Anticipate "Control" - The Ian Curtis biopic...

I hope to God that the utter cunt Moby will not be making music with New Order. That would be even worse than the fool Corgan's involvement with Get Ready.

Ian Curtis Biopic Cast
Casting has been announced for the upcoming Joy Division film, Control. Newcomer Sam Riley will play the brilliant-but-doomed singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide in 1980 on the eve of the band's first American tour. Samantha Morton, who has previously been nominated for Oscars for her work in Woody Allen's Sweet And Lowdown and Jim Sheridan's In America, will play Curtis' widow, Deborah. (It is her book, Touching From A Distance, on which the screenplay is based.) German actress Alexandra Maria Lara, who just finished filming the new Francis Ford Coppola film Youth By Youth, will play the singer's lover Annik Honore. The film will be the first feature from acclaimed photographer and music video director Anton Corbijn (Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box"). Deborah Curtis and Tony Wilson, Factory Records founder and the subject of 24 Hour Party People, will both be credited as co-producers. According to NME, New Order will rerecord some Joy Division tracks, as well as lay down some new songs, for the soundtrack. The production team hopes to begin shooting in Manchester later this year.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1232477,00.html

"At last, we can do this without that wanker Hannett and all his echo!"

http://www.owensboro.org/page.php/Departments/Transit/images/SamRiley-.jpg

http://www.lwtua.free-online.co.uk/jd/ian_curtis_control_s.jpg

Moby will not be involved in this project. he'll be brewing herbal tea and counting the ways he sucks vegan cock.

Moby does ask for it. In other news, the Woodtick mix Go came on the iPod today and i loved it.

is it gonna be in black & white? maybe it should be. it's always weird when you see colour footage of WWII.

moby showed them his trousers?

anyway, this is going to suck, isn't it? i hated "touching from a distance", and i just don't see the point in this film at all. 24HPP nailed the whole thing perfectly. we don't need another factory film (unless it's about section 25, natch).

Spoiler alert: IAN KILLS HIMSELF

How many years will someone in the US have to wait to see this, btw? I don't live in NY or LA either.

How can you hate "touching from a distance"? It was Debbie Curtis' perspective, and for all it's fault it's an honest memoir.

curtis is one of thee most overrated personalities in the entire factory story

ian that is

Tell me more

Any celebrity who kills himself becomes 74.2% more compelling.

Artists Whose Premature Death Failed (or Would Fail, were the Tragic Event to Happen) to Secure Them Morrisonesque Levels of Legendary Status

http://i19.tinypic.com/4q8vdb9.jpg

( more pix )

Ooh, I like their Barney. He looks very very Germanic:

http://www.neworderonline.com/Photos/Cache/11324.2950.large.jpg

(also: MAKE UP YR F'N MINDS ABOUT YR F'N SPLIT, DAMMIT! http://www.neworderonline.com/News/News.aspx?NewsID=1305 )

I recently met Annick Honoré.

I can't seem to find the thread where I said I remembered hearing that New Order decided not to do the soundtrack, but I'm delighted to learn I'm wrong.

http://www.neworderonline.com/News/News.aspx?NewsID=1318

"The Only Mistake" on vinyl from Still just makes me feel like goose bumps all over my arms.

Trailer (with french subtitles)

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=15099883

Looks like it's going to be a great movie, but I'm not sure I'm ready to have the whole thing, dunno, reduced to a movie, you know?

Yep.

fucking hell that looks amazing.

It's got THREE NEW INSTRUMENTALS BY NEW ORDER! And Phil did not play on them! AAAAAAAAH I'm going to get hysterical in a minute here. I can't breathe! Looky at here.

1) Exit - New Order
2) What Goes On - The Velvet Underground
3) Shadowplay (Joy Division cover) - The Killers
4) Boredom (Live) - The Buzzcocks
5) Dead Souls - Joy Division
6) She Was Naked - Supersister
7) Sister Midnight - Iggy Pop
8) Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
9) Problems (Live) - Sex Pistols
10) Hypnosis - New Order
11) Drive In Saturday - David Bowie
12) Evidently Chickentown - John Cooper Clarke
13) 2H.B. - Roxy Music
14) Transmission (Cast Version) - Joy Division
15) Autobahn - Kraftwerk
16) Atmosphere - Joy Division
17) Warszawa - David Bowie
18) Get Out - New Order

I mean that looks like a pretty damn good soundtrack if you ask me.

TS: "BI-oh-pic" vs. "bi-OP-ic"

finish first draft of write-up monday morning WITH LUCK -- horrible stupid interruptions all week have stressed me LOTS and i kinda want to get this one good, for the sake of my lost youth blah blah

haha NO SPOILERS re my thoughts tho, esp.as they are by no means in a row as of this evenin

It's the merchandising I'm looking forward to.

Especially the bendy Vini Reilly figurine.

OMG is there a Factory Records Happy Meal? I want one!

I'm sure there's an "Unhappy" Meal.

crispy hamburgulance

Yeah. That's where Wilson went wrong. He should have opened Factory Restaurant:

Tone: What's your "new" order, sir?
Manc Punter: I'll Stockholm "monster" Steak, with a certain ratio of chips
Tone: And for desserts?
Manc Punter: Durrutti Frutti, please pal....

new order of fries surely

The Perfect Chips

eyes shine relentless serving on a bun

i feel this essay taking on an unepxected new shape

Synchronize love so you eat all day long
Chow your FRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES

Meatier. *th-thump* Best hamburger.

Here are the young men, a steak on their order
Here are the young men, well why not have beans?
A tray for the hors d'ouerves, complete without seasoning
The sorbet we've stuffed and not eaten our greens

Mother I tried to eat veggie,
Really did the best that I can.
Tried all of the things made of tofu,
Never once ever touched ham.

But if you could just see the beauty,
Big Macs I could never describe,
Those fake meats a wayward distraction,
This is my one lucky prize.

Quarter-pounder.

i like that we really suck at this

Oh, completely.

I was skeptical of this, but that trailer does make it look great.

Fuck. I'm going to have to stay up all night now.

When Les Routiers bite hard
and Michelin guidelines are low
When the trifle won't rise
and the souffle won't grow,
and we've no baking trays
and there's no beef to roast

then lard, lard will make us a tart, again
Lard, lard will make us a tart, again

Or maybe not.

"i like that we really suck at this"

In fairness, it's not something I imagine anyone can be "good" at.

<i>what would make this good is if owen wilson played ian curtis.

-- fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:50 PM (1 year ago) </i>

soothsayer?

Wes Anderson's Control

it's great. anton corbijn done good.

aye, i've been convinced by three or four people who've seen it and say it's blinding. hey ho.

still ...

How can you hate "touching from a distance"? It was Debbie Curtis' perspective, and for all it's fault it's an honest memoir

well, an author's perspective, or indeed their "honesty", don't stop me from making a purely subjective and reactionary value judgment ;)

i dunno. i just thought it took iconoclasm to a quite spectacularly dull degree. i mean, i'm quite sure curtis was a bit of a dick -- an awful lot of young men in bands are. indeed, you can delete "young", and "in bands" from that sentence as you wish, and maybe replace "men" with "people in general". and they do appear to have been a very ill-matched, ill-starred couple.

it's a long time since i read it -- more than 10 years now -- and i can't remember the specifics; what i recall is a litany of slightly petty moaning, a spectacularly disingenuous whinge about how she should have been allowed to go on the road with the band, and ... yeh, okay, a truly horrific event that would have totally fucked up her life and that of her daughter. i accept that completely. your husband being a bit of a tool is one thing; being a bit of a tool who hanged himself is something else entirely.

it just seemed to me that writing a whole book going: "hey, everybody, my late husband was a bit of a bastard" was a little unnecessary. i'm not for one second dismissing her feelings, or belittling the absolute horror she must have been through. i just don't think there was a book in it. not a very good one, anyway.

mind, nobody made me read it, so who's the twat? :)

i read her book abt three weeks back, to research this piece -- it's good i think

maybe i'd read it differently now; i dunno. ISTR having to force myself to finish it.

i think my feelings abt JD and IC have shifted a LOT since the mid-90s let alone the mid-80s -- also i read it AFTER i saw the film

what i feel a big bunch now is they were both just kids for fuck's sake (which obv when i wz in my 20s i wd have not noticed and been annoyed if anyone had said to me!)

i think my feelings abt JD and IC have shifted a LOT since the mid-90s

agreed.

what i feel a big bunch now is they were both just kids for fuck's sake (which obv when i wz in my 20s i wd have not noticed and been annoyed if anyone had said to me!)

agreed also.

maybe i should re-read it to see if i do feel differently now. then again ... nah, sod it, that's what the film's for :)

ian crutis stephens

if you can forgive it for being a rock biopic, this movie is actually really good.

I got nothing better to do, I'll forgive it.

i'm interviewing corbijn/principals tomorrow morn.

Ask Anton if he's already made his money back. (Seriously, didn't he invest everything he owns in this?)

did he??

i will totally ask him about that!

whoa!!

sam riley (plays ian curtis) played mark e smith in 24 hr party ppl!!!

did you guys know htat?

haha i was even going to ask him if he'd tried to avoid seeing it

this IMDB thing is useful!!

Hahaha, that is hilarious. The MES bit is a cut scene that surfaces on the 2 disc edition of 24HPP (and is separate from the real MES cameo).

Sez Wikipedia:

Control marks Corbijn's debut as a movie director, and he paid half of the €4.5million budget out of his own pocket

The link is to a Dutch TV interview on YouTube, so assuming it was translated correctly...(That said, maybe he makes all that amount back every time he takes a grainy U2 photo.)

tony wilson in this movie looks disconcertingly like ILX's own chuck tatum!

Hahaha, that is hilarious. The MES bit is a cut scene that surfaces on the 2 disc edition of 24HPP (and is separate from the real MES cameo).

ok i was wondering about that on account of all i could remember was the cameo.

i really want that 2-disc edition.

incidentally i find the two movies complement each other pretty well. honestly earlier i was like what's the point but i think it works.

Yes, you need said edition.

Also, you might want to read this too:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2146993,00.html

Seems like good interviewing grist to ask Corbijn, being from a fellow JD photographer and all...

Gosh, Grimly, I'm sorry I missed your big post all the way back there on the 27th! I thought you really tried quite hard on that post, and I salute you. Well done.

I understand what you mean in the sense that I found it was not an exceptional book. But I did take her at her word, and just took the story as it came along. I felt rather objective about it. I wasn't looking to make a hero out of Ian Curtis, because for god's sake I've preferred the music of New Order for years (although insanely this seems to be changing nowadays).

But then if you read the Torn Apart book by Mick Middles, it's like the polar opposite in some respects. You actually see positive sides to Ian Curtis. So you know, everyone has this or that to say about the man. As it should be, I suppose, if that were the truth.

I'm still frothing at the mouth about the film and its soundtrack, of course.

Wait a minute woah woah woah Sam Riley did NOT play fucking Mark E. Smith in 24 Hour Party people. That was fucking MES himself in the geometric diamond sweater at the door of the club that said hi to Tony Wilson!

You might want to reread my comment there.

here he goes

Anton Corbijn's film about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, Control, which premieres in Edinburgh on Friday, is set in a Manchester that is high-gloss, highly saturated, monochromatic. This is pure fiction. The 1970s reality of Manchester is of a bleak post-industrial Victorian city. Large, decaying warehouses were yet to become idiosyncratic hotels and urban living spaces. Mainly they were filthy, dilapidated and abandoned.

this guy is kinda dumb i think

xxxpost

Oh okay I know, read the thread. Man, it's getting late, here.

unrelated: i saw good movies today! this, el orfanato, lust, caution, and no country for old men. and i chatted with peter bogdanovich. and i walked by roger ebert. and i saw zooey deschanel!!

lust, caution, and no country for old men

See, I want this to be one overall film with that title.

haha. it's two.

yeah he sings ROWCHE RUMBLE in the extra clip btw. also available on the UK single disc extras. MES is then also in the real film seperately-ah.

Thanks, Pisces, I shall have to bite the bullet and get it soon. It's about time.

Me and my friend tried to play Joy Division's "Novelty" together, last weekend, me on bass, him on guitar. But I can tell his heart wasn't in it. Anyone want to play "Novelty" with me? Please email me your guitar or drums for "Novelty" (or even keyboards), thanks. I've got a chip on my shoulder of determination about that song that I can't explain.

I've checked the musician ads in town and there isn't much there. The one ad that even mentioned "Post-Punk" didn't mention any contact info. Please Help.

I owned "From Safety To Where" on vinyl on the vinyl Earcom 2 compilation before it was ever available on CD and I think that should count for something. What, I'm not sure. A ticket to see the walruses at the zoo? Probably.

anton corbijn to me yesterday: "you're from montreal? do you know the arcade fire?"

<i>Anticipate "Control" - The Ian Curtis biopic...
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (122 of them)
Directed by Anton Corbjin
Co-Produced by Debbie Curtis, who will be played in the film by..

