Screenhead

Thank you all for your wonderful, poet posts about Joy Division.  We now have a winner for the movie Control.  I wish all of you could of won, but alas.

The winner is poster # 67, John Millheim, Congratulations!!! 

I do have the documentary Joy Division which I will take a look at and review. 

Thanks everyone again for your interest in this remarkable film about a remarkable young man.

I was hesitant on watching the movie Control because the subject matter is not very uplifting or upbeat.  The film is art; it’s a masterpiece of entertainment.

The acting alone, Sam Riley and Samantha Morton, is transpiring while the black and white photography sets the eeriness of the coming suicide of  the genius of punk rock. The film went under my skin and stayed there throughout.  At times I wanted to reach out and help Ian Curtis; he was looking for help and solutions to his trouble life of epilepsy and love.  Yet, it ended tragically, a tale well told by director Anton Corbijn.

With that all said, I believe, you’d want to see this film — Control.  I have Control DVD to giveaway. Simply post your name and I will pick the winner Thursday July 31st.  Good luck.  

Ever since the revival of soundtracks in the mid 90’s, the debate has become a tired one, always boiling down to the same few choices. It’s either a soundtrack that accumulates the latest and coolest tracks of the day, such as Trainspotting, or else one of Tarantino’s collections of disparate tunes that somehow manage to gain a new, hip meaning when he assembles them together. Scores rarely get a look in.

But that’s not to deny the importance of the soundtrack. Indeed, what would Scorsese’s film be without the barrage of rock n’ roll tracks. Or films like Gattaca, The End of the Affair, and The Piano would arguably be half as powerful if Michael Nyman’s compositions were removed. Yet there are strange occurrences in which the film’s makers, disappointing in their delivery, still manage to throw together the right songs and help slightly elevate the film’s lagging quality.

Below are five of the best examples I can find of film’s whose soundtracks suggest something far greater than the sub-par flicks themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Appropriately, it has been ten years since I discovered Joy Division. Having read an appealing article about them in a newspaper, I took the risk and, during a school trip abroad, forked out whatever amount of francs in the Louvre’s music store for a copy of Unknown Pleasures, with its enigmatic yet enticing cover. Popping the CD in my player, I was suddenly immersed in a world never experienced before. Within the first few seconds of ’Disorder’, its steady but muted beat, robotic yet somehow human, the strange bass tune and spiky guitars, combined with dark and profound vocals, I knew Joy Division were something special. Most people know them by their song Love Will Tear Us Apart, which was abused in a Heinekan ad a few years ago. But the band were much more, an almost literary lyricism combined with a sound that felt entirely unique. It was a sound that lasted only briefly, for the lead singer, Ian Curtis, committed suicide at the age of 23.

Joy Division have been depicted twice in cinema already. Firstly, in 2002’s 24-Hour Party People, which was a playful biopic of pretentious broadcaster and music label owner Tony Wilson. Then, last saw a film about Curtis, called Control, which received much critical acclaim. And now, we see a seemingly definitive documentary on the band being released (briefly in UK cinemas, and then on DVD in the US in June), also called Joy Division.

Directed by Grant Gee, who has directed several music videos, as well as the Radiohead documentary Meeting People is Easy, the documentary conducts intimate interviews with most of the keys players in the band’s history. Band members, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris are all present. You’d think that after so many years of the band’s legacy, the remaining members would be tired of retelling the same stories. Yet there’s still times when the sadness breaks through. Read the rest of this entry »