| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| kathryn |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 18:01:32
With apologies if there's already a thread about this. I am itching to see the new movie about Ian Curtis, directed by Anton Corbijn, the photographer and video maker who shot this purdy photo of Kim n Frank
The movie is in black and white and getting rave reviews, including this one from today's LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-control19oct19,1,5611178.story?coll=la-entnews-movies
The official movie site:
http://momentum.control.substance001.com/
Has anybody seen the movie?
And for the forum nostalgia whores (I'm not the only one):
http://forum.frankblack.net/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11709
Happy hearts fall from my shaking hands
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| 17 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| kathryn |
Posted - 10/25/2007 : 06:33:14
I'm gonna do my Carl impersonation!
From the October 25, 2007 Toronto Globe and Mail
Life would tear him apart
A new biopic delves deep into the emotional underworld of doomed Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, dead at 23
Incongruity No. 1: Before he played the enigmatic Ian Curtis in the Joy Division biopic Control, British actor Sam Riley was such an unknown that he had to take a job folding shirts in a warehouse. Of course, he told me this while wearing a black, retro-glam fitted shirt unbuttoned to the depths of movie-star excess.
Incongruity No. 2: At one point in his struggling pre-career, Riley phoned his agent to ask whether the new Bond had been cast. "I'm very funny," said Riley, self-mockingly in his Yorkshire twang. The answer was no, but the part playing the anomic Curtis was still available, the most un-Bond-like role one could possibly get.
But there is an obvious physical resemblance between Riley and Curtis, helped by their shared Northern-ness. Riley is from Leeds and, while in Toronto to promote Control, channelled a studied, updated Lou Reed glam. Having done some acting in his youth, he returned to acting after his Leeds-based band, 10,000 Things, was dropped by the record label Polydor.
Curtis, who died in 1980, was from Macclesfield near Manchester and channelled glam's darker side (via punk and a pivotal Sex Pistols gig that Curtis and other Joy Division members attended in Manchester in 1976). He turned it into a far darker minimalism, which made Joy Division possibly the most influential post-punk band from the late seventies to the cusp of the eighties.
The rest is rock iconology: Curtis as the disconcertingly innocent-looking young man with the morbid lyrics, married while he was still a teenager, only to be diagnosed with epilepsy as Joy Division was starting to become well known locally. Caught between his marriage, a love affair, the fear of another debilitating seizure and overmedication, he eventually committed suicide in 1980 on the eve of a North American tour. He was 23.
The music he left behind was important enough to act as a spiritual uplift for a re-emerging Manchester and for repeat generations of post punks ever since. As rightly portrayed in Control, his story was far from all darkness and despair.
"When I spoke to people that knew him," Riley said, "they all remember him as being very affable and almost lively, and very friendly and considerate - and also explosive at times. So the melancholic element of him is obviously present. But that's the tragedy of it. He wasn't just a morbid guy from start to finish.
"As things built up - from the epilepsy to questioning his marriage, his insecurity of even picking up his own daughter for fear of fitting, and then falling in love - that's what sent him into that melancholy. His lyrics always seemed to be quite dark, but that doesn't make someone depressed necessarily," Riley said.
In addition to Control (which comes to theatres tomorrow), the Weinstein Company in New York is handling the new documentary Joy Division by director Grant Gee, which portrays more of the typical bonhomie side you would associate with young men fighting to get their music heard.
Gee adds his own interpretative dashes of Joy Division's cold artistry by way of placing the documentary more within a larger Manchester context and adding abstract visuals. That's Gee's style. He was, after all, the director who submerged Thom Yorke's head in water for an agonizing minute in the video for the late 1990s Radiohead song No Surprises. (Unfortunately, Joy Division isn't being concurrently released theatrically with Control, said a publicist for Alliance Films, which is handling Control in Canada. Nevertheless, the documentary will probably be out on home video in the coming months.)
Control is very different. For his feature director debut, Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn, most known for his portraits of U2, and who once famously photographed Joy Division in the London tube, tried to steer away from the usual retelling of the band's story. Unlike the vividness of the Joy Division documentary, Control is in black and white, not vibrant chiaroscuro, but a world of greys.
"Anton didn't want to make a movie about Joy Division or a rock biography," Riley said. "He wanted to make a movie about Ian. And although you can always say it's a rock biopic, I understand what [Anton] was saying. The focus is much more on the home life of a rock icon, rather than the legend."
In particular, there were the houses Curtis grew up in and settled in with his wife. Behind the drab brick exteriors were the even bleaker interiors of the time. Apart from a few photos of Bowie on his wall, Control shows Curtis's room as a teenager with little else but a turntable and stark-looking journals of his writing. For a kid back then, any escape had to be created.
"From what I've heard from English journalists who were around that era, they remember it exactly like that," said Riley, who is 27 and a generation younger than Curtis. "The wallpaper in that era, you can't see it in black and white, but it was all brown, depressing patterns everywhere."
As if to emphasize this, Curtis insisted that his wife, Debbie, not hang anything on the walls, Corbijn said. The accuracy of the visual details was everything to Corbijn. Some scenes of Control were shot within and outside Curtis's actual home, although the compact interiors had to be rebuilt for other scenes in order to allow more room for the camera crew. The street in Macclesfield that Curtis walked down to his day job at an employment agency was also used, although Corbijn had to hide some of the recent changes to the neighbourhood, since more wealthy people now live in the picturesque, newly revived town.
But in Curtis's time, "there wasn't a lot of opportunity around for a young man. Music has always been an escape in the north of England, and everywhere in our country really. Partly because the weather is so ... awful, there's not a lot else to do than play a guitar," Riley noted.
It was that emotional link to the era that persuaded Corbijn to take on the project, despite turning it down at first. "I initially said no, but when I came back to it, my step into it was emotional. ... If you step in with emotion, that's not a bad starting point."
In his early career, Corbijn had even moved to London in 1979, largely pulled by Joy Division's epochal album Unknown Pleasures. Within two weeks of arriving, Corbijn had photographed the band.
For Riley though, the connection was much less emotional. Joy Division wasn't one of his favourite bands growing up. His tastes skip back two generations to the same early seventies music Curtis grew up with. "If Ian was my hero before I did this, then that might have been something I would have had to struggle against. But I could approach it fresh, without much reverence, but with a lot of respect," Riley said.
In researching the role, he found only a little more than an hour's worth of original video material of the band: a couple of TV appearances recorded in good quality, with Curtis only displaying muted versions of his flaying style of dancing, and a few VHS versions of more ecstatic gigs. Curtis's slack-jawed marching movements at the microphone may be easy to imitate, but hard to do well, while also capturing the inner explosiveness behind them.
"I tried to do these around the house. But it didn't really ever come together until we [the actors] were the band, I was singing and they were playing. When hearing them play the music, and the power coming out of the drums and amplifiers behind me ... I had studied Curtis enough to know he never did certain things, and he remained within a certain frame of movement, from the slight to the exaggerated," he explained. "It would be more realistic if I just let myself go with it."
Happy hearts fall from my shaking hands
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| Homers_pet_monkey |
Posted - 10/24/2007 : 09:32:59
It has been nominated for 10 British Independent Film Awards.
 I'd walk her everyday, into a shady place
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| kathryn |
Posted - 10/20/2007 : 18:35:12
quote:
Originally posted by breakmybody
I love Ian Curtis's voice and music, but I can't listen to it very often, because they have that power of sadness, at least on me!
I know what you mean. That music is so connected to less than shiny happy times in my life, that before I listen to it now I must make sure I'm ok psychologically. Yikes.
Happy hearts fall from my shaking hands
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| breakmybody |
Posted - 10/20/2007 : 15:30:49
Kathryn, my dear sweet friend, I just can't wait to see the movie, but it's not here yet...
I've read some reviews about it and it seems to be very good.
I love Ian Curtis's voice and music, but I can't listen to it very often, because they have that power of sadness, at least on me!
I don't know why, but I know I can't stay
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| Carl |
Posted - 10/20/2007 : 02:38:52
That's my line, Homers.
 "In six months, she'll look like Grandma Moses!" |
| Homers_pet_monkey |
Posted - 10/20/2007 : 01:50:08
It's been getting rave reviews.
I'd walk her everyday, into a shady place
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| jediroller |
Posted - 10/19/2007 : 15:35:14
I've seen it and it's really good. And I'm not even a Joy Division fan.
 Awesome! I fuckin' shot this!
"Les Blackolero, y sont forts en sacramant" - Czar | 06/26/2007 | 20:10:34
free music | Blackolero | Frank Black & Pixies Tributes |
| Homers_pet_monkey |
Posted - 10/19/2007 : 10:08:58
I've still not been to see it, but I may take my girlfriend at some point this weekend, seeing as it's our first anniversary and we are both fans.
I'd walk her everyday, into a shady place
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| Cheeseman1000 |
Posted - 10/19/2007 : 02:16:23
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| kathryn |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 20:02:52
It's lost control again.
Happy hearts fall from my shaking hands
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| Carl |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 20:00:38
Yes, but it does have sad, hooded Curtis-like eyes!!
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| kathryn |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 19:53:26
Is that the "I'm getting ready to post Ian Curtis-related links" M+M? If so, shouldn't it be black, not cheerful red? IS NOTHING SACRED, CARL?
Happy hearts fall from my shaking hands
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| Carl |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 19:50:00
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| kathryn |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 19:44:55
Happy hearts fall from my shaking hands
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| Carl |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 19:40:37
Actually, I did come across some articles about it while browsing around, but I thought, nah, can't cover everything!
"In six months, she'll look like Grandma Moses!" |
| kathryn |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 19:32:59
What, no Irish press links to post, Carl? They're doing an artsy preview at a film fest over here then it hits regular theaters on the 26th of the month. I already have a sitter booked! Woo hoo!
Happy hearts fall from my shaking hands
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| Carl |
Posted - 10/18/2007 : 19:27:22
Haven't seen it, but it's been getting lots of good word.
"In six months, she'll look like Grandma Moses!" |
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