Samantha Morton.

-- mark grout (mark grout), Friday, February 10, 2006 3:30 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

Hm, the confusion in her eyes DOES say it all.
-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, February 10, 2006 3:38 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, February 10, 2006 3:39 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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who's playing ian?
-- Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Friday, February 10, 2006 3:46 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Someone called Sam Riley.
-- Si.C@rter (SiC@rter), Friday, February 10, 2006 4:50 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Moby was involved in the making of this film, right?
-- NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Friday, February 10, 2006 4:52 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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What happened to Jude Law?
-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, February 10, 2006 5:02 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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... too old, too bald
-- Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, February 10, 2006 5:05 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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There's talk that New Order will be doing some NEW music for the soundtrack in the guise of 'Joy Division'!
I hope to God that the utter cunt Moby will not be making music with New Order. That would be even worse than the fool Corgan's involvement with Get Ready.

-- Dr. C (Dr. C), Friday, February 10, 2006 5:15 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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IIRC, New Order backed Moby at points on his cover of "New Dawn Fades" when they toured together in 2001. I'm not happy about it either.
-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, February 10, 2006 5:30 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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I thought there were 2 pix in the pipeline - I think it's the other one that Moby has something to do with.
-- Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Friday, February 10, 2006 7:50 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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I just got this in my inbox from CMJ:
Ian Curtis Biopic Cast
Casting has been announced for the upcoming Joy Division film, Control. Newcomer Sam Riley will play the brilliant-but-doomed singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide in 1980 on the eve of the band's first American tour. Samantha Morton, who has previously been nominated for Oscars for her work in Woody Allen's Sweet And Lowdown and Jim Sheridan's In America, will play Curtis' widow, Deborah. (It is her book, Touching From A Distance, on which the screenplay is based.) German actress Alexandra Maria Lara, who just finished filming the new Francis Ford Coppola film Youth By Youth, will play the singer's lover Annik Honore. The film will be the first feature from acclaimed photographer and music video director Anton Corbijn (Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box"). Deborah Curtis and Tony Wilson, Factory Records founder and the subject of 24 Hour Party People, will both be credited as co-producers. According to NME, New Order will rerecord some Joy Division tracks, as well as lay down some new songs, for the soundtrack. The production team hopes to begin shooting in Manchester later this year.

-- jaymc (jaymc), Friday, February 10, 2006 7:53 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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No, I think I'm wrong about that actually. Is this the one that Tony Wilson announced last year? Who would ever have thought I'd be getting confused about Ian Curtis biopics. Bizarre.
-- Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Friday, February 10, 2006 7:54 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Aha, it was Moby...quite some time ago...I presume this has all fallen by the wayside...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1232477,00.html

-- Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Friday, February 10, 2006 7:57 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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New Order will rerecord some Joy Division tracks
"At last, we can do this without that wanker Hannett and all his echo!"

-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, February 10, 2006 7:57 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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i don't think it counts as being "doomed" if you commit suicide.
-- fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Friday, February 10, 2006 7:57 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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this will be great
-- kyle (akmonday), Friday, February 10, 2006 8:16 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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really I was thinking lately, that movies have gotten away with biopics of musicians of a certain generation lately; Ray Charles, Johnny Cash... but who, more "modern" could they do this with? From all accounts Van Sandt's Cobain homage was terrible (I didn't see it); Ian Curtis seems removed enough from current culture to be an good option.
-- kyle (akmonday), Friday, February 10, 2006 8:17 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Think this will ultimately be a cult pic, not unlike the JD fan following. Seems to me all the drama was in JD's music and lyrics. Not sure if traditional movie storyline (band rise, an affair, suicide on eve of international stardom) will hold much interest outside of the devoted.

-- drewo (drewo), Friday, February 10, 2006 8:31 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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"Max and Ruby... Ruby and Max!"
-- Andy_K (Andy_K), Friday, February 10, 2006 8:35 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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A GIS of "Sam Riley" reveals:

-- RoxyMuzak© (roxymuzak), Friday, February 10, 2006 8:47 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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when do we get the RICHEY MANIC biopic?
-- J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, February 10, 2006 8:54 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Starring Conor Oberst!
-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:01 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Not the best pic of him, but there is some resemblance to Curtis:

-- righteousmaelstrom (righteousmaelstrom), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:01 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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it's our generation's la bamba.
-- maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:22 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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I'd love to see Lou Diamond Phillips now play Ian Curtis then.
-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:23 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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i just so hope this is enjoyable.
-- RoxyMuzak© (roxymuzak), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:39 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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what would make this good is if owen wilson played ian curtis.
-- fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:50 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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luke wilson as tony wilson
-- J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:57 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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The ideal biopic would be directed by Mike Leigh, feature no music and and no stars, and be a thoroughly miserable experience for everyone.
-- soukesian, Friday, February 10, 2006 11:16 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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I'm very excited to be simultaneously extremely depressed whilst drooling ... as I am during all Sam. Morton films. This will be very good!!
-- Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Friday, February 10, 2006 11:22 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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I'd like Max Johnson as Ian.
-- RoxyMuzak© (roxymuzak), Saturday, February 11, 2006 1:38 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Tyrone from Corrie as Hooky anyone?
-- jimnaseum (jimnaseum), Saturday, February 11, 2006 1:40 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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newOrder played New Dawn Fades with Moby exactly 1 time during Area:One, in LA. In fact, Moby had to show them the cords so they could play it. I believe some asshole from the Chili Peppers also played with them.
Moby will not be involved in this project. he'll be brewing herbal tea and counting the ways he sucks vegan cock.

-- biz, Saturday, February 11, 2006 1:55 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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There's a lot of hate in your post, biz.
-- joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Saturday, February 11, 2006 1:58 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Moby is kind of asking for it. Also Macauley Culkin should totally play I C.
-- adam (adam), Saturday, February 11, 2006 2:10 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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yeah, i've got nothing nice to say about Moby or the Chili Peppers and I blame others for my childhood heroes resorting to embarrasing collaborations like Moby, Chilli Peppers, Corgan and Bobby Gillespie. I know I should blame New Order for agreeing to work with those people but i'd rather not.
Moby does ask for it. In other news, the Woodtick mix Go came on the iPod today and i loved it.

-- biz, Saturday, February 11, 2006 2:13 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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That Moby/New Order/bloke for Chilli Peppers track is on some album 'cos I've got it and it's hilariously bad. Esp. the extra guitar soloing. I love it though.
-- Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Saturday, February 11, 2006 5:04 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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24HPP soundtrack innit?
-- kit brash (kit brash), Saturday, February 11, 2006 11:32 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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"Directed by Anton Corbjin"
is it gonna be in black & white? maybe it should be. it's always weird when you see colour footage of WWII.

-- scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, February 11, 2006 11:45 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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In fact, Moby had to show them the cords so they could play it
moby showed them his trousers?

anyway, this is going to suck, isn't it? i hated "touching from a distance", and i just don't see the point in this film at all. 24HPP nailed the whole thing perfectly. we don't need another factory film (unless it's about section 25, natch).

-- grimly fiendish (grimlord), Sunday, February 12, 2006 1:01 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

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Spoiler alert: IAN KILLS HIMSELF

-- musically, Monday, May 21, 2007 7:50 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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How many years will someone in the US have to wait to see this, btw? I don't live in NY or LA either.

-- musically, Monday, May 21, 2007 7:52 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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How can you hate "touching from a distance"? It was Debbie Curtis' perspective, and for all it's fault it's an honest memoir.

-- Mark G, Monday, May 21, 2007 9:15 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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curtis is one of thee most overrated personalities in the entire factory story

-- electricsound, Monday, May 21, 2007 9:58 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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ian that is

-- electricsound, Monday, May 21, 2007 9:58 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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Tell me more

-- Dr.C, Monday, May 21, 2007 10:00 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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Any celebrity who kills himself becomes 74.2% more compelling.

-- musically, Monday, May 21, 2007 10:04 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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Artists Whose Premature Death Failed (or Would Fail, were the Tragic Event to Happen) to Secure Them Morrisonesque Levels of Legendary Status

-- Noodle Vague, Monday, May 21, 2007 10:06 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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-- StanM, Monday, May 21, 2007 10:39 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

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Skipping 22 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

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The Perfect Chips

-- Ned Raggett, Saturday, August 25, 2007 10:52 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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eyes shine relentless serving on a bun

-- mark s, Saturday, August 25, 2007 10:55 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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i feel this essay taking on an unepxected new shape

-- mark s, Saturday, August 25, 2007 10:56 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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Synchronize love so you eat all day long
Chow your FRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES

-- Ned Raggett, Saturday, August 25, 2007 10:58 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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Meatier. *th-thump* Best hamburger.

-- Ned Raggett, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:00 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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Here are the young men, a steak on their order
Here are the young men, well why not have beans?
A tray for the hors d'ouerves, complete without seasoning
The sorbet we've stuffed and not eaten our greens

-- PhilK, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:01 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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Mother I tried to eat veggie,
Really did the best that I can.
Tried all of the things made of tofu,
Never once ever touched ham.

But if you could just see the beauty,
Big Macs I could never describe,
Those fake meats a wayward distraction,
This is my one lucky prize.

Quarter-pounder.

-- Ned Raggett, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:06 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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i like that we really suck at this

-- mark s, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:06 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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Oh, completely.

-- Ned Raggett, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:07 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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I was skeptical of this, but that trailer does make it look great.

-- oscar, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:08 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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Fuck. I'm going to have to stay up all night now.

When Les Routiers bite hard
and Michelin guidelines are low
When the trifle won't rise
and the souffle won't grow,
and we've no baking trays
and there's no beef to roast

then lard, lard will make us a tart, again
Lard, lard will make us a tart, again

-- PhilK, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:14 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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Or maybe not.

-- PhilK, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:14 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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"i like that we really suck at this"

In fairness, it's not something I imagine anyone can be "good" at.

-- PhilK, Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:19 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

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<i>what would make this good is if owen wilson played ian curtis.

-- fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Friday, February 10, 2006 9:50 PM (1 year ago) </i>

soothsayer?

-- paulhw, Monday, August 27, 2007 4:15 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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Wes Anderson's Control

-- Ned Raggett, Monday, August 27, 2007 4:17 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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it's great. anton corbijn done good.

-- stirmonster, Monday, August 27, 2007 5:09 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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aye, i've been convinced by three or four people who've seen it and say it's blinding. hey ho.

still ...

How can you hate "touching from a distance"? It was Debbie Curtis' perspective, and for all it's fault it's an honest memoir

well, an author's perspective, or indeed their "honesty", don't stop me from making a purely subjective and reactionary value judgment ;)

i dunno. i just thought it took iconoclasm to a quite spectacularly dull degree. i mean, i'm quite sure curtis was a bit of a dick -- an awful lot of young men in bands are. indeed, you can delete "young", and "in bands" from that sentence as you wish, and maybe replace "men" with "people in general". and they do appear to have been a very ill-matched, ill-starred couple.

it's a long time since i read it -- more than 10 years now -- and i can't remember the specifics; what i recall is a litany of slightly petty moaning, a spectacularly disingenuous whinge about how she should have been allowed to go on the road with the band, and ... yeh, okay, a truly horrific event that would have totally fucked up her life and that of her daughter. i accept that completely. your husband being a bit of a tool is one thing; being a bit of a tool who hanged himself is something else entirely.

it just seemed to me that writing a whole book going: "hey, everybody, my late husband was a bit of a bastard" was a little unnecessary. i'm not for one second dismissing her feelings, or belittling the absolute horror she must have been through. i just don't think there was a book in it. not a very good one, anyway.

mind, nobody made me read it, so who's the twat? :)

-- grimly fiendish, Monday, August 27, 2007 5:31 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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i read her book abt three weeks back, to research this piece -- it's good i think

-- mark s, Monday, August 27, 2007 5:41 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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maybe i'd read it differently now; i dunno. ISTR having to force myself to finish it.

-- grimly fiendish, Monday, August 27, 2007 5:43 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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i think my feelings abt JD and IC have shifted a LOT since the mid-90s let alone the mid-80s -- also i read it AFTER i saw the film

what i feel a big bunch now is they were both just kids for fuck's sake (which obv when i wz in my 20s i wd have not noticed and been annoyed if anyone had said to me!)

-- mark s, Monday, August 27, 2007 5:48 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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i think my feelings abt JD and IC have shifted a LOT since the mid-90s

agreed.

what i feel a big bunch now is they were both just kids for fuck's sake (which obv when i wz in my 20s i wd have not noticed and been annoyed if anyone had said to me!)

agreed also.

maybe i should re-read it to see if i do feel differently now. then again ... nah, sod it, that's what the film's for :)

-- grimly fiendish, Monday, August 27, 2007 5:50 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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ian crutis stephens

-- sanskrit, Monday, August 27, 2007 5:50 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

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if you can forgive it for being a rock biopic, this movie is actually really good.

-- s1ocki, Friday, September 7, 2007 4:37 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

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I got nothing better to do, I'll forgive it.

