Woodstock

There are roughly half a million valid Woodstock stories, personal ones of lives transformed by the three days of peace, love, drugs, music and mud experienced by the masses who made their way to Max Yasgur's Catskills dairy farm for the legendary festival in the summer of '69. Director Ang Lee has chosen just one for "Taking Woodstock," a meticulously rendered and achingly authentic portrait of a time and a place that is, by turns, sweeping and...

The camp has grown so big that it needs addresses. Debates are held at No. 199 Tent Blvd. Haircuts are on the house at Benny Zeevi's flower-decked tent, where the motto is "Life is beautiful, love will prevail. " There's even newspaper delivery, including a pile of financial papers plunked down on the sidewalk next to a tent with a "People Before Profits" sign. Photos: Tel Aviv tent town Part Woodstock, part boot camp, Tel Aviv's burgeoning protest encampment has become a small-scale experiment in a utopian society and a challenge to the established social order.

I'm sick of Woodstock. I hope the reunion is a financial disaster so we'll never see another one. With the Cal Jam and Us festivals, the six-figure-attendance rock extravaganzas have been done to death. But, just like the overpriced concert tours this summer, this anniversary has to be milked for every dollar possible. (I like the Eagles, though. They were worth every cent of the $12.50 I paid to see them in '79.) Wood$tock, indeed. Hey, where can I get one of those hats? How about a T-shirt?

In a celebration of some of the greatest moments in rock history on film, the American Cinematheque holds a three-day rock documentary fest, including a Rolling Stones double feature Thursday of Stephen Kijak's "Stones in Exile" and the Maysles brothers' "Gimme Shelter." Also showing: D.A. Pennebaker's "Monterey Pop," Mel Stuart's "Wattstax" and the director's cut of Michael Wadleigh's "Woodstock." Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. Check website for prices.

Michael Ramirez's cartoon, "You reap what you sow" (July 29), was so off the mark that I almost missed the obviousness of his message. Blaming the youth of the 1960s for the youth of the 1990s is an easy conservative stance that conveniently excludes three decades of radical change in American culture and industry. The original Woodstock's relatively peaceful gathering was a far cry from the media-saturated, advertiser-bloated, $150-a-ticket monstrosity of its namesake. A gaggle of miscreants, in what was essentially an untroubled crowd, behaved violently, the media sensationalized the incidents and the "summer of love" got blamed; what tripe.

Graham's lament over the devirginization of rock 'n' roll was heart-wrenching. No doubt Graham cried bitter tears as he packed them in at the Cow Palace during the '70s and early '80s. Woodstock didn't change rock music from an art form into a corporate industry: The promoters did. NICOLE DILLENBERG Glendale

As the 25th anniversary of "Three Days of Peace and Music" nears, some say that too much has been made of the musical lovefest that took place Aug. 15-17, 1969, near Bethel, N.Y. If it were up to them, the nostalgia would fade away. And that's just the musicians who performed there. Steve Hochman talks to Joan Baez, Carlos Santana and some of the other artists who are willing to remember the cultural milestone.

After almost 72 hours of peace and love, Woodstock '99 ended in blazing chaos as hundreds of concertgoers in Rome, N.Y., turned into vandals, starting fires and looting. What began as scattered bonfires toward the end of the Red Hot Chili Peppers festival-closing set escalated into several major infernos.

Jimi Hendrix's dive-bombing guitar runs on "The Star-Spangled Banner." Rain chants. Joe Cocker's chicken strut. The love, mud and three days of music. The Woodstock experience is a museum piece now. The Museum at Bethel Woods opens Monday on the site of the old dairy farm northwest of New York City that was trampled under by some 400,000 people on the wet weekend of Aug. 15-17, 1969. Part of a $100-million music and arts center, it tells the story of Woodstock. Mocked recently by conservatives as a "hippie museum," the exhibits actually give a thorough look at the generation-defining concert and the noisy decade that led up to it. Displays include a run of the chain link fence placed around the concert site in a futile bid to keep out freeloaders and a plaque telling the story of Leni Binder, a local woman who made peanut butter sandwiches for the concert kids.

