Taking Woodstock (2009) poster
2009 · music · comedy · drama

Taking Woodstock

Directed by Ang Lee2h 0m2009
ElsewhereIMDb6.730kRT47%Metacritic55
  • warm
  • measured
  • gentle
Movie DNA

Warm, measured, gentle music / comedy, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

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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.

Our read · Taking Woodstock (2009) reads as a warm, measured, grounded music · comedy · drama entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Taking Woodstock

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want gentle Woodstock chaos about ordinary people swept into history.

ends upliftingyou’ll feel glowing aftersteady all the waygrips by minute 15attention 3/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-updrug use

Skip it tonightSkip if you need concert footage over motel-family comedy drama.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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