-- Ned Raggett, Friday, September 7, 2007 4:41 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

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i'm interviewing corbijn/principals tomorrow morn.

-- s1ocki, Friday, September 7, 2007 4:44 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

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Ask Anton if he's already made his money back. (Seriously, didn't he invest everything he owns in this?)

-- Ned Raggett, Friday, September 7, 2007 4:53 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

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did he??

i will totally ask him about that!

-- s1ocki, Friday, September 7, 2007 4:57 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

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whoa!!

sam riley (plays ian curtis) played mark e smith in 24 hr party ppl!!!
</i>

Where's Mark E. Smith in 24hrpppl? Besides being played by himself?

The deja vu I get from that post, I tell ya.

Anyway, as I answered a couple of posts later (he said, dryly):

The MES bit is a cut scene that surfaces on the 2 disc edition of 24HPP (and is separate from the real MES cameo).

i dont understand why so many ppl were quoted there

It worries me that folks feel Corbijn didn't portray Manchester in the right light (or lack thereof :)) and especially Kevin Cummins' comment that there is no humour in it. It's pretty well known Joy Division members were infamous for playing practical jokes.

Anton Corbijn's film about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, Control, which premieres in Edinburgh on Friday, is set in a Manchester that is high-gloss, highly saturated, monochromatic. This is pure fiction. The 1970s reality of Manchester is of a bleak post-industrial Victorian city. Large, decaying warehouses were yet to become idiosyncratic hotels and urban living spaces. Mainly they were filthy, dilapidated and abandoned.

this guy is kinda dumb i think

Why? Because you feel the film doesn't actually portray it as the quote claims, or because you don't think Manchester was like that? I have no reason to believe those warehouses weren't "filthy, dilapidated & abandoned".

Whoa! I really don't know how that happened.

Sorry dudes!!

No problem, technology is flawed.

I will see this, but the alleged lack of humor is bothersome. What I liked about 24 Hour Party People is Winterbottom made Factory seem like "Carry On, Manchester". I hope the film shows the goofy side of Joy Division. The contrast between their stage persona and the their off-stage football hooligan antics would be, to me at least, more interesting than the tragic romantic poet myth.

otm

yes, but the fact is that this film has obviously chosen to focus in its mere hour and a bit of running time on a certain facet of the subject's personality. 24HPP could be irreverent and wry and knowing and so on because the only real narrative was wilson's, and even that was loose and heavily fictionalised. everything else that happened in the film swirled around him and didn't need -- in that context -- to be explained. that's precisely why it captured the whole factory feel so well.

this is a totally different type of film, from what i understand: it's about a very short period in a small number of people's lives during which great art was made and great horror occurred. given what we know about a) debbie curtis's book as the source material, and b) corbijn's aesthetic, it's a safe guess there won't be too much time wasted explaining how they once pissed on buzzcocks' drumkit or how barney zapped hooky with a hand-buzzer (nb: this probably didn't happen, but you never know).

i think "off-stage football-hooligan antics" is stretching it a little, no? they were a group of young lads who, like all groups of young lads, dicked about a lot. personally, i'm far more interested in the artistic legacy than in the practical jokes they played on each other ... or, as i said above, the quotidian details of ian and debbie's life together. i guess all i want/expect from this film is some of that grainy corbijn goodness and an interesting soundtrack. all else is peripheral.

there are a lot of jokes about the buzzcocks actually!!

Zancharek's review from Toronto.

god I hate Salon

Argh. Can someone with more patience than I have make it through all of Salon's bullshit and c+p?

it's only one page long, i don't see what's so bad about it

My guess is they're referring to the annoying "Next"/"Next"/"Next" and huge popup of the Graduate that happens right in the middle of the article. It made me feel like I was just lucky to be able to figure out what I was supposed to click on to read the rest of it.

oh my host file blocks all of that

Yeah I didnt see any ads either but I use adblock in FF.

Anyone know this band called Supersister from the soundtrack?

it's our generation's la bamba.

-- maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Friday, February 10, 2006 4:22 PM

otm x infinity

NYC next week

http://www.filmforum.org/films/control.html

Saw it yesterday, loved it, blogged it. It preserves the *cough* iconography *cough* of the band, and doesn't seek to do much in the way of puncturing the legend. But I'm fine with that. YMMV.

http://troubled-diva.com/2007_09_30_troubled-diva_archive.html#1159973526702731889

(But, yeah, it isn't completely devoid of humour either; there's a certain amount of d1cking around, particularly in the scenes involving Tony Wilson and/or Rob Gretton.)

starts tonight in the uk. very excited.

I don't envy the TW actor who has to follow Coogan, despite the different approach of the 2 movies.

or the dude playing gretton.

this is absolute perfection: an unequivocal masterpiece. best film of the year.

gretton significantly moreso than wilson - i think coogan was too distractingly coogan to be a totally believeable wilson

I beg to disagree?!

sam riley (plays ian curtis) played mark e smith (and ended up on the cutting-room floor) in 24 hr party ppl!!!

heheh ... which might explain a wonderfully throwaway line from gretton to curtis after he fits at a gig: "could be worse. you could be the lead singer in the fall."

anyway. saw this last night. it was ... interesting. partly brilliant. enormously flawed.

can we divorce the film from the metnarrative? should we? this is what i've been thinking about the most ... the fact that unless you can superimpose your own knowledge of the story, fill in some of the gaps, the internal narrative of the film is like some weird kitchen-sink drama: boy meets girl, they get married, it all goes tits up. there's no real characterisation of curtis, just a few elliptical references to him being a bit weird and intense. and then suddenly, woah, he's a tortured genius. if you don't know the details -- even the timeframe! the film moves from 1973 to 1976 in the blink of an eye -- then ... well, i think you'd have a hard time engaging with it on any level, let alone taking it seriously. and this is a shame, because it's not just die-hards like me who are going to see it; or, at least, it shouldn't be.

yes, the same could be said of 24HPP ... although there was so much else going on there that it didn't really matter (see my post above). i just don't think there's enough here that tries to explain or expostulate or even just fill in some of the blanks -- that corbijn treats the whole thing enormously reverently, which is fine if you know the story but i think scuppers it badly as a feature film.

and even then: my understanding -- based on obsessive teenage readings of everything i could get hold of, especially interviews with members of the band -- was that although IC was prone to introversion/moodiness/being a bit of a twat (and who isn't?), his personality was absolutely FUCKED by the epilepsy drugs, esp the barbiturates, and ultimately his depression/suicide wasn't so much the desperately "romantic" (i'd choose these words marginally more carefully if i wasn't just battering this out for ILX) action of a tortured artist and lover, but the tragic way out for a man whose brain was in a mess. and again, i don't think this comes across at all; the impression is very much that it's being torn between two women/two ways of life that does for him.

that said: it is a beautiful, jaw-dropping piece of art. the final four or five scenes -- everything from the moment he walks into the kitchen to the end credits -- are flawless. it is tremendously funny in parts (so yeh, i was wrong above) ... IC getting called a "knobcheese" within the first few seconds; hooky obsessing about the penile element of the buzzcocks' name; pretty much half of what gretton comes out with. that's the other thing -- gretton really is revealed as an enormously important, pivotal character in the story, and i get the impression toby kebbell has captured him perfectly. actually, all the performances are wonderful ... even though nobody's ever going to do wilson quite as well as coogan.

and woah, the performance of "transmission" for granada is spellbinding: it is SO LIKE the actual footage that it's almost terrifying.

anyway. enough spilling of thought onto screen. a great film. but ...

er, "metanarrative", natch.

but the film doesn't do "suddenly he's a tortured genius" - it doesn't make any claims for him being a genius at all, just a troubled guy with a way with words.

i really think it's one of the films strengths that it doesn't paint him this way.

hmmm. maybe not overtly. but then it begins with SOLEMNLY INTONED excerpts from his lyrics, which are very quickly parallelled with wordsworth. it's pretty obvious which way it's going. he's set apart, isolated, esp from his wife, and sits there scribbling: the obvious reading to the uninitiated would be that this is a man FORCED BY POWERS BEYOND HIS CONTROL into the act of creation ... that's pretty much tortured-artist/genius territory, no?

i didn't think he was enough of a "guy" at all. that's the big problem.

perhaps we're just looking it from different perspectives, that of hardcore fan of many years that knows a lot of the background (you) and casual fan that knows the outline of the story (me). i thought it struck the balance between painting Curtis as a tortured genius and as a troubled man who became overwhelmed by his personal situation and it was that cocktail of meds that sent him over the brink and made a depressed man into a suicidal one.

i thought corbijn did a good job of deflating a lot of the myths and making him a "guy" (all the stuff at the unemployment exchange which was wonderful) while hinting - through camera placement, framing, lighting etc - at his unique situation. what Corbijn does with the camera is truly breathtaking but it's not just superficial - a shot like the one of debbie, in mum clothes and curtis in long grey trench coat walking up a macclesfield (?) street with that industrial/rural backdrop in sharp relief against the two figures not only looks like one of the most beautiful images ever put on film it says so much about the whole affair.

he's set apart, isolated, esp from his wife, and sits there scribbling: the obvious reading to the uninitiated would be that this is a man FORCED BY POWERS BEYOND HIS CONTROL into the act of creation

i don't see how you can pose that as a criticism of the film, this is obviously how it was for him a great deal of the time.

Trying...so...hard...not...to get...too excited...hysterical...about this film...

I shall calmly hyperventilate at the theatre, thanks.

Sam Riley is amazing as curtis but James Anthony Pearson as bernard sumer is just mind-boggling, he steals every scene he appears in.

Gonna catch this at the Austin Film Festival in less than a week.

Very excited.

i don't see how you can pose that as a criticism of the film, this is obviously how it was for him a great deal of the time

i'm not using it as a criticism per se; just as a critical observation to support my argument ;)

you're right about the number of visually loaded scenes: there's probably not a single wasted shot. (the one that's seared on my mind is the final scene and the slow upward pan: i thought that was absolutely breathtaking.)

yes: barney is amazing. gretton better ;)

Must see this film.

perhaps we're just looking it from different perspectives, that of hardcore fan of many years that knows a lot of the background (you) and casual fan that knows the outline of the story (me). i thought it struck the balance between painting Curtis as a tortured genius and as a troubled man who became overwhelmed by his personal situation and it was that cocktail of meds that sent him over the brink and made a depressed man into a suicidal one.

i agree. and i'm coming from the same place fan-wise.

i don't think i am gonna watch this film. that scene where they take parts of the bbc tv performance of "transmission" and blend it with shots of the guy who is playing ian curtis and other shots of the other actors and the acting audience is such a dilution of the power of the original that i consider it a crime. judge for yourself.

how can you judge for yourself if you're not even going to see the film?

the guy who plays gretton is the same actor as plays the brother of paddy considine in dead man's shoes and, yes, i thought he was great. i'd really have to look for flaws in this but one slight thing was that tony wilson seemed like a post steve coogan portrayal of the man.

alex is totally wrong above, they didn't blend actual bbc footage with actors footage in the film, that is just a video mashup someone made.

that scene where they take parts of the bbc tv performance of "transmission" and blend it with shots of the guy who is playing ian curtis

they don't blend any of the original in, it's all newly shot. if you think they blended some of the original footage in then that is definitely proof that corbijn did, indeed, do a fine job of recreating the scene.

xpost!

... exactly. that's a mashup. not the film. which i think is pretty obvious from the site, but hey :/

as i said above: the scene where they recreate transmission is so spellbindingly powerful that it's worth the price of admission alone.

i didn't watch the link :/

you are all right, i am wrong. stupid me, i didn't read the blog post carefully. thanks for the clarification. if they show the film around here i think i will try to see it. with low expectations. just to ridicule myself even more (maybe there is a grain of truth hidden in there), here is what i wanted to post to the question of s1ocki upthread:

how can you judge for yourself if you're not even going to see the film?
i can't obviously. but that scene was enough for me. they try very hard to recapture the spirit of the times by doing a black and white footage whereas the bbc transmission is in colours but it doesn't work at all. the audience is moving like crazy which i don't think was typical for joy division concerts - at least it wasn't for the les bains douches concerts where the about 100 spectators were immobilised - but that doesn't matter really. why do they have to film the audience in the first place? have a look at the original video, at hooky and his bass which arrives to his knees. at ian doing his jerky dance and barney doing almost nothing and stephen's fast and sublime drumming. i don't want to see the bloody audience in there. especially no fake audience with stupid faces. that's an overkill which the music doesn't need. which tries to work totally against the music. see?

Trying so hard not to get excited...new Radiohead album this month, too.

BREATHE.

alex, yes, do try to see it. i think you'll be pleasantly surprised. and i'm saying that as someone who thinks it's a long way from perfect!

i got an mp3 of the cast version of "Transmission" off someone's blog and it sounds pretty *amazing*. They did a great job - like if I wasn't paying attention, i would have thought it was a lost bootleg or something. Definitely hyped now.

i'm honestly not trying to contradict everything grimly says but... i think this is as close to perfection as any film i've seen in recent years.

hahahahah, sorry :) :) i look forward to discussing it with you over a pint at some point, too!

i have to say: i've been thinking about it a lot today. it's certainly had quite a deep effect on me.

i will be running a story on this this month w/interviews from everyone, i will post it when it's published if anyone's interested. can post teh transcripts too if you like.

