24 Hour P*rty People

The scale of the project seems too large too. You can't tell the Factory Records story without it being necessarily downbeat (unhappy ending) - yet the film is supposed to be celebrating a scene. There's more than enough story (albeit downbeat) in the Joy Division years without getting on to the Mondays.

Magic Realism - aarggh. Is this the spectre of Velvet Goldmine coming back to haunt us?

(i) to think it completely misses the point of Factory Records

(ii) lengthily to lament the omission of any Stockholm Monsters content

(iii) to look a fool on account of (i) and (ii) above.

Overall, the problem is that it just looks like Coogan's production company got a stranglehold on proceedings. I thought it would be really good casting initially - SC's brother was a Mock Turtle, etc, he really knows everything there is to know about that scene - and a director with MW's clout would be able to keep his excessiveness/Partridgeness in check. But sadly not. Steve Coogan will not cross over until he is able to submerge a bit into his roles. Understand as well that I know him vaguely and there's way too much of the person I know there. That's to his detriment - he could sell rollerskates to paraplegics so I can imagine him in a production meeting getting his way.

Comparisons with Velvet Goldmine depend on what you thought of the film - and I liked Velvet Goldmine LOADS due to its queerness quotient an' that. I think VG dealt with the subject matter in it much better than 24PP does with its own. Also I was never as sold on the Mondays as the rest of the world - thugs on drugs not being my scene. They have not dated as well as Joy Division etc so it's hard to get 'involved' with them as they appear on screen. I'm looking forward to someone good getting hold of the Deborah Curtis book because that will make an excellent film (Danny Boyle's option may have run out).

But if the soundtrack has Voodoo Ray on it I will be ver' happy.

I suppose it may well be about the tone of the film (here comes the inevitable Lord Of The Rings comparison). Is it a film made for fans by insiders, or has it tried to open out the story to make it accessible and try and explain why this was important to a world which probably regards the whole Factory Records scene in the eighties as a footnote at best (which to be fair - it is).

I am looking forward to it - because I really never thought it could be done.

They played it for 30 seconds in the film and I perked up and got all smiley.

(She was there, you see).

As for Velvet Goldmine, I liked all the singing bits but the rest Ia bit tedious (though not as tedious as Haynes previous move Safe which is possibly the dullest film ever made). There was also the odd "its not David Bowie but it is" side to it, "And its not Iggy Pop either its Ewan MacGregor with his cock out". I was decidedly underwhelmed by it.

Film out 5th April, DG.

And it seems hard to replicate good nights out on camera, you end up thinking "I'd hate to go out with those bunch of dicks" or "what a crap looking club".

I'm going to see it on Thursday so I imagine I'll have more to say then.

No, no Stockholm Monsters for Tim. Bits of Durutti/ACR but as you can imagine JD/NO/Mondays occupy the bulk of the story. But I think they were at least partly successful in capturing Factory's chaotic and bloody-minded modernity.

Paddy Considine truly marvellous as Rob Gretton. Ralf Little "why bother" as Peter Hook. Ian Curtis, pretty good. Martin Hannett, pleasingly psychotic. Bez's arrival - top comedy.

And some of the music brought me out in goose flesh.

Fuck, all this stuff is creeping out from strange parts of my brain...

Who made a bid for baggy-era fame with his own record. What's was his name again? [googles] ah yes, Andrew Berry - 'Kiss Me, I'm Cold'. Not very good.

They were supposed to have made a little cameo iirc (gleaned from some music rag or other) so it must have got cut.

Much as I liked Alan Partridge that doesn't sound like quite the right vibe for Tony Wilson. Still, if it ever does get released in the US I will probably end up going to see it. Especially if it does have a Howard Devoto moment.

No-one's got it yet.

Velvet Goldmine = roolz. AND I'LL SAY IT AGAIN. But let's have some Crispy Ambulance in this film, then.

The Wendys? Northside? The Adventure Babies?

My theory is you guested on kilt duty with the Wendys.

Anyway I think this fillum suffers from Music Industry Humour, if you know what I mean...

Clue - The band released 2 albums and 2 singles on Factory.

What about Marcel King, then - ex-Sweet Sensation frontboy?

Nick's absolutely right, this is a list of not-great bands. I think I should stop guessing too, otherwise I'll be guessing Meat Mouth or something.

Still suspect kilt action.

Embarrassing a) because he/they were crap. b)because I was too pissed to do the job properly and kept missing cues. At one point I stopped a tape mid-song by accident.

Chris or Craig or Cliff or something is his name. I'll dig up reconfirmation.

Meat Mouth? Is there a webpage that covers the Shit of Factory?

Details here : http://home.wxs.nl/~frankbri/index.html Scroll down a bit for LTM discog.

Actually, I am genuinely, extremely excited. It hadn't occurred to me that I would ever hear any new Stockholm Monsters material. Fantastic.

Abba and REM.

I'm all anticipation now. Still I fear the Coogan.

i saw it and quite enjoyed it, though it was basically 2 hr long i'm alan partridge with loads of stuff going on in the background. funnily enough i went to see it thinking that steve coogan would ruin it, and i came away thinking that it would have been awful if steve coogan HADN'T been in it.....

any more thoughts?

I thought it was a bit of an emotional seesaw. The first act was completely and utterly depressing and bleak. The second act was hyper mentalism and gave as good an impression of what it's like to be in a good club as any film I've seen has done. When it ended my friend and I were like "LET'S GO CLUBBING!", it really had the right amount of energy to it.

Me too, exactly. Obv his face is a bit distracting (generally and in terms of detracting from successful Wilson impersonation) but in terms of intonation and mannerism he got close-enough-w-distance for it to work, for me, anyhow, and more or less quash Partridge-ness. Like lots of people have said, the first act - pacing, pitching of narrative in an interesting place between knowing myth reinforcement and social context/realism - was spot on, I thought, and the second half does suffer a bit by comparison. I though the grounding went awry a bit in the second half; in the first part the mythmaking is set against a context of almost domestic intimacy (Ian Curtis goes home to his little terrace to watch Fassbinder and hang himself, and there's something painfully sad about the washing up in the sink in the bright sunlight), people bumping up against each other in a grass roots kind of way (literally and metaphorically); in the second half the 'realism' is gestured at through heaving club scenes and awkwardly cut in Wilson telly news reports and something human gets lost, maybe? I was also a bit meh about cutting in original footage with staged recreations, but then it is kind of hard to see how anyone might resolve that satisfyingly.