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29 out of 33 people found the following comment useful :-
Superb documentary, 8 April 2003

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

Oscar-winning documentary on the 3 day long concert back in 1969. Despite more people showing up than was expected and running out of food, water and medical supplies and dealing with a torrential downpour everything went fine. There was no rioting, no violence...just people helping each other out. The film beautifully captures all this. It contains interviews with the kids attending the concert (their views are absolutely incredible), people in the surrounding town, the police, media...all viewpoints are presented. Everything that comes through is tolerance, peace and love.

The musical acts are varied--you'll love some and hate others. For me the definite highlights were Joan Baez; the Who; Sha-Na-Na; Joe Cocker; Crosby Stills & Nash; John Sebastian; Country Joe McDonald; Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix. Also the sound is great and there is superb editing during the sequences with excellent use of multiple screens.

I saw the directors cut with adds 40 minutes of music (bringing the running time up to 3 hours and 40 minutes). They add Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and another number by Hendrix. Except for the Joplin footage none of it is really good or needed. The original 3 hour cut is fine.

Warning--there's lots of swearing, nudity, sex and drug taking. It didn't bother me, but it might bother others--originally this got an X rating because of it!

A great one of a kind movie. Don't miss it!

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26 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
A spectacular look at the 1960's., 17 May 1999
Author: kon-tiki-2 from Portland, Oregon

"Woodstock" was meant as a documentary about the famous 3-day 1969 New York rock festival of the same name, but it's really more valuable as a record of 1960's hippy culture. This is unquestionably the best film to capture the spirit of the 60's. Between musical acts, the camera meanders through the audience and the enormous outlying crowds to interview spectators, or just eves-drop on the scene. This is the most interesting, entertaining, and eye-opening aspect of the film.

Several of the musical performances are memorable and deserve mention: Richie Havens' awesome concert opener is a classic--you could watch it a hundred times and still get goose bumps--pure magic. Jimi Hendrix comes pretty close to magic also with the final musical number. His frenzied rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" is incredible, and a fitting closer. Country Joe and the Fish and Joe Cocker are also memorable. A few of the musical acts don't seem to fit: Sha-Na-Na comes across as a weird oddity--(a throwback to the fifties), and Alvin Lee's "Ten Years After" is just too long and boring. Most of the other performances are so-so, but worth watching.

Overall, the film captures the mood, spirit, and music of the times better than any other. I would also venture to say that this may be one of the very best documentaries ever filmed on any subject. The depth of coverage is spectacular -- fitting for such a historical event. A great movie!

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19 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
The Youth of the World, 1 January 2004
Author: (caspian1978@hotmail.com) from Attleboro, MA

I just got done watching the DVD version of Woodstock last night. At 25, I didn't realize it until then, that these were just kids! Woodstock may have been about music, it may have been about peace, but what the documentary truly captured on film was the Youth of American trying to make things right in a time when there was wrong. A garden of eden filled with innocence and joy. The only sorrow one knows when watching Woodstock is the fear of 1969 and the knowledge that many of the idols found in that year are not with us today. Still, man, what a time and I only wish I could have been there, among the innocent in the garden. Too bad I was born in 1978

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17 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Enjoyed additional footage immensely, 5 October 1998
Author: Paul-103 from Washington, DC

Having attended the Woodstock festival, I've probably seen the original movie about 5-10 times. I ordered the 25th anniversary version just recently and was pleasantly surprised by the extra footage of the Jimi Hendrix performance. I invited a guitar playing friend of mine to watch, and we were both totally blown away by his performance. It's sort of disappointing that this footage wasn't included in the original feature, but I'm sure glad it is here now. The addition of Janis Joplin's outrageous performance was also gladly welcomed (I always appreciated the fact that she was loyal to her backup band, but in reality, she deserved a much better band). My only complaint is the remix of the Joe Cocker performance, which in my mind, is one of the best and most powerful rock performances ever committed to film (the audio mix in the original film was much better).

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15 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Serves As Both A Documentary & Concert DVD, 15 June 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

As I have seen this many times since it first came out on in the theater and then on VHS, I now just fast-forward chapters on the DVD to the music, enjoying my favorite performances in this epic documentary of the most famous rock concert of all time.

