Update: The filmmakers are “currently in talks” with several distributors, a spokeswoman for the project told PsychedelicSight.com. “Jerry: The Movie” is aiming for a spring 2012 release.

The 42,000 in attendance at the San Francisco Giants’ Jerry Garcia Day last summer got a sneak peek of the docu while filmmakers were busy shooting more footage. Behind the camera that day was Justin Kreutzmann, the son of Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, who’s listed as a co-producer on the documentary.

The film’s based on three hours of conversation Leo shared with Garcia in 1987, a decade before the Grateful Dead guitarist’s death.

“The historic interview was shot on negative film with studio quality sound and lighting,” the producers said in a release, noting that they had secured rights.

The Garcia movie web site refers to it as “Jerry: The Movie,” but that could well be a working title since no name is identified in the press materials.

The filmmakers promise unseen concert footage and “rare home movies.”

Another Garcia movie, “Dark Star,” was announced in 2010 and is marked on imdb for a 2012 release. It’s a biopic about Garcia’s younger years, based on the book “Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia.”

For the documentary, Leo’s producing partner is John Hartmann, described as the former manager of Peter, Paul & Mary, Crosby, Stills & Nash, the Eagles and Poco. Hartmann apparently is the brother of the late comedian Phil Hartmann.

Leo’s credits include the films “This Is Elvis” and “The Beach Boys: An American Band.” For TV he presentations include “Crosby, Stills & Nash: Long Time Comin,’” “Red Hot & Blue” and “Rolling Stone: 20 Years of Rock ‘n Roll.”

Bill Kreutzmann’s credits include the short film “Backstage Pass,” a documentary, as well as a pair of videos connected to the Who.

The Pranksters, of course, were the pack of bohemian youth who gathered around the hipster novelist Kesey. With beat generation icon Neal Cassady behind the wheel of an old school bus, they traveled across the country, in search of the New York World’s Fair and … Whatever.

The bus, carrying the destination sign of “Furthur,” was painted wildly, in tune with the soon-to-come psychedelic aesthetic. One Prankster called it a “traveling pleasure palace.”

Many historians point to this happening as the big bang that unleashed the psychedelic era. Kesey (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) had taken part in government-sponsored LSD experiments five years earlier and was eager to spread the sparkly swirling vibes.

“We were too old to be beatniks and a little too young to be hippies,” one Prankster recalled.

And so, a half-century later, documentary filmmakers Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) and Alison Ellwood found themselves with 40 hours of amateur home movies shot on the trip.

The resulting two-hour movie from Magnolia Pictures began its theatrical roll-out Aug. 5 in San Francisco (naturally) and New York. “Magic Trip” downloads also are available (iTunes link).

Reviews were mixed: The San Francisco Examiner reviewer found that while ” ‘Magic Trip’ failed “to adequately explore the significance of the journey involved, the film is a worthy document of the 1964 event and a loopily enjoyable visit to the inception of hippiedom.”

The New York Times’ Stephen Holden wrote that “the unbridgeable distance between the stoned and the sober is the problem with Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood’s documentary.” As in, taking acid is a lot involving than watching some shave-tail kid freak out.

The footage couldn’t be synched up with what remained of the recorded sound, so most of the movie’s audio focuses on the participants’ memories. Audio interviews with various Pranksters were made in the 1970s. “None of the storytellers could be described as transfixing yarn spinners,” Holden wrote. “Any philosophical afterthoughts are resoundingly banal.”

The Hollywood Reporter, however, found the older Pranksters’ tales fascinating: “They provide a vivid portrait of the journey previously profiled in Tom Wolfe’s book ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,’ ” reviewer Frank Scheck wrote.

He continued: “Much of the footage on display consists of the Pranksters behaving in generally silly, stoned, sloppy fashion, with the result that the proceedings come to resemble a rambling home movie that was clearly more fun to make than it is to watch.”

The band that would become the Grateful Dead, the Warlocks, make an appearance and, of course, “Truckin’” keys the soundtrack. The main Dead offshoot band is now called Furthur.

You can see for yourself via Magnolia’s on-demand (paid) distribution network, which includes iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, the DirecTV and Dish satellite systems and a swarm of cable providers.

