criterionforum.org

Also individual BluRays of Monterey Pop on its own and the Jimi / Otis disc. The Monterey Pop disc is $49.95, however, so that suggests it will include much or all of the third disc's bonus material or something. Jimi / Otis is only $29.95.

And speaking of prices, the Blu-Ray boxset is priced ten bucks cheaper than the DVD equivalent. Nice deal.

zedz wrote:The Monterey Pop disc is $49.95, however, so that suggests it will include much or all of the third disc's bonus material or something.

This appears to be the case. The Jimi/Otis disc looks to be exactly the same as the DVD edition, but the Monterey disc contains the outtakes found on the third disc of the DVD set.

After having it on my wishlist for 7(!) years, Finally watched the discs, alongside the reissue of Woodstock. What the fuck has happened to music recently? We really have not seen an icon of music since, what Kurt Cobain, seriously? With the number of icons of music in these 2 DVD sets, with Jimi and Otis being on the tip of the iceberg, what the hell has happened to music? I might sound cranky and old, but seriously, has capitalism of the music industry shut down the image of icons more powerful than the company itself?


(And as much as I love Jason Swinscoe, The Cinematic Orchestra comes nowhere near "Icon Status" as anyone on these DVD sets....)

and by the way, with the DTS on this set being so powerful, alongside the remixed 5.1 of Woodstock, it made me realize I need new speakers now. My rear speakers have officially been blown... now with permanant rattly sound....

is the Criterion- Monterey Outtakes Blu-Ray strictly identical in terms of content to the DVD Outtakes ?
I was hoping that the Blu-Ray storage would allow Criterion to release the full Laura Nyro performance (only 2 songs are available on the DVD Monterey-outtakes (and only Poverty' Train is complete)
and I wouldn't spit over the complete Janis Joplin Big Brother and The Holding Company complete show...

Is the Townshend interview taken from the Warner Brothers '73 Hendrix documentary, or much later?

Pretty sure it's from the 80's.

Cool. I could listen to that man talk night and day. Look up his appearance on The South Bank show on YouTube, and you'll get an idea of how deeply intelligent he is about his art and life.

Complete Monterey Pop Festival Blu-ray review

Individual:
Monterey Pop Blu-ray review
Jimi Plays Monterey / Shake! Otis at Monterey Blu-ray review

Mine arrived yesterday (UK time, Saturday 12 Sept). Is it just my machine (all regions Momitsu), or has anyone else noticed annoying "search" operations at the end of each track when using the "play all" option for the outtake performances? Particularly irritating during the Mamas and the Papas set (7 tracks), which was clearly filmed as one continuous set. No such problems with the original SD release, which I also own.

I don't remember an issue on my PS3, maybe a slight hang, but I'd have to go back and check it. I did notice when I was taking screen captures that each outtake is a separate file. That might have something to do with it.

cdnchris wrote:I did notice when I was taking screen captures that each outtake is a separate file. That might have something to do with it.

I think you are right about that! Most of the songs show up on my player's display as Title 1, the only exception being the Mamas and the Papas set, which is 7 chapters on one title - but still with the brief "hang/search" at end of each song! It's not a major issue, but it is certainly noticeable on my player during 3 sets which were filmed as continuous pieces: Simon and Garfunkel (2 songs); Lauro Nyro (2 songs) and the Mamas and the Papas (7 songs). The applause is continuous between the songs, and there's been no attempt to gradually reduce the volume of the applause at the end of each song.

I recently ew-watched Woodstock for the first time in aeons -- and was appalled at how bad most of it was (as cinema). I;ve never seen Monterrey Pop before -- and was delighted to find that it is immeasurably better (as cinema). While it relies mostly on close-ups, it actually reflects glints of the musical collaborative process (almost totally absent in Woodstock). And the concluding section with Ravi Shankar (and the other members of his group) is absolutely breath-tasking (musically AND cinematically).

It doesn't really matter as the editions are the same but it's actually cheaper by $10 to buy the set.

I recently bought this on blu ray and I'm having a problem with the DTS-MA 5.1 soundtrack. During the musical numbers all the sound intended for the front speakers comes from rear speakers only. The front left and right channel are silent! Having previously owned the dvd set I know this isn't right! The two channel mixes sound perfect and come from the front speakers. I tested the second disc of Hendrix and Redding performances and those 5.1 mixes sound correct- all channels working!

My main blu ray player is a Panasonic BD-85. I primarily use the 7.1 analog outputs. I tested the defect using the optical bitstream output and the defect is still there. I have another blu ray player (Samsung BDP 1600) that I tested it on and the defect is also present.

All my other blu ray disc play fine and normal.

I'm at a loss as to what to do. I emailed Jon Mulvaney and haven't heard back. Is this a mastering error? If so I've read of nobody else having this problem. Criterion Blu-rays are pretty reliable so this is very odd! Could it simply be a bad disc? In that case I'm sure Amazon will replace the set no problem.

Any ideas?

Just picked up the Blu upgrade at the B&N sale.

If this is important to anyone, it appears that the Blu version lost the period Rolling Stone article by Jann Wenner from the booklet.

Maybe important if they replaced it with his Goddess In The Doorway review...

