| | | No One Who Was There Will Ever Be the Same. Be There.
Features: DVD, Collector's Edition
1969 was a year unlike any other. Man first set foot on the moon. The New York Mets won the World Series against all odds. And for three days in the rural town of Bethel, New York, half a million people experienced the single most defining moment of their generation; a concert unprecedented in scope and influence, a coming together of people from all walks of life with a single common goal: Peace and music. They called it Woodstock. One year later, a landmark Oscar-winning documentary captured the essence of the music, the electricity of the performances, and the experience of those who lived it. Newly remastered, the film features legendary performances by 17 best selling artists.
"...deserves its registry in the Library of Congress; not just for the great rock performances, but because it best captures the brief era of flower power." Brian Koller, FilmsGraded.com
"...a dazzling reminder of a simpler, younger time and the brief promise it attained." Pete Croatto, FilmCritic.com
"An important sociological document as much as a massive who's who of rock and folk in 1969." Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com
"Few documentaries have captured a time and place more completely, poignantly, and for that matter, entertainingly." Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"...a milestone in artistic collation of raw footage...an absolute triumph in its marriage of cinematic technology to reality." Variety
Editor's Note
Michael Wadleigh's WOODSTOCK: THREE DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC finds the best rock stars of the 1960s performing at the historic Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the most celebrated rock concert of all time. Shot over the course of three days in August 1969, the film conveys the unique spirit of the once-in-a-lifetime, communal event, and in turn, captures the mood of an entire era. Amazingly volatile, electrifying performances are included by such timeless artists as Richie Havens; Joan Baez; The Who; Sha Na Na; Joe Cocker; Country Joe and The Fish; Arlo Guthrie; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Ten Years After; Santana; Sly and the Family Stone; Jimi Hendrix; Canned Heat; John Sebastian; Jefferson Airplane; and Janis Joplin. In addition to the music, the film's historical relevance is what makes it such an important time capsule, thrillingly eternalizing the legendary event for generations to come.This digitally remastered, widescreen director's cut of the Academy Award-winning documentary features 40 minutes of footage not included in the original film, and was released in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the legendary music festival.
| Features | Audio: English | | Exclusive Gift Box Packaging! | | Interactive Menus | | Retrospective Documentary: The Museum At Bethel Woods - The Story Of The Sixties & Woodstock | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | Woodstock - DVD Review By: Pete Croatto - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 5/29/2009 2:39 PM | |
The appeal of Woodstock isn't as a concert film, though there are some great performances that hold up 40 years later. The film is a historical document, representing the zenith of the peace and love movement of the 1960s, and music's integral role in that equation. If you were born in the '70s or '80s, your take on the 1960s might consist of news clips and cultural caricatures. Director Michael Wadleigh sets the record straight. For those whose musical history begins with Fall Out Boy, Woodstock was a three-day festival of "peace and music" held in upstate New York 40 years ago. All of the big musical acts of the day performed: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and The Who....read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Warner |
| Release Date: 6/9/2009 |
| Running Time: 223 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1970 | | Catalog ID: 1000043029 | | UPC: 00883929039289 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Video: Color |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Oscar (1971) |  | Bob Maurice, Winner, Best Documentary, Features | | | Dan Wallin, L.A. Johnson, Nominee, Best Sound | | | Thelma Schoonmaker, Nominee, Best Film Editing |
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| | Professional Reviews | Sight and Sound
"...It is memorable, and it is moving..." 09/01/1994 p.55USA Today
"...Michael Wadleigh's Oscar-winning documentary remains the most enduring movie of a very great movie year..." 08/12/1994 p.3D Rolling Stone
5 stars out of 5 -- "Mirroring the festival's communal sprawl, Michael Wadleigh's 224-minute director's cut flows like a monumental rock symphony." 07/09/2009 DVD Times 9 of 10
Woodstock. The very word has come to represent many things - hippies, the late sixties, festivals, music, peace, drugs, Star-Spangled Banner, the list is endless. The youthful 'Woodstock' generation garnered much criticism in the eighties when they grew up to become the thirtysomething generation of cut-throat yuppies, which seemed to ultimately ridicule everything the hippies stood for. However, watching Woodstock, with its free love, drugs and music, it's hard to detect any potential conservative capitalists...It's difficult to expertly conjure up the experience of Woodstock to those that have never witnessed the documentary. What makes the film a much more interesting concert time-capsule compared to others such as Monterey Pop, Gimme Shelter or Message To Love, is the fact that you instantly sense the notion that no-one, from performers to festival-goers, knew what they were involved in. It was a festival with no script, no pre-determined heroes. Essentially, it was a tacit battle between each band to attempt to render themselves more legendary than the others...As a documentary, Woodstock aims to do two things: to record as much fantastic music as it can as a treat for the unfortunate souls unable to attend; and to provide social comment on America (in particular its ongoing trouble with Vietnam), using the festival as a sort of antithesis to society...As a concert movie and statement of America during the turbulent late sixties period, Woodstock is priceless and perfect, from its multitude of classic sixties music to its na?ve idealism of the hippie movement in full swing. It's long, breathtaking and completely divorced from our society, rendering it essential viewing indeed...Ranked alongside Gimme Shelter, Stop Making Sense and The Last Waltz as the greatest concert movie ever made, Woodstock is as fascinating as a social study as it is an enjoyable rock festival movie. - Raphael Pour-Hashemi
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
In terms of evoking the style and feel of a mass historical event, "Woodstock" may be the best documentary ever made in America...It has a lot of music in it, photographed in an incredible intimacy with the performers, but it's not by any means only a rock-music movie. It's a documentary about the highs and lows of the society that formed itself briefly at Woodstock before moving on. It covers that civilization completely, showing how the musicians sang to it and the Hog Farm fed it and the Port-O-San man provided it with toilet facilities...And it shows how 400,000 young people formed the third largest city in New York State, and ran it for a weekend with no violence and no hassles, and with a spirit of informal co-operation. The spirit survived even though Woodstock was declared a "disaster area," and a thunderstorm soaked everyone to the skin, and the food ran out...The remarkable thing about Wadleigh's film is that it succeeds so completely in making us feel how it must have been to be there. It does that to the limits that a movie can..."Woodstock" does what all good documentaries do. It is a bringer of news. It reports, it shows, it records and it interprets. It gives us maybe 60 percent music and 40 percent on the people who were there...Wadleigh and his team (see the credits, please, for the names of the others who helped bring "Woodstock" together) have recorded all the levels. The children. The dogs (who were allowed ro run loose in this nation). The freaks and the straights. The people of religion (Swami Gi and three nuns giving the peace sign). The cops (eating popsicles). The Army (dropping blankets, food and flowers from helicopters). "Woodstock" is a beautiful, complete, moving, ultimately great film, and years from now when our generation is attacked for being just as uptight as all the rest of the generations, it will be good to have this movie around to show that, just for a weekend anyway, that wasn't altogether the case. - Roger Ebert
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