Say It Ain't So! Taking Woodstock: One and Half Stars (Or, 3 Thumbs Down and A Thumbless Fist)

Lou Lumenick, movie critic for the venerable New York Post, said this today:

"Ang Lee's 'Taking Woodstock' achieves an amazing feat: It turns the fabled music festival, a key cultural moment of the late 20th century, into an exceedingly lame, heavily clichéd, thumb-sucking bore."

It gets worse.

"There are two main problems with 'Taking Woodstock.' One is the central nonperformance by the stand-up comedian Demetri Martin, who is pretty much an emotional black hole as Elliot [Tiber]. By all accounts, Tiber is a flamboyant personality in real life, but as awkwardly played by Martin he's pretty much personality-free."

The other problem? No music footage, whatsoever. Ang, what were you thinking? Doing a Woodstock film without the music is like making a gay cowboy movie where the protagonists end up together, happy.

Still, I'm gonna see it. And maybe, a "personality-free," "emotional black hole," was what Demetri was striving for. Like a funny one, or something.

Demetri's Back!

As you know, I have a slight (gay) crush on the world's only funny, non-douchebag hipster, Demetri Martin. Yet somehow (alcohol), I totally missed his appearance on Conan last Friday. He was there promoting his new movie Taking Woodstock, directed by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Hulk, and Yin shi nan nu). The film, which I recommend you see (or wait for Block's Good Movie/Better Movie and then see), comes out August 28. Thanks, MLR, for staying on top of things, Hulu, for kicking all kinds of ass, and Parentheses, for allowing me to be a lazy (yet beloved) blogger.

"Saying 'I apologize' is the very same as saying 'I'm sorry.' They're the same. Unless you're at a funeral." That line was from his song Sames and Opposites. Buy the whole album, These Are Jokes, on iTunes or Amazon and say you heard about it on AMDAL, and maybe we'll get some money or something.