There is a lot to enjoy, including the stuff between the music if you have never seen this before. It certainly captures the wildness of the late 1960s, the good and the bad. It really brings you back to a unique time in American history. For someone who was part of that time, things that were "cool" back then now look and sound a little stupid and naive, but it's still fun to watch. Not only do you get a ton of music, but you see a half million people weathering storms, the mess, drugs, port-o-johns, drugs, dancing, skinny-dipping, drugs, eating. You get the idea.

Music-wise, everyone has their favorites so I'll put a plug or two in for the artists I've always enjoying watching-seeing the most in this movie: Ten Years After; Sly And The Family Stone; Canned Heat, The Who, Richie Havens, Santana, Sha Na Na, Country Joe And The Fish, The Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

At almost four hours, you can choose from a variety of music acts, enough to give you at least an enjoyable couple of hours of that alone, if you wish. This is a must- have for music fans of that era.

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13 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
"We must be in Heaven, man!", 5 February 2002
Author: Baroque

Wavy Gravy said it best. Three days of peace, love and music, captured onto film. Everybody has their own opinions about which groups are better than others, but the overall effect is a dizzying one. 500,000 people (with an additional 1 million on the roads who couldn't get any closer) gathered in one spot, for a festival that named a generation. It's hard to believe that the concert was supposed to be a nothing more than a publicity event for a proposed recording studio, financed by a pair of venture capitalists. But the sun, moon and the stars were all in the proper alignment to create an event that we can only stand back and admire. I praise the organizers for having the foresight to document this event on film, for future generations to enjoy and behold. And perhaps, one day, repeat in some form.

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13 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
The Mother Of All Documentaries!, 28 June 2003

Author: Ron Scott (magic8ballfl) from West Palm Beach, FL

I was 8 years old the time this event took place and having older siblings into the times, styles, and cultures of the era I certainly got a feel and liking for the bands in this documentary. I have seen bits and pieces of this event throughout the years, but never took the time to sit down and watch the whole event from start to finish; that is until last weekend. This definitely is what music documentaries have used as the measuring stick to define themselves ever since. The Director's Cut, which is what I viewed, is 224 min in length. It's amazing how one can get "sucked into the experience" and not notice the time elapsing! The Remastered version is incredible especially regarding the visual and audio equipment used in that time period. The 2 channel effect with the split screen is interesting and keeps the viewer entertained by the different sounds and noises in the interview segments. Best musical and visual picks are Jimi Hendrix, CSN, Country Joe (cute use of the "bouncing ball" - can we say Karaoke?), Jefferson Airplane, and my favorite Janis Joplin. If you're a period person, grew up in the late 60's, or appreciate classic rock music, then I urge you to go and watch this classic piece of work.

9 out of 10 ***

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the Best Documentaries Ever made, 13 January 2000

Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

Woodstock is a great documentary. It is edited very well and has great spirit and music in the mix. For the generation of the time it was what symbolized them, and I think this is the perfect film for them. Edited very finely (by the director, Oscar Winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker and the man himself, Martin Scorsese) with many parts of the movie in separate sides in great splendor. I think this film is the best movie in which a sound track was made, and one of the best documentaries ever made (definitely the best of the 70's).

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Three days man! Three days., 9 March 2006

