Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director’s Cut (40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition) (2009, Warner Bros.)
purchase from Amazon

Good news, home theater-owning former hippies! You can now relive the original Woodstock festival, in all of its muddy, THC-laced glory, through the marvelous magic of a new 1080p hi-def and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround sound transfer — with an extra disc of bonus performances and assorted extra content — thanks to Warner Bros.’ brand new 40th anniversary reissue of Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning documentary. For once, we’re looking at a title that lives up to the word “ultimate”; not only does this new box collect the four-hour Woodstock director’s cut, but it tacks on two more hours of performance footage, plus another hour of featurettes, plus BD-Live content — and that doesn’t even take into account the box itself, which handsomely houses the movie in a fringe leather case, or its other assorted contents, which include a reprint of Life’s Woodstock issue, a replica ticket, an iron-on patch, a Lucite paperweight, and more. Unlike the vast majority of catalog titles seeing Blu-ray release, Woodstock takes advantage of the new medium’s capabilities; not only do you get a superior picture and sound, but the studio has taken care to add plenty of extra everything, expanding the movie along with its price tag (this set lists for $69.99, but Amazon has it available for pre-order at $48.99 — and their version features an exclusive third disc).

Personally, to put it mildly, I’m not in the target demographic for Woodstock; I’ve never found the ’60s all that fascinating, and although I consider myself a fan of many of the artists who played the festival, the movie has always struck me as a bloated, spaced-out beast of a documentary — the kind of thing you need to have been at Woodstock to enjoy. (Or high.) All that aside, I can’t deny that it’s a beautiful film, and if it seems to go on forever, then it’s just living up to Wadleigh’s original goal; he did, after all, oversee more than 365,000 feet of film, all of which was jealously guarded from Warners executives, and he would have turned in a five or six-hour film if the studio had let him. Like any documentary worth its salt, Woodstock approaches its subject as if it’s endlessly fascinating, and even if you tend to think that seven-plus hours is a mite excessive for a movie about any event, Wadleigh’s enthusiasm is as infectuous as his shots are beautifully framed. Woodstock is as fluid as the spirit of the festival, tumbling from widescreen to split-screen and back again, a visual extension of what was going on all around Wadleigh and his crew. (more…)