Soundtracking: "Woodstock"

The 1970 Smackdown is coming! To kickoff our look at everything 1970, here's Chris looking the music of that year's landmark Oscar-winning documentary...

We love examining the lasting cultural impact of our subjects here at Soundtracking, but rarely do the soundtracks explored serve as a cultural artifact themselves. Woodstock is an event that became a part of the American story, and essentially by accident. It was more than a concert, but a landmark display in anti-war sentiment and activism through artistry. Michael Wadleigh’s staggering cinematic account shows how music and movement lived symbiotically during the era, empowering a generation and an art form.

One of the significances of the concert film is that it allows the viewer to participate in a musical moment that they didn’t get first-hand. But the very best of the genre (see: Stop Making Sense) imbue their own perspective of the artistry on display and provide something an attendee of the live experience couldn’t have lived. Here Wadleigh creates a split-screen, all-encompassing view of the weekend, one that presents the crowd and the musicians as peers moved by the same feeling.

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Links: The Wife, Anika Noni Rose, Kiss the Boy

• Oscilloscope Musings Interesting piece about Zach Snyder's Suckerpunch and how it reflects various old movies, especially the musical Gold Diggers of 1933
• Cartoon Brew on the making of a new animated feature Big Fish & Begonia, now in select cities
• Deadline Jumanji (2017) broke a long held record just barely toppling Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002) to become Sony's all time biggest domestic hit

lots more news and entertainment tidbits after the jump including Omar Sharif, Glenn Close, Melissa McCarthy, Anika Noni Rose and Keiynan Lonsdale...

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HBO Pays Up

By Spencer Coile 

In addition to its already anticipated second season, the impacts of Big Little Lies are reaching far and wide – in this case, from the pocketbooks of its network. HBO executive Casey Bloys explains that in light of the Times Up Movement, as well as insistence from series star Reese Witherspoon, the network went through a process to ensure equal pay for each of its stars… from every single series. Bloys explains:

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Doc Corner: Mariska Hargitay and the Heroes of 'I Am Evidence'

**Before getting into this week's review, I wanted to mention that this column recently won an Australian Film Critics Association Award! My review of Laura Poitras' Risk was awarded the Award for Best Review of an Individual Non-Australian Film from a panel of judges and I couldn't be more chuffed. This column is a labor of love because I love watching and writing about documentaries so I was so happy to see some love of its own thrown back. Thank you to Nathaniel for having it here and to all the readers who follow along.**

By Glenn Dunks

The cult of Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit is a peculiar one. For nineteen (19!!) seasons, we tune in to new instalments, binge old episodes while sick and in need of comfort television or catch the climax of an episode we've somehow seen several times before. "Oh, I love this one. It's about the talk show host who was attacked by her co-host who turns out to be a serial sex pest!" Gosh. How a show about the police investigating sex crimes became “comfort television” is something I, a fan of the series, don’t quite know the full answer to, although I suspect it involves something similar to how audiences often turn to horror movies as a dramatic vent.

Audiences get the rollercoaster of emotions that a show with such a premise offers and the rapists and the abusers always get caught and brought to swift justice in span of just 60 minutes before we move on to washing the dishes or walking the dog or going to bed.

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A "Solo" trailer at last!

Chris here. We've got only a month or so before we finally feast our eyes on the much reported troubled production of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Was Ron Howard able to steer the film to safety after original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller notoriously clashed with Lucasfilm brass? Depending on which reports you believe, Howard either completely reshot the entire script or just the major set pieces. Whether the final product succeeds, expect the "who shot what" discussion to continue into Star Wars lore like "Han shot first".

Adding to the concern has been a lack of footage to pore over, but await no longer for a full trailer is finally here! While the delayed glimpse at what is in store hasn't done much in the way of damage control, the actual trailer doesn't quite help either. We're served a mishmash of murky imagery and what looks to be an overadherence to formula, particularly in its character lineup. If you can already sense there are too many cooks in the kitchen from this short assemblage, it might be time to believe the worst. Doesn't it feel like the titular hero (and our beloved Alden Ehrenreich who plays him) is being backgrounded? Shouldn't our heart race immediately at the sight of the Millennium Falcon?

But the trailer isn't without its highlights: Donald Glover being sexy in space, ample capes, Woody Harrelson being weird again, and whatever it is that Thandie Newton is doing (but speechlessly so? Why?!). And thanks to Fleabag, we still couldn't be any more excited for whatever Phoebe Waller-Bridge's android brings. For now, we wait nervously on the rest...