YES TO THAT.

(...so DID Corbijn get all his money back?)

anton c showed up unannounced to watch the first screening at the manchester cornerhouse and do a brief intro. and i was so going to get tix for that night instead. arse.

s1ocki: yes, would very much like to read that. i linked to our (short!) interview with kebbell above.

Gonna catch this at the Austin Film Festival in less than a week.

Very excited.

-- stephen, Sunday, 7 October 2007 17:28

Dude we should hang at/after this.

Dude we should hang at/after this.
-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, October 7, 2007 8:23 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

oh wow! do you have a badge or saturday pass or anything like that? i'm just hoping for a single-admission ticket, evening of the screening, and not sure how full this one's gonna be. might bring the girlfriend along. who are you going with?

i'm just hoping for a single-admission ticket, evening of the screening

same here. i'm also gonna try to drag along the girlfriend.

same here. i'm also gonna try to drag along the girlfriend.

double date!

my gf's interested in buddhism, should make for interesting convo. plus, you know, the film.

haha sounds good

the other thing i forgot to say: i managed to miss/not notice one of the three NO pieces on the soundtrack but the two i did hear ("hypnosis" and "get out", i'm assuming -- that'd fit with where they sit in the narrative, certainly!) were absolutely wonderful.

(i've just listened to a snippet of "exit" on iTMS. hmm.)

I am definitely going to see this when it gets to New York. Fuck, I am so excited.

NY Times piece yesterday noted film omits Curtis' statements to his wife that he didn't intend to live past 25.

Not quite blown away by the set-pieceness of it: 'this is the scene where we foreshadow epilepsy x 2'; 'this is the scene with the potted introductions' etc. Wilson actor a bit too houndy-looking to do it justice. Gretton actor was absolutely magnificent and basically shat over the entire supporting cast. Would have liked if usual 'flecky' Corbijn aesthetic had prevailed over a bit more of the entirety of the film but I can see how deployment = impact.

You do realise film Ian ran off with film Annik, yeah?

Hahahaha, oh dear. (He was going out with film Debbie, then?)

I really loved the Barney guy too. It made me want to see a film about Barney.

Sam Riley brilliant. Found the set-piece style of it a little too much at times, maybe because some scenes were too familiar. And thinking, "oh, a still of that would make a great lost Joy Division photo" so many times was a distraction. I liked how they used Love Will Tear Us Apart, with Debbie all frantic.

Didn't like the ending.

(joke)

Durrrr no. (xpost)

I've been getting a real earful about this film from certain Mancs I know...

x-post

Actually, sort of not joke. I did like Sam Morton just coming out and screaming, and the way it was intercut with the band's wake in the pub, separate from her, but, but. Maybe it's about the inevitability of Atmosphere.

Maybe it's about the inevitability of Atmosphere

yes: although it works beautifully and emotively, a tiny little part of me did think: "ah, here we go" as soon as the first note was struck.

but then i have a slightly unusual relationship with "atmosphere" now, having pretty much played it to death between the ages of 16 and 21.

It made me want to see a film about Barney

you can borrow my book about barney if you want. once phil's phinished with it.

I didn't really like this. Deborah's desire to romanticise depression mixed up symptom and cause dreadfully (affair, for example, is a symptom of the depression cue to the lack of feeling of self-worth and the desperate urge to throw yourself at anyone who reacts or makes you feel less hit for that exact second).

Also, I'm not as up on the history as some people here but it seemed overall as 'factual' as 24HPP.

There were lots of things to like about it on an artisic level, obv.

Anthony Lane: Me like!

I'm starting to get afraid that I won't like this film. But hell, it's all about the bloody soundtrack, innit?

Word on the street has it that DC unhappy with the final film as it has made her look like a bit of a tool. Just as any school-leaver faced with certain issues would be. I've also been advised to see Liz Naylor's review in Sight and Sound which I haven't read and might tally with a certain disappointment with seeing what is actually a perfect study of a woman out of her depth WRT her partner's capriciousness and the elision into unpredictability/nastiness of the epileptic condition, the culpability of the group in closing ranks around IC's affair. The charms of the source material - and an interesting film about how rock stardom affects women who are not groupies or performers - are completely lost on a slightly artier take on the standard boyrockbiog. Naylor's longtime beef is that women operating at that time in Manchester were integral to that scene and have, in recent acconuts, been given rather short shrift.

as it has made her look like a bit of a tool

which, in fairness, i've always said the book did too :)

but yes, you're right: they were little more than kids (see also the behaviour of the band not just about the affair but about ian's epilepsy) and -- as i've said more than once on this thread alone -- people can behave like spectacular dicks someti ... well, alarmingly often.

S&S looks like it's got a lot of interesting stuff about the film and i might well buy it. or see if anyone else round these parts has got a copy. heh :)

arse: that's actually last month's S&S. i need to find a lackadasical newsagent, and fast.

i think it's still current. i'm sure it doesn't update until about the 20th of the month.

The film magazine Little White Lies is largely devoted to Control this (last?) issue, too.

A.O. Scott: I like it too!

Didn't see this before: <a href="http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2173446,00.htm";>Natalie Curtis on the film</a>.

I like that she's able to disentangle her enjoyment of Toby Kebbell's performance from her not having experienced Rob Gretton as being like that in real life.

One day I'll learn BBCode url syntax and not rely on remembering to click that convert button.

As I recall, Paddy Considine was even more of a snarky Manc git in 24PP.

This works:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2173446,00.html

Hmm..

Tony never got to see the film, but for me it is for him. It feels like Joy Division are finally going from being an enormous cult to a household name - just as Tony always believed they should.
Additional reporting by Dave Simpson

Hmm. I was given to understand that Tony did get to see the finished article. My guess is that the 'additional' bit there was added.

Anyone know what the limited release details are? It played one showing at the Chicago International Film Festival, but I wasn't able to make it...

Naylor's longtime beef is that women operating at that time in Manchester were integral to that scene and have, in recent acconuts, been given rather short shrift

hmm: none of that comes over in the review, which i just read quickly in wh smith's at the station. she makes a couple of interesting comments about the notion of masculinity in the late 1970s, and that her memories of the quite traditionally northern-male IC don't tally with the portrayal therein, but ... not spending the best part of £4 on that! :)

and yeh, the november issue is out now as well.

Not opening in Vancouver 'til the 23rd :(

NY Times piece yesterday noted film omits Curtis' statements to his wife that he didn't intend to live past 25.
-- Dr Morbius, Monday, October 8, 2007 2:36 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Link

Indeed. Great piece too.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/movies/07reyn.html

Hopefully going to see this in an hour...

I saw it yesterday, astonishing. I can't believe how well the cast did at recreating the songs in the live scenes (as well as mimicing the band's onstage demeanour) plus the last 40 minutes or so, and especially the ending of course, is almost unbearably moving.

It's usually incredibly obvious when films have been made by photographers, and a lot of shots in this were virtually just stills. Really good stills, though.

i was just reading my corbijn transcript, which someone else typed up, and "24 Hour Party People" came out as "Turn the Flowerpot"!!!!

hahahaha!!!

turn the flowerpotty people

Oh my god turn the flowerpot, that is fucking *c*l*a*s*s*i*c

haha and what do you think alexandra laria was REALLY saying here, talking about her favourite joy division songs:

"And I love Will Terrell’s part."

hahaha ok you've got to post the non-edited transcript too now.

I saw the West Coast (US) premiere 2 weeks ago and I totally agree with Chris in Belfast's post. As a JD fanatic since Day 1 (bought "FAC 2" new in 1978 - 'cos the cover looked well interesting!) I was prepared for the worst (and of course trainspotted several mistakes) but the fact that the actors became one of the best JD tribute bands ever (my best friend is in one up in San Francisco called The Ghost Of Curtis, so I've some familiarity with the genre) really blew me away.

The portrayal of Rob Gretton was a bit one-sided and of course Alexandra Maria Lara looks nothing like Annik (who, despite legend, was no babe - see the old picture of her from Middles' & Reade's book on Ian), but otherwise, it was really well done and I think any JD fan would like it. As for people who don't know f-all about JD ... a much tougher sell.

I really, really want to see this. I hope it gets a Chicago release soon.

How anyone can call Control humourless I'll never know - the version I saw (and I assume it's the same as everyone else's) was full of laffs in the lads-taking-the-piss sort of way one might imagine it was like.

But I was still...not disappointed, as such - the film as a whole is still reverberating in my head a week after seeing it - but a lot of it felt naff and forced.

Ian's feeling isolated...guess the tune! Ian's torn between the love of two women...guess the tune! JD on telly...guess the tune! (OK, that last one actually happened, but still)

who, despite legend, was no babe

All I gotta say is that her bit on the Shadowplayers documentary from last year shows she looks great.

Ach, come on! Film cliche number one: Real life recreations always cast better looking versions of the real people. Unless people be playin themselves.

I kinda liked the 'film of a musician during the creative process' clichés and I suspect they were pretty knowingly done. Though him writing, erm, was it 24 Hours? on his final evening is kinda odd since you didn't see him nipping out to actually record it after the listening to 'The Idiot' and before unhooking the clothes hanger rail in the kitchen.

When Curtis writes She's Lost Control and ponders over the " 's " I laughed out loud (even more than I did for the 'cold be in the Fall' and 'I've laid my clothes on on my bed' bits).

My main problem with the film is the 'disillusioned with fame' parts, because in 1980 there was no fame. The media wasn't that intrusive at that time and post-punk was well shielded from the mainstream media (Curtis's death wasn't even mentioned in the newspapers, Peel mentioned it, but not even day time radio covered it).

There was a significant underground buzz and the feeling they could be as big as Magazine or even The Banshees. But fame?

Ned (KUCI Ned???) - check this YouTube video; young Annik is seen at (exactly) the 2:26 mark. Hardly the young "Siouxsie clone" she's been described as being. While she does look decent for her age - MY age - in "Shadowplayers" (which I own; she talks briefly about the origins of Factory Benelux in it, nothing about Ian), I still assert that the legend is one thing, reality is another.

Sandy Blair - I totally agree with you. JD were scheduled to play The Starwood in West Hollywood (I had a ticket to see them - June 6th, 1980) and assuming sales were good, a followup show at Madame Wong's in LA's Chinatown was scheduled for the next day. Both of those venues were clubs that held a few hundred people each. JD were a well-respected cult band at the time, no question about it. But "fame"? Hardly. (It was a glorious time to see known bands from out of town, though. I can't even name all the went-on-to-become-really-famous bands I saw at The Whisky-A-Go-Go, The Roxy and The Starwood back in those days, '77-'82.)

Fame isn't necessarily "in the papers, followed by paparazzi, fans on the lawn' sort of thing.

It can just be 'hassled by fans and/or gits down the pub, can't go to a gig as get gladhandled too much, disturbed while shopping' sort of thing.

And yeah, you make records, you get 'ere, give Tony my demo' all over.

Naylor's longtime beef is that women operating at that time in Manchester were integral to that scene and have, in recent acconuts, been given rather short shrift

Yes, agreed. I was discussing this with mark s in the pub at the ESOJ FAP. Cath C made some astondingly great solo recds, probably a couple of years too late. There is a female narrative to the Factory story maybe - lots of girls made music on the label (ESG, Ann Quigley, what's her name from Quando Quango, Jenny Ross and Angela Cassidy, Gillian G, Caroline Allen, Martha Tilson, Lita Hira, Lindsey Anderson) and associated (Liz Naylor, Lindsay Reade).

The most astounding fact I learned recently was that Liz N's family GP was H4rold Sh1pman!!)

And...

I guess fame's relative - travelling to the USA to play a little more than a year after playing tiny venues like the Hope and Anchor, and total bogs like the Russell Club suggests that the band was growing fast. It's likely that Ian was worried about travelling to the states - being away from Annik, away from his daughter, away from family - all in the context of a worsening illness. Others may have seen the anxiety and reluctance as dissolutionment?

Fame isn't necessarily "in the papers, followed by paparazzi, fans on the lawn' sort of thing.

Very good point. The point was made at the Q and A session I went to that in 1980 the tabloids were not interested one jot in the death of some tortured musician on the margins of pop. It's academic to compare eras, but nowadays there might well have been 'Young rock star takes own life' headlines, in these days of the competing interests of round-the-clock news stations, and given the way in which non-meainstream music gets so easily co-opted by the mainstream when there's a story.

Q and A session, I should point out, with Hook and Morley after a showing of Control at the Phoenix in North London.

Dr C / Daniel - I know the band were growing fast, and Curtis may or may not have been having problems with how being on the treadmill of a band trying to make it was conflicting with how he wanted to live his life, but that's not (just) what the film suggests - in one scene in particular it portrays Curtis finding "fame" hollow (the one after the "oh no, it's the hippie from Crispy Ambulance again" riot where he has a discussion with Tony Wilson).