The other day, I came across Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, which he began by writing, "I’ve owned copies of Dont Look Back and Nashville Skyline for decades, but I’d never describe myself as a hard-core Bob Dylan fan." His subsequent criticism of Dylan's music - as well as the fact that Nashville Skyline has been often regarded as a lightweight albeit popular-selling album barely distinguishable from the standard country music coming out of Nashville at the time - really puts a spotlight on how films revolving around rock music are evaluated by critics.

Woodstock and Monterey Pop immediately comes to mind as prime examples. Rosenbaum makes a compelling case on why Woodstock is a great film, but to me, the music really undermines his argument - it really suffers in comparison to Monterey Pop, which not only is better from a musical standpoint but, to me, a better film all around.

Just to pick one scene from the film, read Rosenbaum's analysis of Richie Havens' appearance - the way that scene is cut and composed is great, but then you have Jim Derogatis' take:

"...it’s a bunch of dirty, smelly hippies rolling in the mud, listening to ****ing Richie Havens strumming an acoustic guitar. A lot of the best stuff that happened at Woodstock ain’t in the movie. I’d love to see The Incredible String Band; I love freaky, acid-fried pagans doing their thing. But they’re not in the movie. Instead we get Richie Havens."

Anyway, I always thought Robert Christgau did the best job of comparing both the two festivals and films when he reviewed another film by Murray Lerner in early 1997. An excerpt:

"A quarter century too late to make him rich or famous, Murray Lerner's Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival 1970, at the Film Forum, joins three earlier documentaries of the '60s in viewing that vast, vague decade and concept through the metaphor of the rock festival: D.A. Pennebaker's Monterey Pop, Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock, and the Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerin's Gimme Shelter. As with Woodstock--but not Monterey Pop, which as the most utopian of these films had damn well better make good on the pleasures it promises, or Gimme Shelter, powered by a band that has always made antiutopian pleasure its specialty--the music that's supposed to sell the flick isn't so hot. Instead, like all the others, Message to Love is carried by an argument that's both persuasive and partial, a nod to entertainment value that's truer to the moment it hit the theatres than the occasion it represents.

"In Monterey Pop, the music and its 50,000 or 90,000 celebrants are like a wonderful secret--wonderful because even though everyone knows about it, it still delivers the thrill of discovery. Unveiled in 1968, Pennebaker's vision of the 1967 event was instrumental in convincing potential organizers and participants that music was the healthiest way to crystallize the energy of a counterculture that by then seemed both blessedly inevitable and dangerously embattled. Poof, Woodstock--only before Wadleigh's edit was off the table there was also the anti-Woodstock, Altamont. One reason Woodstock is wryer than Monterey Pop is that the counterculture constituency was no longer gullible enough to buy its own peace-and-love bullshit uncut--by 1970, the myth of the '60s had taken on a layer of the protective irony that had long proven useful shtick for Zen gurus and Yippie troublemakers alike. Now as then, the film is a better advertisement for the fans than for the music that brought them together, most engaging when it focuses on its chosen cross-section of Woodstock Nation's 300,000 or 500,000 fools--sometimes wise or sainted, always self-righteous/self-deluded/self-whatever. But it was too hip and funny to be accused of spreading the false rumor that any such gathering could last longer than a found weekend."

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing those links. I find it hard to argue with Derogatis on any of his picks. Though I am entertained by The Last Waltz, I do recognize that it succeeds in spite of Scorcese and Robertson, not because of them.

But back on topic, I also enjoy Monterey Pop much more than Woodstock. As Christgau and Derogatis astutely point out, anyone sane would hardly view the grim conditions and mediocre entertainment Woodstock offered as at all enticing, and it's therefore interesting mainly as a time capsule of a certain temporary mass insanity. Monterey, on the other hand, depicts an event that's actually somewhat appealing and intriguing.

Gimme Shelter, on the third hand, is just plain harrowing to watch, since Altamont is orders of magnitude less appealing than even Woodstock. The footage at the beginning with the Stones playing in NYC shows them in their element and masters of it. In Altamont, they were totally at sea and the contrast is staggering.

rspaight wrote: As Christgau and Derogatis astutely point out, anyone sane would hardly view the grim conditions and mediocre entertainment Woodstock offered as at all enticing, and it's therefore interesting mainly as a time capsule of a certain temporary mass insanity.

I would agree with this as far as the music goes, but in the movie the only thing that comes through is the crowd's exuberance.

Another counterpoint would be Bob Smeaton and Frank Cvitanovich's Festival Express. Marvelous performances from Joplin, The Band, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy and others. Like many others have said, truly the anti-Woodstock- great music, terrible audience. Though the filmmaking itself wasn't quite as masterful as what is seen on Monterey and Woodstock.

After watching the entire DVD set a few years back, I checked to see if the Blu-ray ported over all the supplements of the DVD. Found that on the Blu-ray reviews there is a mention of a 44 minute audio excerpts on the Jimi Hendrix section which I didn't recall on the DVD. It's not listed on the website, not listed on the DVD box either.

Surprised to say, it is in fact on the DVD set, somewhat hidden in the menus, completely missed it the first time around.

If Criterion has plans on releasing UHD blu-rays this would be the place to start. The 4k restoration looks and sounds terrific.

I hope they offer a trade-in program for current owners of the blu-ray set.

This will be the first Bluray to Bluray upgrade! Exciting News! Agree with the trade-in program!