Scarecrow suggests | Like "Taking Woodstock" and want more on the music? Try "Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music

Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock" doesn't put the music center stage, but it's impossible to think of Woodstock without recalling its history-making performances. The Oscar-winning "Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music" (1970) by Michael Wadleigh is a definitive chronicle of the event.

Wadleigh sent a group of assistants with cameras into the crowd, getting as close as possible to the mud, sweat, smoke and, of course, music. All the iconic moments are here, including Crosby, Stills and Nash, Santana, Sly & The Family Stone, Joe Cocker and Jimi Hendrix. The most recent DVD and Blu-ray release is comprised of the four-hour director's cut plus three additional hours of unseen performance and bonus features, including a making-of documentary featuring one of the editors, Martin Scorsese. And it's all encased in a smart suede-fringed box.

In the same vein as "Woodstock" is D.A. Pennebaker's 1968 documentary "Monterey Pop," a comprehensive collection of performances from the Summer of Love-defining pop festival. Pennebaker employs his cinema vérité style to capture the spirit of the festival as well as sets by the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, Ravi Shankar and more. The Criterion Collection's DVD set includes the film plus Pennebaker's 1986 "Jimi Plays Monterey" and 1989's "Shake! Otis at Monterey," featuring Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding's entire sets at the festival.

For more music of the era, there's the Maysles Brothers' gripping document of the tragedy-marred Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, "Gimme Shelter" (1970), and George Harrison's benefit show "The Concert for Bangladesh" (1972).

"Festival Express" (2003) examines a festival that didn't fare quite as well as Woodstock. This documentary tells the story of two young Canadian businessmen who, in the wake of Woodstock, gathered musicians such as the Grateful Dead, the Band and Janis Joplin and a film crew, then loaded them all on a train for a trans-Canada concert tour. The tour was a financial bust and thus the footage languished on a shelf for 30-plus years until director Bob Smeaton carved a film out of all the performances and in-route partying, adding current interviews and perspectives from some of the participants.

The spirit of the '60s is often defined by the ensuing backlash of later decades. For a humorous take on reactions to the hippie mentality, there's "Flashback" (1990), starring Kiefer Sutherland as a young yuppie FBI agent who clashes with a former '60s radical (Dennis Hopper, who else?) while escorting him to trial, and "Rude Awakening" (1989), starring Cheech Marin and Eric Roberts as radicals who flee from the FBI to a South American commune and return 20 years later to find their former partners in counterculture (Julie Hagerty and Robert Carradine) have become full-fledged members of the establishment. And for a purely comedic look at the logistics of festival preparation, there's "Wayne's World 2" (1993).

Though it doesn't have much to do with Woodstock, we can't pass up an opportunity to recommend Cameron Crowe's 2000 film "Almost Famous," based on his experiences as a young reporter following bands such as the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin for Rolling Stone magazine. The story begins in 1973 as 15-year-old William (Patrick Fugit) heads out on tour with Sweetwater and their "Band-Aid" group of adoring girls, mixing a sweet coming-of-age story with an honest look at backstage life.

Ang Lee has directed an impressive body of diverse films. Among the films in his section at Scarecrow you'll find favorites "The Wedding Banquet" (1993), "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" (1994), "Sense & Sensibility" (1995), "The Ice Storm" (1997), "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) and "Brokeback Mountain" (2005), for which he received an Oscar for best director.

If you're looking to theatrically revisit the year that gave us Woodstock, check out the ongoing 69 series at Northwest Film Forum (www.nwfilmforum.org).

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