There was a definite whiff of Cobainism in that scene and it jarred as up to that point the seediness and the small scale of the post-punk circuit was spot on.

Yeah - I know you know, Sandy :) I haven't seen it yet, so I'm sure that you're spot on with your assessment.

There was a definite whiff of Cobainism in that scene and it jarred as up to that point the seediness and the small scale of the post-punk circuit was spot on.
-- Sandy Blair, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 2:11 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i saw the film Saturday at the Austin Film Festival, and yeah, while i generally enjoyed the film, the mistaken contrast that Sandy points out in this scene is right on.

Ian's feeling isolated...guess the tune! Ian's torn between the love of two women...guess the tune! JD on telly...guess the tune! (OK, that last one actually happened, but still)
-- CharlieNo4, Monday, October 15, 2007 9:33 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

honestly, didn't bother me

(KUCI Ned???)

Um, yeah? Do we know each other?

I also really liked the Northern-ness of it. I think the film shows this really well.

I liked it on record when it slipped out too, despite them probably wanting to pretend they all lived in eastern Europe. I mean things like the idioms is the lyrics '..do you right in...' .

I think its in the (generally hopeless) Chris Ott book where he describes them forming in the shadow of a chemical plant or something equally silly. The films shows more that they formed in the shadow of Coronation Street.

Curtis's the unresolvable conflict of "Corrie" and "Sally Bowles", "a taste of Honey" and "Naked Lunch" etc is a much more coherent thesis on his issues

seeing it on sunday hopefully.

this is pretty cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fco_pH5F9xA

NOT A GODDAMN THING ABOUT IT IN THE SEATTLE PAPERS YESTERDAY!!! *BITING MY HAND* ARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HOW MANY WEEKS WILL THEY MAKE US WAIT?

We ain't got nothing! NO CONTROL! WE'VE LOST CONTROL. AGAIN.

Please smack the shit out of me that I don't live in NY or LA, thanks.

So is the bloody soundtrack out now or what? Amazon made me confused last time I tried to figure it out.

Is this the part where I get to brag about my BRAND NEW UNKNOWN PLEASURES SHIRT?

Oh I saw it advertised on the Rhino website. 3 "new" New order tracks, presumably these are the supposed "nu-Joy Division" tracks.

I wonder why somebody making a film with some, frankly, stunning shots in it would want to go and ruin it all with some big old glaring anachronisms. Like, for example, shiny new UPVC double glazing on a block of flats (opening shot) or a self-seal envelope (note to Deborah). Well, not ruin, but...

Our family had a supply of self-sealing envelopes in the early 1980s, if not before. Are you sure about this?

This says they were introduced to Britain in 1930!

(the uPVC window frames were there to add relevance to a modern audience)

i DID NOT see any upvc windows and i actively looked for them.

in that first shot of the tower block?

Another anachronism was when Curtis is explaining to Hooky where he got the title for the song 'Dead Souls' and Hooky says 'the fella that invented the internet?'

Sorry, this was much funnier in my head than when I typed it out.

I also was wondering about the bit when Ian tells Annike that his favourite film was the sound of music... surely this deserves a follow up question wanting to know which side he was cheering for when the Von Trapp family do a runner.

saw it this afternoon in the midst of a week filled with all things Joy Division for some programs being made for Viva-Radio (more info soon). I really liked it and was all teary at the end. Oh sorry about the spoiler. Conversation a few nights ago:

my sister: I just saw control and
me: oh no don't tell me how it ends
my sister: they live happier ever after
me: wow
my sister: they had to tack on a happy ending for the american version

My fanboy favorite stuff were the posters everywhere, especially the Joy Division/Cabaret Voltaire at Eric's in Liverpool one they kept showing. I'd like one of those please.

mmm, yes and for my wall as well.

Sandy, your post is hilarious.

yep! i noticed a Bunnymen poster in one scene :D

xpost

Yeah, if you really paid attention to those geeky little details you'd think they spent more time in Liverpool then Manchester.

I think Rob's office also had the poster for the last night of the Electric Circus show. Personally, I think the movie should've included several minutes of footage of the Prefects playing the same night, if only to turn people onto another great band of the era. Oh well. The Prefects recording was cut from the record, while Warsaw's made it under the name Joy Division.

7/10 for this

very, very nice on a visual level, but rather slight on details surrounding ian curtis' creative process. beyond simply extended scenes of the band performing live, i would have liked to have seen more parts depicting the collaborative songwriting process (they aren't acknowledged as being a run of the mill band, after all). perhaps a bit more of a direct portrayal of how curtis was suffering for his art, as well as more insight into what made him such a sincere and intense performer. what exactly was driving the band's creative vision? sure, it rams home the marital problems and the epilepsy, without an inch of subtlety i might add, but what was distinct about curtis' personality that made him react to these issues the way he did? this film seems to focus on the band and its music on a secondary level, while curtis' domestic struggles are given precedence. that was possibly the point of the film, but it's a surprising take as far as i'm concerned, given the symbolic potency of the music and the extraordinary resonance that it still has with fans so many years later.

deborah curtis was portrayed as a bit of a gormless outcast. she's quite sweet and you feel bad for her, yet she's somehow completely unlikeable. annick, by contrast, is presented as some sort of mystic siren - every phrase she speaks is seemingly loaded with a prophet's wisdom. what's so compelling about her relationship with ian? the movie doesn't really touch on this, despite the high level of emphasis that is placed on the couple's relationship.

gretton is great. funny, sharp, and full of cutting remarks. the humour in this film is mostly effective. it's not about trumping situations up for forced laughs, but focuses on believable characterisation as a means of exposing its lighter side. it's a film i enjoyed watching from start to finish - and i suppose, that, in itself stands for something. certain parts were overdramatised, and i think the film suffers as a result, but i think overall the corbjin did a good job.

It's tough, guys, but it's a film made for people who don't necessarily know the whole story already and arent looking for uPVC Windows (ffs!).

if I've learned anything these last couple of days, is that despite the myth, and despite the almost religious conversions of people like Gretton, Wilson, their fans etc, the band saw themselves as a bunch of dudes, making music like anybody else. Ian wrote some words, came in, the band jammed and he picked out the good bits and that was it. Like every other band of the period they wanted to sound like Velvets/Bowie/Iggy but they couldn't do it quite exact, it somehow came out differently, they were happy with that, then Hannett sprinkled on what Hook calls "the salt and pepper". It seems like anything unique about Curtis was that bit of distance he had, which he kept from everybody, Debbie, the Band, Annik etc, and perhaps it wouldn't have been possible for the movie to go any deeper inside his head then they all ever could.

I like the simplicity of the movie, how much of the first 2/3rd are just layed out without too much heavy melodramatic mythologizing, and it takes its time so by the time you get this pretty simple love triangle and a guy who can't deal with it and has medical problems on top of that it's come about more gradually. If this was a biopic of the band as much of his life and had to stick in all the stories it couldn't have done that as gracefully, I think. Yeah, it wasn't always so subtle, particularly the moment where he says "I don't think I love you" CUE LOVE WILL TEAR US APART (hey, at least they didn't play that during the scene when they're lying in bad and he turns away on his side, right?)

But as discussed here and elsewhere, despite some obvious mythologizing around the time of his death and the release of their last records, it seems like people involved have always wanted to say "he was a normal guy" "we had a laugh" "we were a rock-n-roll band", and being based on and around the book, it had to be about these people and their lives. We'll have to wait for the documentary perhaps to go into their impact and resonance and whatnot.

(hey, at least they didn't play that during the scene when they're lying in bad and he turns away on his side, right?)
-- dan selzer, Friday, October 19, 2007 9:06 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

so incredibly OTM

"i don't like hotdogs!"

It's tough, guys, but it's a film made for people who don't necessarily know the whole story already and arent looking for uPVC Windows (ffs!)

I wasn't looking for them! But in monochrome their whiteness made them really jump out at me. After that, I admit, I was looking for more anachronism. Alba, I don't remember self-seal envelopes until the nineties, but my family was the last to get a video and microwave so perhaps there was some backwardness wrt stationery too.

I saw two C reg plates, which weren't issued until 1985/6. And a Husker Du poster. Surely Husker Du hadn't toured the UK before 1981? And Joe Anderson (Peter Hook) screwed up the accent a couple of times.

But yeah, really, really good film. Great performances all around, felt Northern in a plausible way.

There was a modern litter bin in one of the opening shots... but really I thought the period details were mostly excellent. Especially liked the TV with just three channel buttons, labelled BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV.

Rob's flat had one of those fancy modern fuseboxes that are little levers instead of proper fuses.

They're called Circuit Breakers. Over here at least.

I totally noticed the Husker Du poster! Maybe there was a belgian Husker Du who played Plan K in 1980?

There was a sewing machine in the corner of the living room which was identical to the one my grandmother gave me, with a lovely floral patterned hard case.

But they also had a Klippan sofa and a Billy bookcase.

And a Nintendo Wii.

"don't walk away.. with yr phone on silent.."

the scene where they all get iphones was a bit much for sure.

There was a sewing machine in the corner of the living room which was identical to the one my grandmother gave me, with a lovely floral patterned hard case.

blue with white flowers?

My mum had one that was blue with white flowers. She may even still have it.

Up one of the walls of a terraced house was a bit of wiring that you only see now leading down to cable tv in the street, in particular the bit where the wire goes into the house, and I was just about to lean over to my friend and tell her about it when a little voice inside my head said "don't..." so i waited till the end. This shows growth I think.

When they're playing LWTUA, Ian is playing a 2000's Eastwood Vox Phantom copy with a very visible trademark on the headstock.

yes, and don't you think debbie looked awfully like that samantha morton? ooh, and one of hooky's beard hairs was ever so slightly longer than he'd have had it at the time. and i'm sure there was a tiny piece of 21st-century dust visible on the sideboard for a millionth of a second.

FFS, people.

Actually those jeans of debbie's were spot-on for the time!

I didn't notice the dust.

"yes, and don't you think debbie looked awfully like that samantha morton?'

LOL

Morton's acting was a bit odd, if quite good, I thought she was trying to be the policewoman from Life on Mars at one point.

I thought she was great. Rumour has it she's quite the diva but if that's what it takes to be this good I for one don't give a damn.

One of the audience members had a very contemporary looking goatee beard. Also, Stroszeck had only just come out then so probably wouldn't have been shown on TV yet. Actually I thought they could've showed his descent into suicidal despair a bit more brutally, but then again who wants to see that? Depression is mostly mundane and boring.

But it's been a long stated fact that he watched Strosczeck on TV that night. Maybe BBC was showing recent foreign films.

mundane and boring

yes, like nit-picking over supposed "factual" errors, especially ones based on -- as dan says -- long-established fact.

please, people, can we possibly give this a rest?

Yes people.

But it's been a long stated fact that he watched Strosczeck on TV that night. Maybe BBC was showing recent foreign films.

It was out in 1977, so every chance the Beeb would be showing it - they used to show stuff like that then, y'know, good stuff

Wasn't it a video he watched anyway?

No, it was on the TV, that's why he didn't watch it at his parents house as they woudn't have enjoyed it.

(i know...)

Respec'

I don't have much to add except that i saw it on Sunday and enjoyed it a lot more than i expected to and that the recreation of the music by the actors in the live sequences was amazing.

(KUCI Ned???)

Um, yeah? Do we know each other?

Ned, in case you're still reading ... no, not personally, but from socal-raves days I know a bunch of KUCI-associated people you know. (Dan, Chris, Ben, Dána, Andy and so on) Low Kevin Bacon Factor between us :)

As for the rest of you - you do realize us Yanks aren't exactly trainspotting uPVC window borders in this flick don't you? ;)

Ned, in case you're still reading ...

Ha!

saw this on sunday too. great movie.

i liked how the sex pistols gig was shot, everyone's expressions were fucking priceless.

Yeah, I really liked that too. I was sitting there wondering if the youngsters in the cinema would know it was a Sex Pistols gig, but Anton helped out by shooting the next scene in front of a giant SEX PISTOLS sign so that was OK then.

blue with white flowers?

Yes!

Ned, in case you're still reading ... no, not personally, but from socal-raves days I know a bunch of KUCI-associated people you know. (Dan, Chris, Ben, Dána, Andy and so on) Low Kevin Bacon Factor between us :)

Oh cool. Hi dere!

I am sooooooooooooooo mad that the soundtrack does not include the versions of JD songs done by the cast. I want that version of Candidate damnit!!!! Fuck the whole damn world. I thought the versions they did were really interesting interpretations, and that particular one made me flashback to my teenage years for some odd reason. God please tell me they will come out all of them, eventually. Well they will on the DVD I guess...but I wanted the whole damn version of Candidate so bad.

