, but many other as well. Interesting look into Flower power. I don't nessesarily agree with everything in the movie, but this is an important American Documentary. Something for any Music person to watch at least once in their life.Movie Review: Terrible job!
Summary: 1 Stars
I agree completely with Kockenlocker "Thrusting Greatness" review.
Anyone who has seen either the VHS or, better yet, the actual film will be very upset about this! It seems downright irresponsible to make such a bad copy of this historic cultural event- especially because music is the central focus of it!!!
Movie Review: The greatest concert film ever
Summary: 5 Stars
The Summer of 1969 seems a thousand years ago. I was eighteen years old, had just graduated from high school, was on vacation in Hawaii with my family, and terrified of the draft because the Vietnam War was at its height.
Watching Michael Wadleigh's Oscar-winning documentary, WOODSTOCK: 3 DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC (1970), on letterboxed double videocassette, I don't know how I survived that Summer of 1969. For those of us not gathered in a field in upstate New York over one weekend, the movie is a priceless cultural record of an era. No one got killed, and at least one person was born. The crowd size was estimated at 500,000, with minimal toilets and highways turned into parking lots. At one point, mention is made that "This is the third largest city in New York". Fences were broken down, so some people got in to the musical concert for free. People were making love in fields--it was called "balling" in that long ago era. There was nudity elsewhere as people washed their only clothes in a muddy river. Maybe because there was so much drug use, almost everyone was too stoned to be unruly or unhappy. There was a loudspeaker announcement that some of "the pot" was bad. "Use it at your own risk, people." Wadleigh, at least five camera operators, and a huge team of editors (including Martin Scorsese and his future collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker) brilliantly employ split screen to show the crowd trying to get in by any means possible and the owners of the land talking about the kids; their opinions naturally vary. Certainly, it was difficult to helicopter in medical supplies and food for half a million people. But through it all, everyone survived and seemed to have an adventurous time. And now everyone can see it all on home video in their homes or apartments, whether they were there or not.
Originally just titled WOODSTOCK, the movie ran 184 minutes. But now it is called WOODSTOCK: 3 DAYS OF PEACE & music and runs a whopping 225 minutes. The 40 minute running time difference is mostly music performances, making this maybe the greatest concert film of all time. Included over nearly four hours, often in split-screen Panavision and Dolby Surround Stereo, are three numbers by Crosby, Stills & Nash, two songs by Richie Havens, "Joe Hill" and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" by Joan Baez, The Who doing an enthralling number from "Tommy", Sha-Na-Na doing "At the Hop", Joe Cocker and the Grease Band, Country Joe and the Fish, Arlo Guthrie, Two Years After, Jefferson Airplane doing two songs not in the theatrical cut, John Sebastian, a song by Country Joe McDonald, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin in a song cut from the original film, and Jimi Hendrix ending the weekend with three numbers (one cut before), including "The Star-Spangled Banner" on an acoustic guitar. It is one mindsucker of a musical lineup.
To especially watch The Director's Cut of WOODSTOCK and in one evening is to be grateful that Michael Wadleigh, his camera people, and his editors put up with inconveniences galore over this 1969 Summer weekend. They have captured, now and forever, what one aspect of that drugs and sex era was like for 500,000 attendees. And they have preserved on film for the rest of America--and maybe the world--what Woodstock was like as a concert event. Set aside a weekend and watch this almost-four hour musical masterpiece. (REVIEWED ON LETTERBOXED VIDEOCASSETTE).