Inglourious Basterds Universal, $29.98/$34.98; Blu-ray, $39.98 Cannes audiences largely dismissed Quentin Tarantino's long-gestating World War II adventure, but actual moviegoers and a brilliant marketing campaign turned this talky, unusual action picture into a surprise hit. It's heartening to know that a slow-building story (more than half of which isn't even in English) about cartoonish Nazi-hunting soldiers, tragic cinéastes and the perils of propaganda can win over crowds expecting a bloody romp.

At first, an Illinois chiropractor was miffed when he opened a shipment of supplies last week and noticed tufts of fur. Then he spotted a black-and-white cat that had hitched a ride from Texas. "My first reaction was, I didn't know what kind of animal he was, so I closed the box back up," said Brett St. Aubin, clinic director at Chiro One Wellness Center in Woodstock, Ill. The stowaway's collar identified him as Cody, 2. The cat had jumped unnoticed into the roughly 2-by-3-foot box as it was being packed, said Marie Webster of Dallas, whose daughter is Cody's owner.

Oscar-winning director Ang Lee, attending the Hong Kong premiere of "Taking Woodstock" on Wednesday, said his next project will be an adaptation of Canadian writer Yann Martel's bestselling novel "Life of Pi." The fable about a boy and a tiger who survive a shipwreck won Britain's most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize, in 2002. Lee said he is still working on the script. Lee told reporters he's baffled by the poor box-office results of "Taking Woodstock," which had earned $7.45 million in the United States as of Tuesday, according to the tracking website Box Office Mojo.

Shaun Duffy and Sophia Costas never suspected they'd chosen a career path that would eventually require them to find 6,000 people willing to grow out their body hair. "A lot of the looking for extras in 'Taking Woodstock' was about hair," said Costas, who, along with Duffy, served as extras casting director on director Ang Lee's new film about the landmark music and cultural event. "We couldn't have any really short haircuts. And because several people appear nude in the movie, we also had to make sure that they had hair in all the right places!"

Rock 'n' roll is in the air this weekend as the American Cinematheque screens a Frank Zappa double feature: 1971's "200 Motels " and 1979's " Baby Snakes" tonight at the Aero Theatre. And on Friday the Aero will show a new 35-millimeter print of director Michael Wadleigh's cut of his 1970 Oscar-winning "Woodstock ," with an introduction by Hal Lifson, pop culture historian and author of "1966! The Coolest Year in Pop Culture History." www.americancinematheque.com 'Night Flight' salute Meanwhile, the Don't Knock the Rock 2009 festival winds up tonight at the Silent Movie Theatre with a tribute to "Night Flight," the seminal late-night show from 1981 that included music videos, short films, cartoons, interviews, concerts and cult movies.

Clearly, Woodstock was more than just a festival. For the more than 500,000 concertgoers who made the trip to that dairy farm in upstate New York 40 years ago, it was a three-day invocation that summoned up music as a shackle-busting experience, an uncorking of generational exuberance, aided along by a massive amount of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Director Ang Lee's experience with the event, however, was much more subdued but transformative nonetheless. It came via an old black-and-white TV. He was a 14-year-old middle schooler in Taiwan, studying docilely and relentlessly for his high-school entrance exam.

There are roughly half a million valid Woodstock stories, personal ones of lives transformed by the three days of peace, love, drugs, music and mud experienced by the masses who made their way to Max Yasgur's Catskills dairy farm for the legendary festival in the summer of '69. Director Ang Lee has chosen just one for "Taking Woodstock," a meticulously rendered and achingly authentic portrait of a time and a place that is, by turns, sweeping and...

Woodstock, N.Y., is a short 17 miles from Bard College, home of the college's far-reaching Wagner festival. As I drove down from Albany International Airport to Bard, the town seemed an appropriate stop for lunch, not the least because Garden Cafe, in the village green, is reputed to be the best vegan restaurant in the region, and Wagner was a vegetarian. Not surprisingly, Woodstock is festooned with colorful reminders of the 40th anniversary of the famous "3 Days of Peace and Music" held about 70 miles away but known anyway as the Woodstock festival.