In London, ex-Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined Waters onstage May 12. Gilmour played on “Comfortably Numb,” and Mason came onstage for the closing song “Outside the Wall.”

On the recording front, Sony has in the works an eight-disc Waters solo box set.

The sudden addition of the July 8 show at the Olympic Sports Complex caused Waters to move up several concerts set for early July in Milan, Italy.

“The Wall” filming first spools up for Waters’ May 11-18 shows at the the O2 in London (another Olympics host facility).

For both of these recorded events, management is telling fans to leave their cameras, recorders and smartphones at home, fearing the effects of flashes from the crowd on the filming and the screen projections.

In April, Waters’ show inspired some new controversy in Holland via the part of the “Wall” concert in which he points a fake machine gun at the audience. Earlier on the day of the first show, a gunman opened fire with a machine gun at a Dutch mall, killing six. The fan site pinkfloydz.com reports that local media tagged Waters’ use of the gun as “shameful” and “insensitive.”

In other news, Sony is releasing Roger Waters’ “The Album Collection” as an eight-disc box set. This is a Europe-only product, but online retailers already are taking preorders for the imported set at $48. Sony pushed back an April release date in Europe to May 30. In the States, “The Album Collection” surfaces June 7.

The box set contains the solo albums “The Pros And Cons Of Hitch-Hiking” (1984), “Radio Kaos” (1987), “Amused to Death” (1992), “In The Flesh” (2000) and “Ca Ira” (2005). There’s also a DVD of a 2000 performance of “In the Flesh.” Online retailers list the DVD as PAL/Region 0, which is tech talk for it’ll work in your player, wherever you are.

Now it’s “one final night,” with screenings at 7:30 p.m. local time on the 5th. The distributor/promoters are Fathom and Rhino Entertainment. The Dead movie is being redistributed to cinemas via Fathom Entertainment’s digital cinema network.

Of the 540 screens used in April, 108 are back in action.

Check out the lineup of “Grateful Dead Movie” cinemas. Organizers say that not all ticket arrangements have been finalized, so check back if they’re not available for your local bijou.

Other than the April 20 screening, “The Grateful Dead Movie” has not seen in mainstream cinemas since 1977.

The film offers a mix of performance, documentary footage and animation. It was filmed at Winterland Arena in 1974, during what was to be the Dead’s farewell appearances. The two screenings in 2010 advertised “exclusive” interviews with Jerry Garcia as well.

Tickets went on sale March 18 for the April 20 screenings. The Dead movie is being distributed to cinemas via Fathom Entertainment’s digital cinema network.

The movie offers a mix of performance, documentary footage and what was cutting-edge animation for the time. It was filmed and recorded at San Francisco’s Winterland Arena in 1974, during what was supposed to be the Grateful Dead’s farewell concert stand. The Deadhead phenomenon receives almost as much attention as the band, with plenty of footage of fans — some cool, some annoying.

“The Grateful Dead Movie” has been released several times on home video and its five-CD “soundtrack” offers a sonic experience far beyond that offered by the film.

The album “Steal Your Face” covers the same event, but was disowned by the Dead as focusing too much on songs and not jams. Famed soundman Owsley “Bear” Stanley dismissed the double album even though his legendary Wall of Sound audio system was used during the stand. Critic Lester Bangs called the album “Steal Your Money.”

Regardless, the movie was directed by Jerry Garcia and comes from the early ’70s, an era widely considered to be the Dead’s best. The band included Keith Godchaux and Donna Godchaux. Songs in the movie span the Dead catalog up until that time, stretching from to “Morning Dew“ to “Eyes of the World.”

Deadhead favorites include “Playing in the Band,” “One More Saturday Night,” “Casey Jones,” “Stella Blue” and “Sugar Magnolia.”

Here’s Gary Gutierrez’ animated segment for “U.S. Blues”: (text continues)

Organizers say a bonus feature at “The Grateful Dead Movie” screenings will be an “exclusive” unseen interview with Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia conducted while he was directing the project 35 years ago. (The DVD has an extensive lineup of extras.)

Rhino Entertainment, which handles the Dead’s CD and download releases for Warner, is the co-presenter.

