Taking Woodstock

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Our next Rialto Recommends is Ang Lee's 2009 film TAKING WOODSTOCK. Lee's film tells the story of Elliot Tiber and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was. When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers thinking he could drum up some much-needed business for his parents' run-down motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor's farm in White Lake, New York, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life–and American culture–forever. Newsweek said "Some will call his Woodstock naive, but that's what he intends: the movie is a sweet, anecdotal, comic embrace, a gentle reminder that it was once possible to overcome the cynicism of the times and believe that "the flow" leads in a benign direction." While the Detroit News said "Lee takes the viewer on a sweet-enough and nicely personalized trip through a corner of the '60s. And even if he skips the main event, he finds plenty of color in its surroundings." TAKING WOODSTOCK is streaming on DirectTV and is available to rent for a modest fee from Amazon, GooglePlay, Apple, YouTube, FandangoNow, Vudu, and others.