Taking Woodstock

When a young and up-and-coming man in a local no-name town convinces the town council to have a bigger summer concert, he suddenly becomes overwhelmed by the response. A son of Jewish immigrants who operate a run-down motel just outside of town, Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin), serves on the town council and with a little left-hand behind the back transaction uses the permit to schedule some of the biggest names in music.

After making arrangements with local dairy farm operator Max Yasgur (played by American Pie father Eugene Levy), the organize the festival to use his farm and plans start rolling fast. Jake spends the next couple of weeks getting the hotel and field ready, but as the day approaches, the town soon becomes overwhelmed by hippies and the locals are not happy. Originally scheduled to be a concert requiring tickets, common-sense led them to change it to a free concert. There was no way they were going to be able to control the mass of people that showed up. The festival finally arrives and Jake experiences life at Woodstock and learns more than he ever learned at college.

Also staring in this movie are Imelda Staunton as Jake's mother, Henry Goodman as Jake's father, Live Schreiber as a transvestite (yes, you read that correctly), Dan Fogler as a head of a local theater troupe, and Emile Hirsch as Jake's friend who recently returned from Vietnam.

I'm no historian on the Woodstock event, but this is totally how I pictured events as they played out. Thousands of hippies. Dozens of naked people. Acid. Camping. Rock music. And more naked people.

Directed by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Taking Woodstock is Rated R for nudity, drugs, and yet more nudity. And the movie comes in right at 2 hours.

I liked Taking Woodstock for the seemingly obvious reasons. Not only is it funny (Jake's mother is hysterical), but there's also that good quirky small-town dialog. Not an Academy-Award winning nominee, but not too bad. I give Taking Woodstock 3 stars.

Some interesting facts - the concert was actually in the town of Bethel, New York, about 43 miles from the actual town of Woodstock, NY. Performers at the festival included Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, John Sebastian (Welcome Back Kotter), Canned Heat (Goin' to the Country), Mountain, Grateful Dead. Creedance Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Ten Years After, The Band, Blood Sweat & Tears, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Sha-Na-Na, and Jimi Hendrix. Can you imagine that concert today? It wouldn't happen. Too many stuck-up greedy bands. This was quintessential 1960's.

Fanboys

The only thing better than a Star Wars movie is a spoof on the movie or the people that are obsessed with the series. Nothing I have ever seen was funnier than Triumph the Insult Dog interviewing fans at the premier of one of the movies. This movie is about those fans.

Fanboys stars Sam Huntington, Chris Marquette, Dan Fogler, Jay Baruchel, and Kristen Bell as the fans. Other than Dan Fogler (Balls of Fury, Horton Hears a Woo, and School for Scoundrels) you probably have not heard of these actors, but they fit the part. Guest staring in the movie is Seth Rogen, Kevin Smith, William Shatner, Carrie Fisher, and Billy Dee Williams.

The premise of the movie is that one of the friends is dying and his wish is to break into the Skywalker Ranch and steal the reel for the new movie, The Phantom Menace, before its public release. This will require them to drive across country in a van.

To make matters even more ridiculous, the gang intentionally crash several rival Star Trek events. Who's cooler? Star Wars or Star Trek? There will be a beat-down!

Eventually they make it to the ranch, but the guards from another movie try to stop them. And if you catch the reference to this older movie, you win a prize!

This movie is mostly a comic adventure, though I was practically rolling on the floor during an interogation to determine if they were truly Star Wars Fanboys. This is where Triumph comes in. Once you see this movie you will totally understand.

Fanboys was directed by relatively unknown director Kyle Newman. The movie is 90 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for crude behaviour, language, sexual references and some drug use.

If you hate Star Wars then this movie is not for you. Fanboys is fairly predictable and some of the sequences are dragged out a bit too long. However, the funny scenes more than make up for this criticism. I give this movie 4 stars.