Despite it’s name, the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival didn’t actually take place in Woodstock as the local inhabitants at the time were scared of what a few hundred hippies would do to their town.
In the end the festival took place in White Lake with nearly half a million people attending or at least trying to.
Ang Lee’s latest film Taking Woodstock tells the story of Elliot Tiber and how he brought the festival to his hometown. Played wonderfully by Demetri Martin, Elliot is finding his feet as an interior designer in Greenwich Village, and feeling at home with the burgeoning gay rights movement. (more…)
It’s 1969, and Elliot Tiber, a down-on-his-luck interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has to move back upstate to help his parents run their dilapidated Catskills motel, the El Monaco. The bank is about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn’t paid the insurance; and Elliot is still figuring how to come out to his parents. 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 the motel.
Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor’s farm in White Lake, NY, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever.
Taking Woodstock is directed by Academy Award®-winner Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) with a screenplay by James Schamus (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm), based on the book Taking Woodstock by Elliot Tiber. The film stars Demetri Martin (Important Things with Demetri Martin on Comedy Central) as Elliot Tiber, Emile Hirsch (Milk, Into the Wild), and Liev Schreiber (Defiance).
On paper Surrogates ticks all the right boxes for a Sci-Fi hit. The film tussles with themes of technological advancement, terrorism, social divides and religious subtext all in the condensed time frame of 88 minutes. Plus for part of the movie you even get to see Bruce Willis with a full head of hair!
Don’t let this fool you though, as the initial promise soon falls well short of expectations. Surrogates has a great concept based of a successful graphic novel and is directed by Jonathan Mostow of Terminator 3 fame. The running time however is its largest downfall as plot holes quickly squash away any initial promise the film displays.
The plot sees us taken to an unnamed year in earth’s future where society now consists of people laying in bed controlling their robot selves. (Think of The Sims with a pulse). However, society’s flawless lifestyle is quickly disrupted by an unidentifiable criminal who possesses a gun that can kill not only the robot, but the humans controlling it as well. (more…)
Despite it’s name, the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival didn’t actually take place in Woodstock as the local inhabitants at the time were scared of what a few hundred hippies would do to their town.
On paper Surrogates ticks all the right boxes for a Sci-Fi hit. The film tussles with themes of technological advancement, terrorism, social divides and religious subtext all in the condensed time frame of 88 minutes. Plus for part of the movie you even get to see Bruce Willis with a full head of hair!
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