View the list of cinemas showing “The Grateful Dead Movie.”

The indie film features music by the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Stones. The Dead’s Bob Weir is in Park City, Utah, for a solo gig promoting the indie picture.

Roadside Attractions snapped up U.S. distribution rights to “The Music Never Stopped,” in one of the Sundance fest’s biggest and earliest deals. The movie was the featured film at the Salt Lake City Gala, one of Sundance’s big opening events.

Director Jim Kohlberg’s debut film is based on author-neurologist Oliver Sacks’s case study “The Last Hippie” (printed in An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales in 1995). Sacks remains best known for the tales “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”

The story goes something like this: The son (Lou Taylor Pucci), can’t remember much of anything, but he responds to music by the top rock and psychedelic music artists of back in the day. Two decades earlier, the young man ran away from home in part because his father hated his counterculture music. Now, in the 1990s, he’s in a hospital with cerebral trauma that leaves him stuck in the ’60s.

The dad (J.K. Simmons) tosses off his loathing of hippie music with the help of a music therapist. He shares the tunes with his broken son and there is peace, of a sort. The movie’s tag line is “No matter how lost you are, music can bring you Home.”

“I always connected deeply to the story and the redemptive qualities of the characters and the iconic music,” director Kohlberg says. The production company takes its name from a Byrds song: “Mr. Tamborine Man.”

“By far, getting the music was the hardest part of the production and I never really thought we would get it done,” Kohlberg told the Wall Street Journal. “I really didn’t. I was amazed I had overcome my self-imposed hurdle.”

The movie has three songs from Dylan, four from the Grateful Dead, two from the Beatles and three from Buffalo Springfield. The director says getting the Dead and Dylan on board was huge, considering the budget.

Sue Jacobs (“Things We Lost in the Fire”) worked as music producer/supervisor.

“You can’t beat the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash music in this film,” Roadside co-president Howard Cohen said.

One critic isn’t so sure. Matt Goldberg, writing on Collider.com, calls the use of classic rock lazy. “In my experience, people who love music are far more aware of deeper cuts and less-popular bands,” Goldberg wrote in a review. “I don’t have a problem with (the son) loving the Beatles or the Grateful Dead as much as I mind that the songs he connects to are “All You Need Is Love” and “Truckin”. … A music aficionado like (the son) should be more into obscure stuff.”

Actor Lou Taylor Pucci’s father is a rock guitarist from New Jersey.

The movie’s title comes from a Dead song co-written by Weir. A 1995 CD of songs by artists that influenced the Grateful Dead also borrowed the title.

That curious and notorious 1968 movie returns this fall, with a new Blu-ray and a CD box set celebrating the group’s lone venture into filmmaking and psychedelia.

Asked today why “Head” retains a cult status four decades later, drummer Micky Dolenz says with a grin: “There’s no accounting for taste”

The movie, a non-linear bomb, was directed by Bob Rafelson, who went on to make “Five Easy Pieces” and “The King of Marvin Gardens” with another “Head” collaborator, Jack Nicholson.

Freed of NBC and the demands of weekly pop stardom, the band fell in with the psychedelic vibe of 1968.

Early on in the movie, the band sing-songs, “Hey, hey we are the Monkees/you know we love to please/our manufactured image/with no philosophy” — dumping on the TV theme song that introduced the fresh young actors to the nation only two years before.

The Criterion Collection will include “Head” on its Nov. 23 release of “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story” box set, along with the Rafelson films above and “Easy Rider.” (The BBS refers to Rafelson and his partners Bert Schneider and Steve Blauner. Rafelson and Schneider created the Monkees.)

Meanwhile, Rhino Handmade, the specialty unit of the Rhino WEA label, resurrects the soundtrack of “Head” with a three-disc boxed set due in late October. (text continues below)

Originally six Monkee songs and a batch of sonic clips (“I’d like a glass of cold gravy with a hair in it, please.”), the new version of the soundtrack packs in 21 previously unreleased tracks, outtakes, rarities, and live performances. There’s also a live set from the spring of 1968 and a contemporary radio interview with singer Davy Jones.

