Okay, the other day I threatened to say something about the new 40th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock and being nothing if not a man of my word, here goes.

I think I like Wolfen -- director Michael Wadleigh's other, scarier movie -- better. And this despite the fact that Woodstock has music by The Who and Jimi Hendrix, while Wolfen has music by...uber Titanic hack James Horner.

There....I didn't mean to say it, but you dragged it out of me.

Perhaps I should clarify. First of all, I didn't go to Woodstock, although a lot of my friends did, because I expected it to be pretty much what it actually turned out to be, i.e., a hippie convention with poor sanitation in which a bunch of vague dots on the horizon (translation: rock groups) provided tribal muzak. In retrospect, I'll grant you that might actually have been a fun way to kill a weekend, but let's just say I knew it probably wasn't going to be my cup of tea.

Heh heh. He said "tea."

Anyway, when the movie came out the next year, I dutifully attended a showing, and although the sanitation at the Oritani Theater in Hackensack New Jersey was undoubtedly better than that at the festival, I found the film mostly underwhelming. The bands I liked -- the aforementioned Who, for example -- didn't seem to be enjoying themselves, there were far too many acts I didn't like who did, and the whole thing just seeemed to go on forever. Frankly, I thought the completely out of sync with the festival's ethos Sha-Na-Na, whose "At the Hop" clocked in at less than three minutes and who provided pretty much the only laughs in the whole interminable three plus hours, stole the movie, but perhaps that only goes to show what a peculiarly adversarial relationship I had with the 60s.

Alright, all that said, Warner Home Video's new Woodstock package puts about the best face on the event and the movie as you could hope for. On the most basic level, that means the film has been completely remastered from the original elements, and it looks and (especially) sounds better than ever (Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer worked on the new 5.1 surround mixes). There's also about three weeks worth of new making-of docs and interviews (including, bizarrely, a conversation with director Wadleigh and Hugh Hefner) and 18 unearthed bonus performances. The latter are generally less interesting than you'd expect, with the exception of a three song Creedence Clearwater Revival set with the band at their peak, and a jaw-droppingly out of tune Sha Na Na take on "Teen Angel" that's one of the most intensely funny things I've ever seen.

Anyway, here's the DVD trailer to give you an idea what I'm talking about.

Bottom line: You can -- and I suppose should -- order it here.

And now -- where's my anniversary Wolfen edition?