My God! This is a MUST SEE film. It charts the short life of Joy Division's Ian Curtis - hard to believe he comitted suicide at 23, before most of us start living. This took me back to those northern, gritty sixties angry young men movies but the twist was it was in colour and it was about a person I never really had any connection with, since when Joy Division were at their peak I was listening to the likes of Steeley Dan, probably, when the angry young men were a thing of the past - everywhere else but not in Macclesfield .

Brilliantly acted - Samantha Morton's performance at the end made me cry. The guy who played IC was remarkable.


Not remotely like a biopic where you see all the pointers a mile away. I was so into this I dropped the bike key I usually swirl around on my little finger when I watch films. Dropped it in the cinema, didn't realise I'd lost it and had to get a taxi home, after an hour spent looking for it. Some nice person picked it up so tomorrow I can retrieve it and get my bike back unless it's been trashed!

I'm really looking forward to seeing this.

Thank you for the review

Sarah

The version I saw yesterday was black and white.

I liked it very much, but found it so depressing I drank a whole bottle of wine afterwards and watched a really dire movie on TV called 'The Hole'. It was billed as a horror but I think the blurb-writers were muddling it with the one about pot-holers. That was the one I was expecting.

Maybe it was just good wine. I can't decide.

Sheila

Why did I remember it as being in colour? You're quite right it was black and white.
Know what you mean about feeling depressed afterwards, though. I felt bad for two days. Must be the sign of a good film.

<Added>

Just to add my bike hadn't been touched, though someone had thrown an empty can of coke in it and a few crisp packets.

You must look very frightening if you twirl a key all through a film and nobody says anything.

It reminds me of when some people chatted throughout a film despite my glares and shushings. When it finished I turned round and said quite loudly 'You should refund my ticket price because you ruined that film for me!'. The man stood up, all bald head and tattoos, and snarled 'Oh, yeah?'

'Yes, and for my husband too!'

I looked round for back-up, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then I noticed him scrabbling round on the floor behind the seats in front. The burly man's girl-friend persuaded him to leave, which was just as well. My husband stood up when they'd gone and said he'd been looking for some dropped keys.

Ever since then when someone is praised for taking a stance against anti-social behaviour I say, 'Oh, you'd be looking for your keys!'

On the other hand I was once at a press screening where a man threatened to punch me for clicking my pen and turning over the pages of my note book too loudly.

Sheila

I'm looking forward to seeing this too Jem - I know the music and the are well. I went to school about two minutes away from the cemetery where he was cremated.

Now, if I could just find the time...

Nik

PS Just out of curiosity, how did the film portray Macclesfield? Did it get much of a mention?

PS, Sheila -

the one about pot-holers.

is rubbish. You'd do well to avoid it!

N

Nik, Macclesfield was fantastic. Almost made me pack up and move there. The last shot was the best - the view of the hills from the city over a very doomy foreground. That's what I miss about the the north.

Thanks for the tip-off about the pot-holers.

Sheila

Macclesfield was fantastic

The Special FX guys must have done a good job then!

Seriously, very much looking forward to having a watch.

Nik

Sorry, I should have said authentically gritty and drab - it looked as one a Manchester suburb of the period would look. In fact, the mundane nature of the place is emphasised in the very first shot,where the hero walks between high-rises on a housing estate and the camera pans across identical windows in one of the blocks. He works in a dispiriting employment exchange and all the domestic interiors as well as the back-street venues where he plays are correctly detailed. In other words, it's the 'mise-en-scene' that's fantastic.

No need to rush back to check for a make-over.

Sheila

<Added>

The crematorium chimney is in the last shot.

That sounds much more like it!

Nik

Oh, but the hills were fantastic Nik - alive with the sound of music.

Cornelia - this key of mine is only a ickle bike key and it doesn't make a noise - not even when in drops. (Which is why I didn't miss it.) Also, I saw the film at lunchtime and there was only me and two others in the entire screening.

I have been known to descend on posses of teenagers to tell them to stop talking, and they do, so yes, I can be frightening when I want. But I always check if they've got knuckle dusters and tattoes first!!

Funniest incident about telling someone off was when I asked a group of teenagers from the local sixth form college to shut up at a screening of Sherry Baby. Outside one of them said to the other - That Maggie Gyllenhall. Is she related to Jake?

Well, dur. How many Gyllenhalls would you see in a phone book do you think? And isn't there just a bit of a resemblance (like they could be twins!)

I've just sent my two fifteen year olds off to see Control. Was this a wise choice, do you think? Actually, one is really into film and the other really into music, plus I wanted to show them how grim it were oop north, where mummy comes from.

I never realised you were a northerner, Jem. How far from me are you from?

The hills are admittedly lovely (was up walking them today actually).

N

It's amazing how many northerners are lurking about. I went to see a film about Chinese garment factory workers today at the ICA today - the film was on there, not the workers, of course, and met a man who'd lived in Beeston, a suburb of Leeds.

He said he didn't normally review films but he was covering this one for the 'Weekly Worker'. Oh, a bit left-leaning, I said, to show I caught on quickly, and he agreed. But the reason we talkd about Leeds was I saw 'Exodus' by Penny Woolcock last week and mentioned this other film of hers called 'Mischief Night', which is about as opposite a portrait of a northern council estate as you could get. She has a Dickensian eye for character and her people tend to be cheerfully anarchic instead of miserable.

I had thought Mischief Night was a fictitious invention by the director,a kind of Halloween for which the characters prepare throughout the film (based on the mediaevel 'all fool's' or twelfth night) but this man said he'd heard of it. I was still sceptical. Does anyone know?

Sheila

I haven't heard of those films but sound my kind of thing. Nik, I'm from a place called Leigh, between Wigan and Bolton. Birthplace of Georgie Fame, so not all bad, but mostly so.

<Added>

Speaking of Northerners and films - did you see any of Terence Davies's films? I saw The Long Day Closes - Liverpool working class film, beautifully lyrical and almost reverential in it portrayal of the working classes from a really impoverished part of Britain in the 50's. Another film I'd highly recommend.