I'm kindof half and half on the film itself. Some parts just didn't seem quite believable to me, especially Rob's entrance, and mention of "Rob's Records" which didn't come about til later. But in some respects I realized the belief to be suspended depended upon how much of a fan you were and how much you could overlook those things as kindof tongue-in-cheek gestures, like the Fall comment.

And yes the Wilson guy was shite...where was the cheeriness in his voice on TV? Surely at least there he shouldn't have sounded so dour.

But the best things about the film (aside from the music) were Sam Riley's performance (which seems in retrospect almost a superhuman feat)
and the fact that it gave Ian a kind of humanity and realness he's never really had before for fans.

And no I don't think the Killers version of Shadowplay was that bad, actually. But then I'm a Killers fan, always have been and always will be.

Right! Next is vinyl reissues and I'm buying a brand new turntable to mark the occasion!

You see, I recall on the BBC4 Factory thing recently that Saville said Gretton had not actually managed a band before them...or at least I thought it was Saville. Someone said that. And yet Rob claims to be managing a couple of bands in the film. Maybe he was just saying it out of a confident bluff, but as I said, that scene just bothered me for some reason. And yet what do I know? It could totally have happened that way.

The soundtrack includes the cast version of Transmission.

Gretton hung out with Slaughter and the Dogs and Ed Banger and the Nosebleeders, maybe he was kinda considered a "manager" or involved with their management in someway.

The soundtrack includes the cast version of Transmission.

I know that, Dan. But it's not near enough and I'm going to see it again Wed. with another friend of mine and I am taking a tape recorder into the theater. I can't wait until Feb for the DVD, man. I just can't.

Re: Gretton, it's possible. Who knows? I sure don't. If there's much on this stuff that is actually documented, I'm not aware of it at all.

Another kudos to this film was seeing Hannett say Curtis' performance was genius. Paints a bit of a different picture of Hannett than the stereotype of him, which I appreciate. Apparently Hannett & Curtis got on quite well, more than the Hannett seemed to with the rest of the band, and Hannett seemed to take Ian's death harder than most in that circle from what I understand.

Another thing that brought a smile to my face in this film was when they got the guy from Crispy Ambulance to come out and sing. I was so chuffed to see they'd at least made some effort to get a guy who looked like him, even if they were only about 30-40% successful.

i thought he looked about 42% like him.

Haha slocki!

And yes I know Crispy Ambulance are playing in Belgium in December with the Names, Section 25, Kevin Hewick w/Peter Hook & Martin Moscrop as DJ's and I don't have a passport and I could never get one in time to do it and that's why I want to die. Thank you and goodnight.

Saw this yesterday. I was blown away by how just good it was, and I'm not even a JD fan.

And yes I know Crispy Ambulance are playing in Belgium in December with the Names, Section 25, Kevin Hewick w/Peter Hook & Martin Moscrop as DJ's

?!

link? when? fucking hell.

I think it's mentioned on Hook's myspace page.

No...scrub that...there's nothing on there...but this is the CA website...
http://www.crispyambulance.com/images/plank.jpg

don't think this has been linked yet; Tom Breihan makes a bunch of interesting Control observations on his VV blog:

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/statusainthood/archives/2007/10/things_i_learne_18.php

i think i disagree with just about everything he says there.

wtf, yeah. slocki OTM. i don't think i've ever read an article with so much wrongness.

except the part where he says that joy division goes well with... images.

to pick out just one thing re tony wilson:

His character in Control really couldn't be more different from the way Steve Coogan played him in Winterbottom's film

i thought the one major flaw of Control that wilson is played too much like coogan's portrayal of him.

MARK: Did you, did Tony Wilson see the film before he passed away?

ANTON: No, he didn’t unfortunately. He came to the set a few times, though. He had an idea of what we were doing and he liked the character. Greg Balkerson plays him in the film.

MARK: Um-hmm.

ANTON: He thought that was very accurate. And of course, he was very famously portrayed by Steve Coogan in Turn the Flowerpot.

MARK: Um-hmm.

ANTON: But we all know that was a caricature

MARK: Yeah. Absolutely.

ANTON: That’s not really Tony Wilson. And Tony Wilson always said about playing a myth, go between the story and the myth, go with the myth.

MARK: Yeah.

ANTON: So that’s what happened with Tony. For our part, the people in our film, they are mostly very accurate portrayals of people.

MARK: Um-hmm. It’s interesting, because I find the film, your film complements 24-hour Party People very well. They both tell a very sort of different type of version of that story.

ANTON: Yeah. It was different stories, really.

MARK: Um-hmm.

ANTON: I think 24-hour Party People touches on a lot of stuff, but only on the surface.

MARK: Yeah.

ANTON: Because it goes on a very long period of time. I don’t particularly like how they deal with Ian’s suicide in that film, but I laughed a lot at other things.

MARK: Um-hmm.

ANTON: But my film goes for Ian Curtis, sort of one element of that really, but goes very deep.

MARK: Yeah.

ANTON: You know. Then touches upon Joy Division. In fact, 24-hour Party People is not about Joy Division either. It touches upon that.

MARK: Um-hmm.

ANTON: So there is no real Joy Division film yet, in that sense.

it just seems amazing to me that anyone could come out of this film with the view that curtis "acts like a total spineless worm" and was "a coward" rather than just... a fucked up (on meds) depressed guy who made a lot of wrong decisions he couldn't bring himself to deal with.

ya i totally agree. what a weird mean-spirited way to watch that movie

MARK: Did you, did Tony Wilson see the film before he passed away?
MARK: Um-hmm.
MARK: Um-hmm.
MARK: Yeah. Absolutely.
MARK: Yeah.
MARK: Um-hmm. It’s interesting, because I find the film, your film complements 24-hour Party People very well. They both tell a very sort of different type of version of that story.
MARK: Um-hmm.
MARK: Yeah.
MARK: Um-hmm.
MARK: Yeah.
MARK: Um-hmm.

^ GAH

It's called a transcription, Stephen! Jeez.

ya i say umhmm a lo

ya it's pretty word-for-word. i grunt a lot when i interview ppl so to keep them talking. admittedly not pretty!

a movie about a guy who killed himself at 23 ffs.

xposts - sorry, still mad at that article.

a fucked up (on meds) depressed guy who made a lot of wrong decisions he couldn't bring himself to deal with.

-- jed_, Monday, 29 October 2007

uh, that's kind of the definition of a coward. especially when at least 75% of what was plaguing him (leaving 25% for the epilepsy) was a hole he had dug for himself like the (little bitch) he was. "waah i can't break up with my affair and deal with the responsibilities of my life." boo hoo.

jd are possibly Top 5 Of All Time for me, still, but y'all need to stop playing cap'n-save-an-abandoning-father. that shit's kinda unforgivable, mitigated ONLY mostly by the fact that he was 23. but not entirely.

p.s. this movie was awful and i'm going to assume anyone giving it a pass was hypnotized by how nice it looked.

Let's forget this and compare the Ian Curtis's

http://images.scotsman.com/2002/04/05/0504ianb.jpg

http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/0/5/7/2/16312750-16312755-slarge.jpg

http://www.longliverocknroll.it/Speciali/ian_curtis.jpg

I think the guy who did him in 24 hour party people actually looked more like the real Ian.

yeah the control dude looks more like doherty than curtis

Oof. Well that'll make watching it pretty painful.

Plan on seeing it in a few days -- I think Jess's points are pretty well taken, and remember thinking similar thoughts after I read the book.

Ooh! Compare the Ian Curtises, I love it!

WTF? Not to derail (ha, I was just reading that ILE thread on suicide and depression), but how can anyone think that someone's decisions while in the grip of genuine depression could be described as cowardly (in any meaningful or compassionate way)? Seriously, that's pretty fucking cold.

from "We're gonna tour America" to end: LONGEST FILM OF THE YEAR

Possibly the most grauitous musician-bio film in recent decades, and that's saying plenty.

Grouitious?

You people are messing up this thread, fuck!

oh yeah.

I'm not even sure I'm serious.

I'm still righteously pissed at that Jess Harvell post, though.

Jess OTM about Ian! P.S. I haven't seen the film, yet.

so when did ILX invent this time machine (not to mention acquire a sophisticated array of psychological and physiological tests) so it could be absolutely sure about the motivations and emotions of a dude who died 27 years ago?

jess's post, while hardly couched in the most sensitive of terms, perhaps contains elements of the truth. personally, i think the biggest problem was that IC's brain was mashed by the anti-epilepsy drugs.

but you know what? WE'RE NEVER GONNA FUCKIN' KNOW FOR SURE. which is why films will continue to be made, and arguments on message boards will continue to rage.

fuck's sake. i think i preferred it when we were spotting anachroni ... actually, no, strike that. did i fuck.

I dunno, did you.

btw strongo pretty much OTM

no he fucking is not

FOR FUCK'S SAKE

I meant, confined to the film, at least. A pretty time waster. Listen to the records.

dr morbius, i don't think strongo was referring to the film.

sorry but this posturing around the moral character of a seriously ill man, suffering from depression, on a stultifying, ever changing round of medication is one of the ugliest things i've read on this board.

p.s. this movie was awful and i'm going to assume anyone giving it a pass was hypnotized by how nice it looked.

-- strongohulkington, Monday, October 29, 2007 4:05 AM (Yesterday)

we were shown not one, not two, but FOUR fucken epileptic fits.

talk about hamming it up

yeh morbius, that was by some margin the less conspicuous of two posts. I have no way of knowing what kind of criteria someone responisble for this kind of sentiment:

"uh, that's kind of the definition of a coward. especially when at least 75% of what was plaguing him (leaving 25% for the epilepsy) was a hole he had dug for himself like the (little bitch) he was. "waah i can't break up with my affair and deal with the responsibilities of my life." boo hoo."

would apply to a joy division biopic, surely they can't be bemoaning it's lack of emotional complexity?

those statistics terrify me. i suppose it makes sense that joy division fans see things in black and white...

CW? CRW?

mark, i think i know what you are implying but what the fuck could it possibly mean in this context? seriously, i'd like to know. it's just weird.

anyway, cw pretty much otm although i'd seen much much uglier things than that on the board. as far as strongo's post and morbius's support of it... well, it's in character, i guess. it probably says more about them than curtis.

i don't at all think it's an ugly opinion it's just one i don't happen to share.

To the real-life IC "selfish" for the decisions he made is perhaps "ugly." To criticize the movie IC is a whole different matter. I don't doubt that IC was seriously ill. But to be fair, the film seems afraid to really delve into it. If you didn't know the back story, you'd seriously have no idea from watching the film why he was so depressed.

Well his own wife had a go post-mortem didn't she? "Touching from a Distance" is hardly a flattering portrait.

y'all need to stop playing cap'n-save-an-abandoning-father. that shit's kinda unforgivable, mitigated ONLY mostly by the fact that he was 23. but not entirely.
-- strongohulkington, Sunday, October 28, 2007 11:01 PM (3 days ago)

i agree with jess here. i'm 22, been a single dad since i was 17 and never once thought to abandon my daughter. so yes, ian was more or less a coward w/r/t his family life. still a big fan, but it's true.

It's amazing that an adap of the wife's book makes her seem like such a drip.

morbs corbijn insisted it WASN'T an adap when i talked to him

fwiw

MARK: Tell me about bringing Deborah Curtis’ perspective to bear on the film.
ANTON: I didn’t really bring her perspective to the film. I was fighting that perspective.
MARK: Right.
ANTON: I wanted to have Ian Curtis’ story, and also, if you talk about the love affair and the love story of that Annik.
MARK: Um-hmm.
ANTON: You know, properly developed character in there. I mean, that was a real love story, so I didn’t want her character to be assassinated by the movie version.
MARK: Yeah. For sure.
ANTON: Because that wasn’t the case.

i'm 22, been a single dad since i was 17

o_0

Honestly, the things you learn! I had no idea!

while I think we've all come to learn that Ian could be an asshole and made some shitty and selfish decisions, I don't see how we can so easily call him a coward without really knowing what he was going through...c'mon, manic depression + about 12 different kinds of pills that they'd probably never prescribe at the same time these days + the fits + all the other stuff we've seen. I mean, I take sudafed 4 days in a row for a cold and I can barely get out of bed I'm so out of it.

exactly. displaying behaviour that some people -- who aren't actually, and can't ever be, in possession of all the facts -- consider cowardly doesn't make you "a coward".

Jess and Morbs OTM. A real disappointment. Alternating between giving explicit motivation and being too damn taciturn, it frustrated the hell out of me.

it's really not as bad as y'all are making it out to be.

...or as good as those Corbijn stills/photos.

i agree with jess here. i'm 22, been a single dad since i was 17 and never once thought to abandon my daughter. so yes, ian was more or less a coward w/r/t his family life.