While the movie proved plenty strange, predictably the original six “Head” songs were in line with the relatively tame psychedelic songs that were finding a mainstream audience in ’68.

They were “Porpoise Song,” the movie theme written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King; Michael Nesmith’s hard rocker “Circle Sky”; Peter Tork’s “Can You Dig It”; Harry Nilsson’s “Daddy’s Song,” performed by David Jones; and “As We Go Along,” a track penned by Carole King and Toni Stern, and sung by Micky Dolenz.

The Monkees started playing their own instruments on 1967′s album “Headquarters,” to some fanfare and confusion. For “Head,” they continued to play, supported by artists such as Ry Cooder, Leon Russell, Neil Young, Jack Nitzsche, Danny Kortchmar and Dewey Martin.

None of the “Head” songs found a radio audience, but taken as a whole they hold up well in the new century. Monkees haters could find their minds expanded by this set — or at least its original six tracks.

The “Head” movie last was released on DVD in 1998. Rhino produced via its theatrical unit, still riding the success of its wholesale release of the Monkees catalog four years earlier. A few years back, Rhino created collectors editions of the Monkees’ first four albums, “Head” not among them until now.

Dolenz, in a promotional interview for the new releases explains “Head” as “a deconstruction not only of the Monkees but how people perceived them.” Helpfully, he points out that the bit where the Monkees play dandruff in the hair of actor Victor Mature is “obviously very metaphorical, about the new generation.”

The actor speaks of the Monkees in the same breath with the Beatles and Dylan, adding to the surrealism.

Among the guests in “Head” were Frank Zappa, who wrangles a cow, and boxer Sonny Liston.

We can neither confirm nor deny reports that any sequel to the movie was to be promoted as “from the producers who gave you ‘Head.’ ”

(If you order the BBS Blu-ray set from Criterion, use the promo code rhino.)

Expected to be titled “Dark Star,” the movie “will be psychedelic in the best sense,” one writer says.

The independent film’s director is Amir Bar-Lev, who made the excellent 2007 documentary “My Kids Could Paint That” as well as 2010′s “Tillman.” While a stream of documentaries have covered Garcia and the Grateful Dead over the years, this is a feature film.

The source material is Robert Greenfield’s book “Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia”. (The guitarist died in 1995.) Greenfield told Rolling Stone’s web site that the biopic would use period music, but since the film ends when the Grateful Dead begins, it’s unlikely the jam band’s songs would be heard.

(Update 8/4: Unlikely seems an understatement. Grateful Dead Productions and Jerry Garcia Family LLC made a point of announcing that the “supposed upcoming” biopic won’t be allowed to use recordings by the Grateful Dead or from Jerry Garcia’s solo work. Access to Garcia family members will be denied as well, the Dead organizations said.) /update

Greenfield compared the project with the acclaimed Beatles movie “Backbeat,” which told the story of the Fab Four (or Five) before they became famous. “(Garcia) did things on electric guitar that weren’t done before not because he had taken LSD but because of all the influences he absorbed throughout his life.”

The Garcia project’s screenwriter is Topper Lilien, whose previous movies “Where the Money Is” and “Dungeons & Dragons” were released in 2000. “Topper Lilien’s daring script does justice to Garcia and steadfastly resists cliche,” Bar-Lev told Variety, which broke the story.

Producing are Eric Eisner (“Hamlet 2″) and the indie team of Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa (“Little Miss Sunshine”).

Hollywood trades often float early-in-development projects in exchange for exclusivity. The Garcia biopic has no star or distributor, apparently, so there’s no guarantee it’ll come out soon — or at all.

The news comes days after Amy Adams (“Enchanted”) was announced as the star of a Janis Joplin biopic called “Get It While You Can.” “City of God’s” Fernando Meirelles directs and “Twilight’s” Wyck Godfrey produces.

“Nowhere Boy,” a U.K. import about John Lennon’s childhood, is making the festival circuit before its October release in the States.

