Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music (Blu-ray)

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Audio:
Like the picture quality, the audio varies all over the place, despite WB reproducing it in lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Fortunately, TrueHD is the default, so you won't have to worry about changing it at start-up. Even at its best, though, the sound is nowhere as impressive as a slick studio recording, and it's not meant to be. Again, this is a documentary of a live, open-air concert. The bass suffers the most, practically disappearing much of the time; the surround sound seems oddly balanced, sometimes too little in the rear and side channels, sometimes too much; and the highs are not immune to frizziness.

Extras:
Disc one of this two-disc boxed set contains the remastered, 224-minute Director's Cut of the movie, plus fifty scene selections; English as the only spoken language; French, Spanish, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, and Thai subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Then, for those viewers who have their BD-Live compliant Blu-ray players connected to the Internet, there are three BD-Live features: "Media Center," "Live Community Screenings," and "My WB Commentary." The "Media Center" is a place for trailers, featurettes, photo galleries, and other such stuff. "Live Community Screenings" allows you to invite friends for virtual screenings at a specified time and chat with them on-line as the movie plays on each person's BD player. "My WB Commentary" allows you to record and post your own picture-in-picture commentary over the film, then share it with friends. You need a Web camera for this besides a BD-Live hookup, but it sounds pretty cool.

The second Blu-ray disc contains the rest of the bonus materials. First, we get "Woodstock: Untold Stories," eighteen bonus performances not found in the Director's Cut. These include Joan Baez: "One Day at a Time"; Country Joe McDonald: "Flying High"; Santana: "Evil Ways"; Canned Heat: "I'm Her Man" and "On the Road Again"; Mountain: "Beside the Sea" and "Southbound Train"; The Grateful Dead: "Turn On Your Love Light"; Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Born on the Bayou," "I've Put a Spell on You," and "Keep on Chooglin"; The Who: "We're Not Going To Take It" and "My Generation"; Jefferson Airplane: "3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds"; Joe Cocker: "Something's Coming On"; Johnny Winter: "Mean Town Blues"; Paul Butterfield: "Morning Sunrise"; and Sha Na Na: "Teen Angel." The neat thing here is that the disc contains a Blu-ray exclusive allowing you the option of creating your own playlist and listening to only the songs you want.

Next up is "The Museum at Bethel Woods: The Story of the Sixties & Woodstock," four-and-a-half minutes on the amphitheater and museum now at the site, the museum chronicling the era. After that is a long, seventy-six-minute, 2009, multipart documentary on the making of the film, "Woodstock: From Festival to Feature." It includes interviews with the film's director Michael Wadleigh, executive producer Dale Bell, editor and assistant director Martin Scorsese (yes, that Martin Scorsese, who would go on to direct several fine rock documentaries himself), and many of the performers and filmmakers involved with the concert film. There are twenty-one segments in all, covering everything from setup to cleanup to aftermath. Even Hugh Hefner gets into the act.

In addition to the discs, the set contains a number of collectible items. These include a Lucite display with photo images from the festival; a sixty-page commemorative "Life" magazine reprint; an iron-on Woodstock patch; and various festival memorabilia, like reproductions of handwritten notes and a Three-Day ticket. The box itself is a sturdy, fiberboard unit covered in leather, further enclosing yet another box for the materials, the whole package encased in a transparent plastic slipcover. Moreover, each set is a numbered, limited edition. Plenty classy.

One final observation. Unlike some of WB's previous Blu-ray box sets, which I found might be too cumbersome and space-consuming for a lot of buyers to consider, this one contains an ordinary Blu-ray keep case for the two discs, allowing a person to put the big box itself somewhere else, like a closet, thus freeing up valuable disc-shelf space. Thank you, Warners, for allowing us the choice.

Parting Thoughts:
If the film version of "Woodstock" isn't the best rock documentary of the best rock concert of all time, it will do until something better comes along. Warner Bros. were correct in celebrating its fortieth anniversary with no-holds-barred box sets.

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