Sorry, I had a tantrum in this thread then disappeared. I was pissed off about a simple thing, really, which I alluded to when I mentioned some other ILE thread that discussed depression... namely, that depression isn't necessarily something that is triggered by some event (although it can be). It's an illness. Which makes it cruel to attribute morality and judgment to actions taken by a person who is genuinely, clinically depressed. I hear what you're saying stephen, but the difference between you and someone who might conceivably abandon his daughter is that you are not depressed! I mean, Kurt Cobain seemed to genuinely think that his daughter would be better off without his presence in the world (I remember him writing something to this effect in his suicide note). It's a mental illness. Which affects/warps/twists thought processes! "Cowardly" or "cruel" or whatever don't come into it. For all we know, they thought they were being kind or accommodating or whatever.

Point taken re: critiquing the movie vs. critiquing IC's actual life, though.

Hmm, I'm reluctant to say too much for fear of upsetting someone, but still...

Disappointing
The ending didn't make much sense. I know depression isn't logical and real life probably was like that, but the fact is that for a story to work the ending needs to be somehow inevitable, and this was only inevitable because we already know what happened. Ian should've been more obviously controlling or nastier somehow, or to have never failed at anything in his life before, or even just to have been more obviously depressed. Instead it was like he got everything he wanted - and then killed himself. The film made it look almost like a whim.
The humour. Hooky and Barney seemed too nice, and their gags were a bit predictable. I wanted them to be crueller to Annik when she was was interviewing them. Rob's gags were better. I also really liked the notorious bit where Steven Morris takes Ian's fags out his pocket, how it was just matter-of-fact.
The voiceover jarred with me. I suppose it shoehorned in enough internal struggle to justify the ending, but it was weird to get an internal monologue so late in the film.

Really good
The music. I know they're fairly simple songs, but if the actors really did perform them live it is very impressive. Transmission seemed a bit slow, mind.
Rob Gretton. Brilliant performance.
The photography. Some of it had a really small depth of field, which struck me as quite unusual and nice to look at - a shot of Ian walking into the labour exchange, with the building very gradually coming into focus behind him. Best was an early landscape shot looking up a hill, with Ian and Debbie walking or running into it - the black & white made it look phenomenally beautiful.
Steven Morris playing the aerosol in the studio was priceless.

So while I enjoyed it, on the whole it's probably ultimately a pretty failure. I do hope Corbijn gets another go at directing.

s1ocki, he shoulda checked the credits.

The voiceover jarred with me. I suppose it shoehorned in enough internal struggle to justify the ending, but it was weird to get an internal monologue so late in the film.

I thought that too. They were supposed to be readings from his journals, yes? It wasn't that late that they started, actually. I remember it jarring when he did a voiceover about how it was all getting so big and everyone wanted him to perform and he couldn't do it anymore. Which they showed perfectly well with his stage-fright, I don't think they needed exposition.

s1ocki, he shoulda checked the credits.

-- Dr Morbius, Wednesday, November 7, 2007 8:44 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i assumed they used it enough as a source material that they HAD to credit her... but that he didnt want it to be entirely her story.

i felt that it should've been silent. we know how the music sounds and the dialogue was crap, and it introduced nothing new.

a voiceover about how it was all getting so big and everyone wanted him to perform and he couldn't do it anymore

Oh, I didn't realise that was a voiceover - I thought he was talking to someone else (maybe Tony Wilson) at that point. I thought there was only one voiceover, about how much he had to give out on stage, which is why it seemed to strange to just have one. But you're right, pretty much everything was shown perfectly well with other stuff.

I thought of something else I liked - the costumes. I liked how Debbie's floral dresses made her so out-of-place. And it was good that the other kids weren't stereotypical punks. I only saw one mohican.

the only slightly irritating thing was Annik's non-stop doe-eyed stares, otherwise, bravo, excellent piece of film...I particularly liked the early parts, pre-JD, with Ian in his room smoking and listening to Roxy

I did a lengthy and meandering write-up about the Viva Radio Control shows.

You can access the playlistshere.

and my blog entry here.

Thurston Moore on the film, as well as JD/Ian Curtis in general, via Pfork:

>> Last Great Film I Saw

Anton Corbijn: Control

I just went to see Anton Corbijn's film, Control. I really liked it. Usually, a biopic like that-- I've had a lot of feelings of conflict about a short-lived and precious kind of band in a way. And this is going to be hard to watch. But he really nailed it by not really making so much a biopic about Joy Division, but just basically really relying on Ian Curtis's wife's account of her relationship with this guy. And the fact that they got married at such a young age and had a baby at such a young age and started singing in this band, and they became pretty popular pretty quickly and dealing with his own epilepsy and his obvious problems with self-doubt and immaturity at that age. Being at such a state of reponsibilty at parenthood and having a band that were so demanding of his time, and getting involved with another relationship-- I thought Anton really captured that in a very-- not in an exploitative way at all. It's a very simple film because it only takes time between this guy when he's 17 to when he's 23. But what really kind of excited me, was as soon as he becomes the singer of this band called Warsaw who later become Joy Division, the way he captured it on film, the way they're playing music, was really startling. I had never really seen a movie where a director captured a band playing as a punk band in a way where it wasn't just exploiting the fact that they were a punk band, and having all of this shock-vibe to it...it was all about the idea of these young people making radical and marginalized music. He shows the band doing their first performance, and that nervous-energy of playing that kind of music in front of a crowd at a club. It sounded so good. The way that band sounded was real minimal, direct, aggressive, yet very artful; Ian as a lyricist and a vocalist was so personal. It really comes across. It really inspired me; how heavy a band they were.

I remember buying a ticket to see them play in New York when they were coming over, and I certainly remember really liking Unknown Pleasures because it was such a mysterious kind of record. And it was only, like, days before that concert that we got a report that the singer killed himself and they're not coming over. I remember at the time, I couldn't really process that. I was like the same age, living in New York, and thinking, "What could bring somebody like that to that point?" Being in a band, a great band like that-- what could possibly be the reason? And I remember holding onto the ticket for awhile, but then I got evicted from my apartment and I lost everything. I don't have it anymore. But then, six months later, New Order came over. I didn't go to that. I invested most of my interest in that band as a band with that singer. And then gladly rediscovering their music. But their music has become so culturally important to so many people, like Siouxsie and the Banshees or something. I kind of have a reaction to that kind of thing in a way. And I think Anton did a really fabulous job as far as giving a band like that an interesting story.

thurston moore is to music what billy crystal is to baseball games.

the siouxsie comment is weird though

It is weird, but Thurston is always coming from weird angles like that - strangely over or under-estimating public recognition of bands.

thurston moore is to music what billy crystal is to baseball games.

explain pls... sorry i don't know much about billy crystal/what he has to say about baseball..just curious

Crystal basically has nothing to say that fans want/need to hear.

how many SY videos has Corbijn done?

totally wrong! i love Thurston's commentary on music and pop culture, think he's a great example of someone who listens to music for love's sake, rather than just for consumption like a lot of people nowadays. he's a true fan of everything he professes to love, popular or not, and if you've ever met the guy in person (as i have several times now) and discussed such things with him, it's especially obvious.

are you suzy's brother?

no. who's suzy?

a headbanger

i expected to really like this but i didn't - there was just too much i found unsatisfying.

i was impressed by the band performances (other than the vocals), dude doing gretton was great, morton did a good job and i thought the relationship between ian and debbie was portrayed really well.

i thought the casting was generally quite poor - the guy doing wilson seemed like he was playing coogan playing wilson, not wilson. i thought riley was a bit of a crappy actor, particularly during the performance scenes. the singing couldn't decide if it wanted to be ian curtis or neil young. most of the time he looked more bored and a little indifferent than anguished or depressed.

bernard sumner continues to be a complete enigma in all of these films. did he really come across as this much of a non-event in reality?

also the almost complete lack of anything to do with his creative processes was pretty much unforgivable to me. it verged on portraying him as a pretty, and barely talented, asshole

ian that is

re crystal/baseball: even espn dudes make fun of him since he seems to have attended every major baseball moment since Ruth came to NYC.

bernard sumner continues to be a complete enigma in all of these films. did he really come across as this much of a non-event in reality?

Listen to his lyrics! (and I love the man)

You're mostly OTM, but I liked the guy playing Tony Wilson.

I just saw this movie.

What a shit portrayal of women. I know this is a tormented white rock star messiah film including two dimensional women (see: Johnny Cash movie, Doors movie) but even by those standards this was fucked up.

Oh and the hypnotism scene, and him reading poetry to a rapt audience were so corny I laughed.

Yeah, I saw the film twice and both times the hypnotism scene seemed like a strange and unnecessary detour. Electricsound OTM re: creative process.

Much as I like Thurston, he sounds kindof out of his depth here. It bothers me a bit that he seems to think it's based more on Debbie's book than it is, and I bet a lot of people will understandably make that assumption. She actually portrays him much more negatively than the film does.

That thurston bit read like they caught him on the way to, um, I dunno a Baseball game?

It did one thing very well: It didn't present Ian Curtis as depressed so much as it suggested that being Ian Curtis was kind of depressing. Is the logical leap to suicide there? Not really but the more I think about it I kind of like that. As a film it was far from perfect but it was worth breaking my ban on biopics for and certainly went a long way in rescuing a genre that has become just totally awful in recent years. For a guy with photo/video background I thought Corbijn made some really good decisions with the narrative and I'll give him total props for selecting to leave out the creative process--the problem with biopics is that they try to grab everything, and he focused in his film to great effect,

oh yeah: John Cooper Clarke gave the best performance

the point is, if what the film focuses on is everything BUT THE ONE THAT MADE HIM EXTRAORDINARY, what's the point?

I haven't seen this yet, but I can't imagine how it could depict his messed up inner life you read about in anecdotes. Like ... the depression and alienation of feeling like some kind-of infected outsider doomed from birth, curled up crying listening to Throbbing Gristle, etc. etc. I can't imagine any way to capture that on film that wouldn't gross people out, aka, make the rock star hero look kinda pathetic. Unless it does have those scenes, in which case I'll see it.

the point is, if what the film focuses on is everything BUT THE ONE THAT MADE HIM EXTRAORDINARY, what's the point?

I guess this comes down to if you think he was extraordinary or not.

if he wasn't, then there's absolutely NO reason to make a film.

I don't know about that....you don't think it's possible that the myth and legacy of Joy Division doesn't match up with the reality of Joy Division? You don't think films about sub-extraordinary people and events are occasionally worth making?

sorry, that's AREN'T

No, you said "don't" so that was right.

Wow, I over-grammar-corrected myself.

If Control were a portrait of mental illness and the creative process, cool. I honestly don't think Joy Division's music itself was all that great outside of feeling Curtis's illness in the music. I can't imagine him being a rock star hero to anyone.

Some of us loved Joy Division at the time, and the idea that Ian would become a "dead rock star" was not one we really entertained. So I guess I'm saying almost the opposite of what you just said, burt... except that a really good treatment of the topics you mentioned could indeed make an interesting movie, that I agree with. Well, I'm trying to say this properly and not really doing a very good job, but I think it might be difficult for anyone not old enough (!) to grasp, but Ian didn't need to die in order for many people to dig JD's music back in 1979/80. Kind of like how everyone who became aware in the '90s get embarrassed by the whole Cobain thing, forgetting that Nirvana could be a really fucking great band, subsequent mythologising notwithstanding.

*seriously entertained, anyway

Well, I'll be amazed if anyone entertained the idea he might die young. Seriously or otherwise.

Ian's daughter's thoughts:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2173446,00.html

Look, I can't remember what thread it was talked about on, and I have an elbow injury that makes me not want to spend hours on the computer scrolling around for it, but can someone please explain to me why it is that I've watched all the deleted scenes on my double UK DVD of 24 Party People and at no time did I see Sam Riley playing Mark E. Smith? I know there were other deleted scenes unique to the US DVD...surely it couldn't have been on that one, though?

the US version at least has a very very brief scene of the actor playing mark e smith in line at the club. coogan/wilson passes him and says "hello mark" or something like that.

But, much as I always appreciate your posts, latebloomer, that scene is part of the proper film. I'm talking about whatever Ned and whoever else mentioned about Sam Riley playing Mark E Smith in some outtake or whatever. Is it just a freaking myth?

I saw Control yesterday, wanted to share a few thoughts. I have little interest in Joy Division or Ian Curtis, or tragic rock tales in general, but I have to say the film was very well made - the actors were very good, there was more humour than I expected (which was nice), and the cinematography was absolutely beautiful. However, if the Ian Curtis myth doesn't much interest you, the movie has few new insights to offer. It pretty much follows the stereotypic Tragic Rock Icon formula: IC seems to already be a lonely, tormented poet in the beginning, and in the end dies as one. Control hints that he was an undiagnosed depressive, and that his epilepsy medication made this worse, but it doesn't really go any deeper into his mental condition. It seems like he dies simply because a tragic hero needs to die, and the movie doesn't really put much thought into whether his suicide could've been avoided.

So, as a tried and tested rock & roll tragedy Control works fine, but to me the formula itself is kinda boring. I'd much rather see a movie about a band whose depressive lead singer dies a tragic death, but who eventually manage to get over it, and in the end become more popular than ever. Unfortunately that sort of a story seems to have less appeal for moviemakers.

