UP FOR SOME REAL TIME TRAVEL ? TRY "TAKING WOODSTOCK"

Woodstock. Were you there? Do you wish you were there? I sure do but it was waaay before my time. Now that was a revolution. And as stories go, it doesn’t get much truer than that. Well, did you ever stop to consider how Woodstock came about? Because with an event like Woodstock one tends to put it in the same category as the forces of nature, magically appearing on its own so to speak… However as magical as it may have been the Woodstock music festival had its beginning rooted in very solid reality had VERY real organizational problems and by all accounts one would have trouble believing some of the characters involved were real off the screen…
Such as Elliot Teichberg. In the beginning Mr Teichberg had nothing what so ever to do with Woodstock. He is an interior designer and painter (well, friends and family buy his paintings) and a gay rights activist in New York. His parents run a small motel in The Catskills. Well they try to – their attitudes have scared off all the customers… With foreclosure looming Elliot has no other option but to go back to White Lake to somehow save his parents. But the situation is pretty dire and Elliot is getting pretty desperate until Elliot happens to see a news item in the local newspaper… A three-day music festival was going to be organized in the next town. Something pretty damn big and impressive. However the townspeople had (successfully) run the organizers out of town fearing a “hippie infestation”. Now Elliot has in his possession one permit for a music festival (he organizes the town’s festival every summer), an empty motel (a little run down but ideal for a H.Q for the organizers) and a neighbor, Max Yasgur who owns a dairy farm with HUGE fields (and we can all guess what THEY were used for)… Elliot communicates this fact to Michael Lang, the organizer of the festival and low and before he knows what’s happening, millions (literally) are on the road to the Catskills for three days of music peace and love…
Taking Woodstock is HANDS DOWN the sweetest film I have watched in a long time. But with a master director like Ang Lee at the helm, how can one not expect a show? Mr Lee literally transports us to the heart and soul of the festival. The best thing about it is that on slight inspection, the film is pretty full of what could be called “clichés”: 60’s clichés, hippie clichés, small town clichés, even a few Jewish clichés (I have to put a disclaimer here and add that what starts out as seemingly an amusing oddity takes a rather serious turn at the end of the film – but I’m not giving away anything, watch and see) The thing is, these are so beautifully managed they are not caricatures or clichés but little things that convey the very soul of the festival… That is why the film portrays the “spirit of the 60’s” so well, with complete honesty, openness and simplicity – to the point that it feels like time travel! The characters are naturally taken from real life but they are so well portrayed that you can’t help sympathizing and empathizing with them all almost immediately. I especially enjoyed watching Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) and Jonathan Geoff as Michael Lang.
Some bits in the story made me laugh out loud. Yes, there is some nakedness… Ok, a lot of nakedness… But when I say nakedness I mean just that – naked people. NOT what you were thinking… Ok there are drugs – but come on for God’s sake, it was the 60’s! It was Woodstock!! And don’t dismiss it as something that will fall down the generation gap – you’ll love it. Word of honor.