Huge music: Taking Woodstock, Jeff Buckley and more

"Hirsch is also wondering whether that same audience can be lured into theatres to see his new version of Hamlet, which he begins filming this winter with Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke. Journalists quizzing him about the movie keep assuming that it will be in today's vernacular and are astonished when he tells them it will use Shakespearean text.After his award-winning triumph in Sean Penn's Into The Wild, his acclaimed performance as a gay activist in last year's Milk, and his top- billed work in Speed Racer, he took on this small supporting role as a troubled Vietnam vet coping with post-traumatic stress disorder. His reason for doing so was simple. This was an Ang Lee film. When the director of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came calling he had to say yes.Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal and Randy Quaid in "Brokeback Mountain".

"The great thing about Ang Lee movies is that every single role - whether the biggest or the smallest - is so good. Like the Hispanic ranch hand in Brokeback Mountain - he had like three lines, but I thought he was great''.Nevertheless, this is a period film, a memoir of events surrounding the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Festival - a happening indelibly imprinted in the memories of older generations but dangerously alien and remote to young moviegoers today. If Hirsch is worried about this new film's reception, it's partly because of the box-office failure four years ago of The Lords of Dogtown, director Catherine Hardwicke's evocative look at the skateboard culture of the 1970s. Hirsch is convinced that this film, in which he appeared with Heath Ledger, was destroyed by the hostility of today's young filmgoer."It's the problem of when you market the movie to young adults, young men in particular. It's a period piece and there's a danger there because they go: 'These guys were the coolest guys in the world when they were modern, but now that they're historical, it just looks like some skinny dudes with long hair'. If you're a 16-year-old teenager and you see dudes with long hair they look like a bunch of girls''.
"The reason Woodstock has survived and is so famous - I don't think it's just because of the music which, of course, is huge. A lot of it is because it's like this big utopian ideal of the peaceful good old days. You know what I mean? We kept going back to this one huge event: this was the peaceful time and it kind of grew in legend. The legend of Woodstock grew until 40 years later we have a movie".The Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer is perhaps the closest Hirsch has come to making a conventional Hollywood popcorn movie. He wants to broaden his own acting horizons and he wants filmgoers of his generation to broaden theirs. That's why he gets so evangelistic on the subject of Taking Woodstock or his upcoming Hamlet, which he admits will be unorthodox yet true to Shakespeare's text.

"We're really excited to make like a modern kind of teenage crazy thriller Hamlet'', he says. The story will be modern, set in college and have a gothic architectural feel to it. Hamlet is going to be a kind of gloomy poetic rocker who gets in way over his head. We want to make it scary, though we want the ghost of the father to really seem (like) this crazy dude . . . actually scary. I watch these other Hamlets and the ghost is just not that scary. Why can't it be scary like . . . The Ring?''

Source: www.canada.com

"James Franco vs. Robert Pattinson"

The Role: Jeff Buckley, son of musician Tim Buckley, got popular in the '90s playing cover songs in the East Village before focusing on his own material. In 1997, Jeff accidentally drowned in Memphis at the age of 30. Since he only had one studio album, several songs were released posthumously, including his cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" which earned him chart success over a decade after his death.
The Candidates: James Franco is the spitting image of Buckley. Plus he's a master of the the good-die-young shtick since he's already played James Dean. Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson has experience playing an emo musician in "How To Be". And he was a pretty convincing Salvador Dali in "Little Ashes".

The Winner: My vote's on James Franco. Pattinson may be the hot young thang, but Franco can handle the tough roles and has Hollywood staying power. Plus, there's that eerily similar facial structure". Source: abcnews.go.com

More illustrious/amateur guitar players:
Elvis Presley.

Lou Reed.Jeff Tweedy.Nels Cline.Rivers Cuomo.Brad Pitt.Michael Angarano and Kristen Stewart.Lindsay Lohan.Mischa Barton.Katy Perry.
Peaches Geldof.