24 hour party people?

the movie doesn't really put much thought into whether his suicide could've been avoided.

how exactly would you represent that cinematically? doctor in a white coat comes out at the end and gives the audience a stern talking-to about mental health?

Tuomas - erm, what? It's not a formulaic film at all, and you seem to be wanting a film with a different plot to what actually happened.

well no he wants to see a film about new order not joy division

the movie doesn't really put much thought into whether his suicide could've been avoided.

how exactly would you represent that cinematically? doctor in a white coat comes out at the end and gives the audience a stern talking-to about mental health?

I'm not sure how to represent it cinematically - maybe have some of the supporting characters talk about his mental condition, plus what happened to it after he started taking the medication. As it was, no one in the movie seemed to pay proper attention to his very obvious psychological problems. Maybe it was like that in real life, but I kinda doubt it. Anyway, what the film could've avoided was to depict him as this lone, silent, tragic figure right from the start, because that sorta gave the impression his death was inevitable.

It's not a formulaic film at all, and you seem to be wanting a film with a different plot to what actually happened.

All films based on "what actually happened" are fictionalized anyway, the filmmakers always choose a particular approach to portraying real events. I thought Control was a very well made and effective movie (I did cry in the end), but the way it depicted Curtis's life was quite cliched and not very inventive or insightful. Okay, maybe he really did live a stereotypical life of a tragic rock hero, but that doesn't mean you have to depict it stereotypically. I thought 24 Hour Party People did a nice job in avoiding that, while at the same time presenting it as the tragedy it was.

As it was, no one in the movie seemed to pay proper attention to his very obvious psychological problems. Maybe it was like that in real life, but I kinda doubt it.

Rob Gretton, Tony Wilson, and all the members of New Order have said countless times that they didn't think anything was seriously wrong with him, and that they were all having too good of a time to notice anything regardless.

Anyway, what the film could've avoided was to depict him as this lone, silent, tragic figure right from the start, because that sorta gave the impression his death was inevitable.

This is exactly how Debbie Curtis portrays him in her book -- depressed from a young age and generally obsessed with death.

I'd much rather see a movie about a band...who eventually manage to get over it, and in the end become more popular than ever.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/1b/57/51956230a8a0ebb6940ff010._AA240_.L.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510TA2DYYRL._AA240_.jpg

I haven't seen Ray, but yeah, I certainly liked Walk the Line better than Control.

http://www.elandregistration.com/images/Head%20on%20Desk.jpg

"Control hints that he was an undiagnosed depressive...."

I'm no expert but, based on some of items in that appalling cocktail of drugs that were apparently being prescribed for him in one scene, it looked to me rather as if he had been diagnosed as a depressive - which was news to me.

Maybe, especially given prevalent attitudes towards mental health issues in '79/'80, Deborah Curtis wasn't keen on having this fact publicised.

Maybe (especially given the state of their marriage) Ian didn't tell her.

Weren't the drugs prescribed for his epilepsy? The movie never said they were for something else. Don't know if epileptics would actually have so many different drugs though, even in the seventies.

As I said I'm no expert, but there were drugs included in that list which I've heard of as treatments for depression (e.g. Dexedrine) but which I'm not aware of having ever being used as treatments for elilepsy; although of course it's possible that e.g. they were prescribing the Dexy's to counter-act some of the side-effects of the Barbiturates!

As I understand it there were a lot of drugs about that were being experimented with in different combinations for controlling epilepsy in different combinations, often in almost random combinations..... It did seem unlikely that they'd have started out prescribing that many at once right from the outset which was another reason why I wondered if it was more than just epilepsy that was being treated (although of course there may well have been may have been artistic licence being used, maybe to list all the medications he ended up on rather than the ones that were prescribed from the outset).

Would anyone care to transcribe that list of drugs so we can look 'em all up?!?

Hah I just saw Grant Gee's "Joy Division" documentary last week and you'd have prob enjoyed that more Tuomas - aside from being mostly light-hearted, it also ends on a positive note, following the band through the aftermath of Ian's death and on as New Order.

Whether anyone did anything to help - the hypnotism was Bernard Sumner's idea, he thought it might help after Ian came crying to him one day about feeling suicidal. But yeah, most of them didn't think anything was wrong because a) being naturally reserved, Curtis was good at hiding his feelings most of the time and b) after he started his epilepsy medication, he went through extreme mood swings - happy and jokey one day, and bawling his eyes out the next. I don't think it was something the band or anyone else around knew how to handle or predict, they just thought it was the side-effects of the drugs. So he wasn't completely depresso all the time - Bernard and Hooky admitted to playing elaborate pranks on Curtis and Annik on tour, and just generally having a fun time with them.

And practically everyone close to Ian (except for Annik) admitted they never paid attention to his lyrics or dreamed that he might have been writing about himself.

This is exactly how Debbie Curtis portrays him in her book -- depressed from a young age and generally obsessed with death.

Yeah, and considering when the movie starts, he was about 17; there were and are still loads of 17-year-olds who go through that stage of being dreamy and obsessed with poetry and death. Dude just never got out of it, or never had time to.

".... he went through extreme mood swings - happy and jokey one day, and bawling his eyes out the next.... So he wasn't completely depresso all the time....

That's as good a description of bipolar disorder as any I've read.

Although, of course, in '79/'80 they'd have called it "manic depressive illness": a term which was far more emotive and far more stigmatised.

I thought it sounded like bipolar but I've never heard of it being triggered by epilepsy medication before. But yeah, the band were pretty adamant that he had never behaved like that before he was on the meds.

If you suddenly start giving Dexys and Barbs and all sorts of other stuff all at the same time to someone who's already got a chronic neurological disorder, then who knows what new symptoms / conditions this might create or indeed what pre-existing conditions it might suddenly make substantially worse?

Just the fact of being diagnosed as an epileptic; especially back in those days when relatively little was known about the condition, let alone how to treat it; was hardly going to be seen as a cause for jubilation.

Was quite enjoying this beautifully shot biopic about depression, fits and infedelity until the following....

At about 1hr.25m ,the actor playing that conceited Mr Madchester smarms through the door into the JD dressing room to reveal a Husker Du flyer on said door

Husker fuckin Du! 1980! In Madforitster!

They did incongruously play FAC51 but that was in about 1985?(I was there twenty odd basterd years ago...)Or maybe I was just too young for their pre Land Speed Record tour of the UK ?

Unbeknown to Mould, this dawn of the 80s appearance at Dance Central and his necking of an early 'e ' sent subliminal messages into his brain which emerged disasterously 20 years later, on the dance floors of DC ,with Cher's vocoder thrown in as an added bonus.

It's a reference to when they had the wrong poster on a wall in "24 hour PP"

Also, Fer, did you suddenly ZOOM into the present day, like Malcolm McDowell in "Time After Time" when he found that present day nickel?

I enjoyed Control, it was beautifully shot and stuff, but I still think JD are overrated and Curtis was a dick.

Well, there's always that film about Joy Division to come!

I just, obviously, kept thinking of 24hr Party People, which I love, and thinking that 24hpp was by far the better film and Tony Wilson by far the more interesting character.

I didn't get the impression that Curtis was a lifelong depressive; I got the idea that he was slightly maudlin, very into the idea of the romantic hero, and a bit of a dick, who was diagnosed with epilepsy and then given a cocktail of drugs that made his system a total mess, which, combined with the turmoil between his band lifestyle and home lifestyle, caused him to top himself.

Interestingly the guy who played Rob Gretton played Paddy Considine's retarded brother Anthony in Dead Man's Shoes; Paddy Considine having played Rob Gretton in 24hpp.

i really want to see this

this british co-worker described it just now as "the story of a young boy who becomes a guitarist"

http://www.qwipster.net/crossroads.jpg

finally saw this. above average, especially the photography, but my expectations were wrong going in. it just seemed like the visual manifestation of a plot i already knew, and maybe that is all a biopic should be. but i always hold out hope for some sort of interesting insight. and i don't mean onto a specific person's life but rather insight into life in general from the specifics of one person's life. for me, to call something an Art anything, there has to be more than depiction, even if direct literal depiction is the aesthetic of Art in question (a lot of carefully chosen literal depictions can add up to something much more). Joy Division's music accomplishes that for me, which is why reducing it simply to the emotions of IC is reductive. i understand the desire to not make the typical rock star story and portray larger-than-life characters, but describing him as just a regular dude is just as much about uncritical veneration as the other approach; it's just a type of veneration more appropriate to the expected audience for the film.

Some of the actors/actresses did quite well, but it's still a crap film. I find your post a bit hard to understand, but I don't really trust anyone who loves this film without reservations, so as far as I'm concerned, you're doing fine.

It's funny, but to me, the one scene that stands out the most is the one where Ian is walking from one building to another (I know I probably already said this upthread somehwere). All he's doing is walking...and smoking a cig and looking "cool". But the problem is it's clear that the whole POINT of that scene is just to play an amazing early JD song while he's walking. And that's IT. That's the whole POINT. And it's like...if that's all you have to say...forget it. How do you justify that scene? I really can't. It's like literally putting up a great big sign in the middle of your film saying "my film is shit, I have nothing to contribute...but look at Ian looking "cool" while this song is playing". It's pathetic.

I agree with that for the most part ... a lot of the perceived magic in the film stems from taking these characters that we know mainly from words and pictures, and animating them on a movie screen in the same black and white hues that we know and love. It's like watching the comic book characters pop out of the page and seeing them act out the story right there in front of you. I can appreciate that for what it is, but yeah, it makes for a superficial film and I was hoping for something different.

Yeah I think some of the sentences in my post are summations of much longer arguments I have rolling around in my head that are beyond my abilities to explain clearly. Perhaps it is easier to say that the film has all the conventions of an art film without being one. Long takes, carefully framed shots, carefully chosen locations, excellent use of all of the tones between black and white, relative lack of "shot -> reverse shot" editing, are all hallmarks of some of the better films made but in the end, I didn't finish this film with any greater understanding of anything than when I started.

Finally watched Control the other day. Now I know why female interest in me has picked up about 1,000% since this came out.

stfu, liar

Not totally, but I love when movies come out about pale, sensitive, troubled types. It's like ... oh yeah. Am I right, brothers?

note: pale, sensitive, troubled types with very small frames. jack pot.

what are you going to do? When you realize I'm more goth than you?

when you realize that I have outgothed you from the minute you were born, what are you going to do?

I just saw this movie. It was probably as good as it could have been, given what it was.

The Curtis character seemed uninteresting and undistinguished, a mixed-up NW chancer who worked in an office, sang in a band using a bizarre, silly syrupy American accent, and was unsurprisingly keen on the blandishments of a cute chick rather than his understandably clinging wife. I guess the one thing that would make him interesting is if one liked the band Joy Division.

And yet - so many movies are so bad. This movie wasn't actively bad at all. It seemed better made than most pictures, and it did what it did quite competently, really. I just don't think that the subject matter was compelling.

I just, obviously, kept thinking of 24hr Party People, which I love, and thinking that 24hpp was by far the better film and Tony Wilson by far the more interesting character.

Yes, exactly.

I've wanted to see that film for ages and yes - even in Control, Wilson seems more interesting than anyone else.

You haven't seen it?! You should definitely change that. I haven't seen it since it first came out but recently added it to my netflix to watch again.

Thinking about this film still makes me angry. What a piece of shit. Looked okay I suppose, Anton should stick to sub 5 minute movies.

yeah of all the films made about this particular time, 24HPP is still far and away the best. also funny as hell.

they should film some section 25 scenes and splice those into future versions of 24hpp

Yes, Pinefox, please see 24PP. So much more satisfying, even if Section 25 & Crispy Ambulance didn't get any mentions.

Oh, thanks - I'd still love to see that movie, though I don't know those bands you mention. It has been on my own film rental list for ages but they never send it to me.

one of the most enjoyable things about 24hrpp is how much tony wilson DNA went into alan partridge, and then fed back into its source here.

Lots of really great extras on the 24HPP 2-disc DVD edition.

The Grant Gee film "Joy Division" is good too. It has just the right touch of humor, irreverence, and tragedy. In contrast, Control comes off dull, ponderous, and heavy handed. Maybe the Factory story is told best by the people who lived through it.

From ImDb...

Sam Riley (who plays Ian Curtis) and Alexandra Maria Lara (who played his lover Annik Honore) married in August 2008 and now live in Berlin

Aw.

As I said on the Labour thread, I watched this last night.

Funny moment, at one point DebbieCurtis is searching through Ian's stuff looking for incriminating evidence, and moves aside a copy of the NME with Ian's photo on the front. I'm sure that's the 'memorial' edition published after Ian's death...

That's the secret sf twist.

i was really excited to see this

i was bored to tears, probably because--as has been suggested upthread--i already knew the plot

would watch a 2 hour "concert film" of the cast reenacting the les baines douches show

anton corgi shouldn't be allowed with 20 feet of a narrative

Ah, but it has one of my favourite "rock band" film moments...

Call it "it's in my fuck off pocket"