Author: johno-21 from United States

What a great documentary this is with an event like Woodstock captured so magnificently on film. I saw this in the theater during it's initial release more than once and have seen it at least a dozen times since. This film won the Academy Award for 1970 as Best Documentary for Michael Wadliegh as he uses split screen imagery for many scenes capturing different events at the same time and different angles of same events. Wadleigh had done cinematography on a couple of notable but forgotten films from 1967, the feature drama Who's That Knocking On My Door, an early Martin Scorsesse film, (Scorsesse would help with the editing of Woodstock) and film maker Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary. This had to be a monumental task to chronicle the three day event and reduce it to a single theatrical film. 30 acts provided about 50 hours of music to the crowd of half a million in upstate New York in the summer of 1969 and the film makers of Woodstock had to eliminate over half of the performers from their film but what they chronicled here is captures the thrilling performances and the crowd, the rain and the events that unfolded during that three day festival in an fast paced, energetic and thoughtful documentation. It was nominated for and should have won the Academy Award for it's principal film editor Thelma Schoonmaker who would go on to successful career editing such films as The Color of Money, Good fellas, Cape Fear, The Kings of Comedy, Gangs of New york, The Last Temptation of Christ and The Aviator. This film also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound and should have won that too. It's brown acid alerts, rain storm precautions, latrine maintenance, three days of peace and music and breakfast in bed for 400,000 with Merry Prankster Wavy Gravy as your stage host starring Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, CSN&Y, The Who, Santana, Sly & the Family Stone, Country Joe & the fish, 10 Years After, Sha Na Na, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie and John Sebstian. I would give this a 10 and highly recommend it.

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7 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Wouldn't Stock, 1 July 2002
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Spoilers herein.

This was never a concert, but a defining moment in the struggle for the future of the nation. It was never about music, but about politics as religion, about the massive change of defining what it meant to be alive.

You had to be immersed in the times to get a feel for how true this is. After the war (WWII), the US coasted on self-reinforcing images, images that had been created as a defense during that war. These images were fed by movies but the role was being taken over by popular music.

Meanwhile, as as popular phenomenon, `folk' music was the stuff of the self-aware. Dylan, who controlled more of the nation's soul than anyone else living, completely shifted that from Folk to Rock at Newport. From that moment on, rock was the medium in which we invested ourselves to create new images to replace those of film. Onto this moving train jumped the Beatles and completely took control. These men changed the relationship of listener to artist: even masquerading as another band in their most influential album.

But by the time of Woodstock, we the youth were adrift. Creating a vocabulary of images as aggressive and intellectual as we expected from early progress turned out to be impossible to sustain by individuals. Enter the `Music Industry' and supporting cultural niches.

Woodstock was a spontaneous happening, but it happened for a very clear reason: we were yearning for a coherent mythology. Many of us went because we really expected to see both Dylan and The Beatles. Unbeknownst to us, The Beatles were already dead because of the same conflict we see in this film. The Beatles knew they led the future of the world, but disagreed bitterly on the core of that leadership: John pushed for drugged politics; Paul for Kabbalistic, surreal cosmology; George for kundalini; and simple Ringo for simple country music (then still called country and western).

And we see exactly the same battle here in this film: a battle for influence over the structure of our minds. Still kicking were the folkies: dear Joan, Arlo and Richie. Against that: ironic rock (the Who, the Airplane); modern blues (Canned Heat, Joe Cocker, Janis); free jazz meditations (Jimi); pure goof (Sha Na Na); lush pop (CS & N); and popular country (Sebastian and `Country' Joe). Fit the rest in yourselves, all tussling for mass listenership, working to be the one that caught fire. In the background were various purveyors of watered down religious and political notions. Drugs were there, but they really had little to do with it, only being an excuse for discontinuity.

Now the moment is gone. The hoped-for reinvention never really happened. What emerged were two cultures: one that followed a lobotomized popular music derived from country and one that pretended to be extreme based on various types of staged excess.

Nixon won.

In the final indignity, after the music disemboweled itself, the whole event is turned into a set of what? _Film Icons_. Many more millions of people see this film than ever were there, or for that matter participated in the east coast freak movement (east coast: intellectual `freaks' -- west coast: dropped out `hippies'). Those millions are massaged and reinforced by the visuals. The music probably won't mean anything by itself unless you were a part of it. It can't, the images wash the music out. In fact, today the video is what sells the song.

But even within the film world are similar battles for how images are registered in our collective imaginations. Scorsese (who is responsible for the visual and narrative philosophy of this project) represents film images built around characters. It is a sad thing that he got this project rather than someone who understood the music. There are other cinematic philosophies, more powerful, less self-limiting. (Look at how Demme understands the Heads in "Stop Making.") I advise you to look elsewhere for both your understanding of this period and the manner in which you build your imagination.

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