JoyDivision Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Cinematical has just received this exclusive clip from the DVD for Control, which hits shelves this coming Tuesday, June 3rd. Based on the book by Deborah Curtis, Control follows the life and times of her husband, Ian Curtis (Sam Riley), the enigmatic lead singer of the British band Joy Division. Talk about a flick that's won all sorts of praise (and awards) since first debuting last year; our own James Rocchi noted in his review: "I joke that any rock and roll film can be judged solely on how fiercely it makes you want to go to the record shop immediately afterwards, but Control doesn't just capture the music of Joy Division; it brings Ian Curtis off the posters, out of the speakers, and in doing so rescues a man from his own myth."

The DVD looks to be presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English Dolby Digital track. Extras include an audio commentary with director Anton Corbijn (famed photographer and visual artist making his directorial debut), a making-of featurette, music videos and more. Check out an additional review from Christopher Campbell over here. Once again, Control hits DVD on June 3rd.

On May 18, 1980, Deborah Curtis walked into her kitchen and found her husband, Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, hanged to death. As depicted in Anton Corbijn's Control, his feature debut, the event is all hers, shot from a distance, outside, across the street. Not even their infant daughter is present, having been left out in the car for what was to be just a moment. And certainly we, the audience, aren't brought in to examine the body, as we might have by another film.

It makes sense, because Control is based on Deborah Curtis' book "Touching from a Distance" (she also produced the film), which has been adapted here by Matt Greenhalgh. The moment should be all hers; it was her loss more than anyone's, in many ways. And at least in the way he's portrayed in the film, Ian Curtis did it just to hurt her, and that's what he's done, and that's what is shown. Sure, he may have been tortured, or unstable or anything else that could defend such a selfish act as suicide, but here he's pretty much a coward who couldn't make up his mind nor face up to any decision he actually was able to make.

Control begins in 1973, when Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) is a bored teenager in Macclesfield, England, listening to Bowie, Roxy Music and Mott the Hoople as all the young dudes of '70s Britain should. Fitting with the glam music, he wears furs and eyeliner, but what makes the setting unsettling is how void of color it is. Yes, Control was shot in black and white, which is only initially strange if you associate the glam scene with anything but an achromatic palette. And it completely foreshadows the wan and ultimately neutral behavior the singer would exhibit throughout the rest of his short, should-have-been-vibrant life.

Looks like the Weinsteins are big Joy Division fans. First they picked up Control, a biopic about the band's lead singer, at Cannes in May. And now The Weinstein Company has acquired the documentary on the band, simply called Joy Division, after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Hollywood Reporter says the movie's price was "in the low- to mid-six figures" -- typical for a documentary, a genre that usually doesn't make more than a few hundred thousand dollars at the box office or on DVD. The Weinsteins added it to their Toronto shopping cart, which already included Boy A, Diary of the Dead, and the Spanish thriller King of the Hill. (Our report on the Boy A deal is here; on Diary, here.)

Cinematical's James Rocchi saw Control at Cannes and proclaimed it very good. He saw Joy Division at Toronto and lo, he declared it also very good. (Specifically: "A dense, rich and exciting look at a band who helped make modern pop music become truly modern.") The Rocc interviewed the doc's director, Grant Gee, too. James is now our resident expert on all things Joy Division and the movies pertaining to them.

The press notes for Joy Division offer that director Grant Gee "Essentially is a geography teacher and owns two corduroy jackets ..."; he's also a film maker whose music-based projects like Radiohead: Meeting People is Easy and Demon Days Live have both been Grammy-nominated. His latest film looks at the music and influence of the Manchester band Joy Division; speaking with Cinematical in Toronto, he shared his thoughts on process, on the state of the modern film industry, and the challenges and pleasures of making and releasing a documentary roughly in parallel with a fiction film on the same band. To download the interview, click here.

It's been one of the more pleasant coincidences of the Toronto International Film Festival this year that there's not one, but two separate films focusing on the times and musical legacy of Manchester's Joy Division. Anton Corbijn's Control is a bio-pic about the band's late singer, Ian Curtis; I had the chance to see it in May at Cannes. The other film -- simply titled Joy Division -- is a documentary take on the band's genesis and influence, their victories and struggles. Directed by Grant Gee (Radiohead: Meeting People is Easy,) Joy Division may not be as immediately striking as Corbjin's film -- with its stark-yet-warm black-and-white photography and Sam Riley's performance as Curtis -- but it's just as compelling.

Formed in the industrial city of Manchester, Joy Division marked a unique turning point in popular music: Where punk turned to post-punk, where anger was replaced by angst. Formed by Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Ian Curtis, Joy Division released only two full-length albums before Curtis's suicide; at the same time, tragedy isn't the only thing that made Joy Division's short discography a legend.