More Grateful Dead content:

• Grateful Dead’s history a Society affair
• Furthur adventures of the Grateful Dead family
• Furthur live on satellite radio; concert cancelled

“Twilight” producer Wyck Godfrey let slip the left-fielder that Adams (“Enchanted,” “Junebug”) is the latest actress aiming to play Joplin in a biopic. “City of God” director Fernando Meirelles is aboard “Get It While You Can” as well, Godfrey says.

Adams doesn’t look her years — 35 of them — and Joplin always looked a lot older than hers. But at best Adams will go before the cameras being eight years older than Joplin when the singer died of shooting dope in a dicey Hollywood hotel.

What could possibly prepare the former Mormon, ballerina, Disney princess and Gap greeter for inhabiting the drug-and-booze-ravaged body of Joplin? Adams’ brief stint at Hooters and her role in “Psycho Beach Party” offer some faint hope.

Then there’s the beauty thing. Adams has plenty. Joplin … had a great voice. But, as many have pointed out, who could have imagined Charlize Theron as the ugliest woman in Florida in “Monster.” And no doubt Adams can sing and work a stage.

Other contemporary actresses linked to Joplin roles over the years include Pink (a major fan), Zooey Deschanel, Brittany Murphy, Scarlett Johansson and Renée Zellweger. Lindsay Lohan, Nikka Costa and Brittney Spears also had some flirtations with Joplin projects.

Bette Midler, of course, did what is to this point the best Joplin on film, playing the thinly disguised singer in “The Rose.” Midler won the Oscar for her performance, highlighted by a blazing version of “Stay With Me Baby.”

Penelope Spheeris’ apparently abandoned “Gospel According to Janis” originally had Pink in the lead role, but she reportedly walked out on the project, citing a “circus” atmosphere in casting. Deschanel then came aboard, taking months of voice lessons aimed at imitating Joplin, but the project dragged on for years. IMDB lists that production’s status as “unknown.”

Zellweger was attached to a Paramount project that also failed to surface at the boxoffice.

Sony says the version of Ken Russell’s "Tommy" on Blu-ray comes “newly restored and remastered” for its Sept. 7 release.

The original 5.0 “quintaphonic” soundtrack returns from previous DVD versions, this time rendered in lossless audio. The regular Dolby 5.1 mix also has been remastered.

Lovers of the “Tommy” album looking for an amazing journey in sonics had best return to their SACD discs, however, as this movie’s soundtrack doesn’t feature the original 1968 recording. Instead, mainstream actors and a handful of rock stars help the Who perform Pete Townshend’s rock opera. (It’s a good 20 minutes into the film before we hear the ‘orrible Who do their thing.)

“Tommy,” of course, stars the Who’s Roger Daltrey in the eponymous role. Director Russell brought in movie stars Ann-Margret, Jack Nicholson and Oliver Reed in a bid to flesh out the rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy.

Townshend made numerous changes and additions to his sketchy narrative from 1969, notably moving its catalytic events from WWI to WWII. All of the Who’s original music was rerecorded for the film, a downgrade in every case.

The actors all sang their parts — terrific in the case of raspy Tina Turner; borderline tragic when Reed warbles his villainous nasty bits.

Actors from the rock world included Keith Moon (Uncle Ernie), Tina Turner (the Acid Queen), Elton John (the Pinball Wizard), and Eric Clapton and Arthur Brown (psychedelic priests).

Surreal/psychedelic highlights include the “Pinball Wizard” number with Elton John atop giant boots; the Marlyn Monroe worship scene with Clapton and Brown (“Eyesight to the Blind”), and the “I’m Free” sequence in which Tommy awakens from his addled state.

Here’s hoping for the best, but quintaphonic sonic probably won’t blow many minds these days, as its basic set-up — three speakers up front, two in the rear — has become common in homes, much less theaters. But back in 1975, “Tommy’s” quintaphonic dazzled preview audiences, who were presold thanks to the (short-lived) quadraphonic home audio format.

Four-channel audio (at the least) dated back to CinemaScope, but the stereo matrix technology used for quintaphonic — with its discrete horizontal and diagonal separation — proved groundbreaking. Quint was the forerunner of Dolby Stereo and the dueling cinema audio systems of the 1980s, such as DTS and SDDS.

The Blu-ray extras include a cloud-based trivia track and a trailer, perhaps this one: