Note the ad accompanying a disjointed Garrison Keillor column on the Amish and global warming on Salon:

Britain's Glastonbury festival -- possibly the greatest pretty-much-continuously-operated music festival in the world -- kicks off in less than two weeks.

If you don't have tickets, you're likely screwed. There were 137,500 available to the public; those sold out in two hours back in April (at least 400,000 people sought them).

But if you want to live vicariously (and who doesn't?), then check out Julien Temple's eponymous 2006 documentary (It screened in T.O. as part of NXNE).

Temple -- who also did two films about the Sex Pistols, The Filth And The Fury and The Great Rock 'n Roll Swindle -- reportedly sorted through about 900 hours of film to make this two-hour-plus doc (see this BBC story for more details).

Personally, I think he could have done a better job of editing the film down (by the end, some of his visual material had started to repeat itself; We got the point, Julian, let's move it along). There's no supers to introduce characters, and it's decidedly ... non-chronological. :)

However, there is some absolutely magical concert footage within it -- Pulp, Blur, David Bowie, Joe Strummer, Bjork, Toots and the Maytalls, Stereo MCs, Tinariwen, Primal Scream, Radiohead, the Chemical Brothers, Cypress Hill, the Bravery, the Prodigy, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Scissor Sisters ... and on and on.

Whatever the film's flaws, watch it and tell me you wouldn't want to be at Glasto to experience the scene for yourself. :)

Here's this year's line-up. As a sign of excellent taste, the festival has booked Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans! :)

The Arcade Fire, K'naan and Tanglefoot provide some of the other CanCon.

Addendum

The film is now out on DVD in a two-disc edition. Here's The Globe and Mail's mini-review.

Here are some film reviews from rottentomatoes.com.