Indeed, Gee's demonstration of that legend is a great demonstration of his technique here -- forming a collage of ephemera and seemingly-random information that forms an easy-to-read big picture. To illustrate just how many bands have covered Joy Division's seminal single 'Love Will Tear Us Apart," we're shown ... an iTunes search screen. And while you'd think that simple blunt instrument of a visual may seem inelegant or crude, it instead works perfectly -- not only proving Joy Division's place in the hearts of their admirers but also in an instant reminding us how completely the music business has changed since the days of hand-crafted 7-inch single sleeves and cut-and-paste artwork -- which, thanks to Gee's fractured-yet-focused technique, we also see.

After decades of acclaimed rock-and-roll photography and music videos, it's not surprising that Anton Corbjin's first feature film is about a musician; what is surprising is how well-crafted, sympathetic and good Control ultimately is. Telling the life story of Ian Curtis (Sam Riley), the lead singer of Joy Division, Control hits all the notes that come as part and parcel of the musician's biographical film -- the dream, the rise, the fall -- but it also manages to find beauty and sadness in a story where we know the sad finale.

Control begins in 1973, as the young Ian Curtis lives among the council flats of Macclesfield, England -- listening to David Bowie, scrounging the occasional pill to pop, practicing applying eyeliner while wearing his sister's fun fur jacket. Something's out there -- a sense that pop culture has a place for the placeless -- and Curtis wants in. After a now-legendary Manchester Sex Pistols gig (where, as shown in the similarly-set but far breezier 24 Hour Party People, everyone in the small crowd apparently went out and started a band afterwards), Curtis runs into a group of three friends struggling to start a band -- "We'd be a lot less shite if we could find a singer who could actually sing." Curtis can't play a note on a guitar, but he's got the soul of a poet and -- just as importantly - the cheekbones of a fashion advert model, and soon Joy Division are playing local gigs that springboard them to international attention.

When I first heard celebrated music video director Anton Corbijn was directing an Ian Curtis biopic, I was sure that it would meet the expectations of Joy Division fans everywhere. If anything, it would at least be a visual stunner. Well, now the film, which is titled Control, has made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, and it is currently a very hot topic. Variety calls it, "a riveting, visually arresting portrait of a soul in torment." The Telegraph also praises the black and white visuals and says the film is worth watching, comparing it to British kitchen-sink dramas of the 1950s. However, The Hollywood Reporter, by contrast, predicts that the film will not follow in the success of the classic kitchen-sink films and says the film, "fails to make the case for its fallen star."

Despite the Reporter's take, though, the film is apparently generating a lot of buzz and mostly critical acclaim at the festival, with much of the talk focused on the star-making performance by Sam Riley, who portrays Curtis. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, who gives Control a four-star rating, says Riley is "superb"; The Telegraph's word of choice is "extraordinary"; Variety's Russell Edwards calls the performance "a winner". Also in agreement are the former members of Joy Division, who regrouped as New Order (with new recruit Gillian Gilbert) following Curtis' 1980 suicide. Even Peter Hook, who previously had issues with Corbijn regarding the film's soundtrack, seems to be a fan. According to Corbijn, though, neither Curtis' widow, Deborah Curtis, who wrote the source material for the film, nor his girlfriend, Annik Honoré are very happy with Control.

The biopic doesn't yet have a distribution deal for the States, but thanks to its popularity at Cannes, there will hopefully be a deal made soon. It is definite that the film won't perform as well in America as in the UK, but there are plenty of us Joy Division fans here that one of the major U.S. companies should see the film as a worthy acquisition. In the meantime, while you wait for a chance to see the film yourself, check out James Rocchi's review of Control for Cinematical, to be posted shortly.

Back in 2005, we reported that Anton Corbijin had signed on to direct the film biography of Ian Curtis and Joy Division, titled Control. The film is currently in post-production, but an NME report with former Joy Division bassist Peter Hook implies that all is not well between the director and musician.

After the suicide of front man Ian Curtis, the band moved on from the post-punk movement of the early 80's and created a new style of alternative dance music as New Order. Corbijn's film is based on the book Touching From a Distance by Curtis' widow, Deborah, who is also co-producing. The film stars Sam Riley as Curtis and Samantha Morton as Deborah. During the creation of the soundtrack was when Hook claims things fell apart, "We're supposed to [record the film's soundtrack] but the problem is that he's telling us what to do. If we don't tell him how to direct, why is he telling us how to make music?"

All this seems like a bit of healthy ranting on the part of Hook, as the film is already in post-production and he hasn't made a move to take himself off the project. It might just be me, but it seems a little dangerous on Corbijn's part to alienate a member of the band you are making a film about. I'm guessing that Hook's comments to the press might not help the situation, but if the film is a success, I'm sure all will be forgiven.