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grigorss - 2007-10-20 12:08:57
By some curious bit of synchronicity, I also happened to catch Control yesterday myself, and while I suspect it didn't impress me quite as much as it did you, it was refeshing to see this kind of story told with a minimum of sentimentality and melodrama -- just an interesting story, well -- if sometimes ploddingly -- told. Two tangential notes -- Curtis mentions my favorite music bio-pic during the course of the film, and since seeing 24 Hour Party People, I can no longer accept anyone other than Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson; including -- now that I've seen a couple of interviews with him -- Tony Wilson himself.
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Paula - 2007-10-20 12:11:50
Curtis mentions my favorite music bio-pic during the course of the film
Either I'm blanking or I didn't understand him thru his accent. What did he say?
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grigorss - 2007-10-20 12:29:42
He said The Sound of Music -- hey, it's based on a true story; sort of . . .
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Paula - 2007-10-20 12:50:41
Oh, right, I forgot. That got a big laugh in my audience, actually.
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grigorss - 2007-10-20 12:54:45
Mine too; these kids -- no respect for the classics . . .
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Greg - 2007-10-21 00:40:10
I've sooo got to see Control. Loved 24 Hr. Party People. I thought it was fair and not over-dramatized. I'm a Steve Coogan fan also so that helped.
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Eric - 2007-10-21 01:50:57
I liked Control, especially Samantha Morton. And that same day I saw Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and she completely unimpressed me, as did the whole movie.
I have yet to see 24th Hour Party People, although the Sunshine has a midnight movie of it first week of November. Maybe I'll have to take a trip. . .
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Philip Shelley - 2007-10-21 09:49:54
It attempts no great statement about the redemptive power of love or music, but it captures something subtle about the power of music and love to transform people.
And, in both films, the tragic limitations of those awesome redemptive forces as well. Or at least, the paradoxical fleetingness of momentarily infinite connectedness.
(Um, maybe I'll have some coffee and attempt to rephrase that...it is Sunday morning afterall.)
By the anyway, any nominations for the best music bio pic "of all eternity"?
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Greg - 2007-10-21 16:42:08
Would that include documentaries? Bio-Pics... I don't remember any that weren't corny, not off the top of my head anyway. I'm sure there's one out there... maybe the Def Leppard bio.
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Philip - 2007-10-21 18:40:31
Wow, not one!
Well, we all seem to approve of 24 Hr. Party People...Definitely not corny...But are there others...Hmmm...Sid & Nancy?....Backbeat?...Sweet Dreams?...Bird?...I dunno...
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Greg - 2007-10-21 20:59:52
Oooh I forgot about Bird. Backbeat was a fictional bio but fun. Sid & Nancy was dreadful. Bird was good though... just played it straight without romanticizing anything.
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Sharon - 2007-10-21 22:50:11
Can't wait to see Control even more now. I recently heard an interview with the director. He's a Dutch guy, very interesting sensibility. He heard Joy Division in the Netherlands in the seventies and felt immediately compelled to move to England! He really was under Curtis' spell himself , so the authenticity of the times and actors may be due to Anton Corbijn's direct experience. We'll see. Music biopics? I can think of a really awful one from the 70s about Billy Holiday, starring Diana Ross and a Malt liquor hunky pitch man. completely junky with awful music on top of it! I used to work in my hometown movie theater and I had to hear that awful song for weeks: Do you know, where you're goin' to.. Do you know what life is showin' you...? Ugh! How could a biopic about such a fascinating American genius be so ridiculously bad. A music biopic I saw on TV as a little kid was All the Way starring Frank Sinatra. It's actually about a comedian who started out as a singer but who gets beaten up by the mob and can't sing anymore, so he becomes a comic. Maybe I just thought it was great, but I remember being totally absorbed, and All the Way has such a lovely-sad melody. Not a music biopic, but an art biopic, one of my top ten favorite movies of all time came out in 1977 about Edvard Munch. I think it's one of the best films about the interior life of an artist with demons. It also deeply captures the weird zeitgeist that 19th century artists had to struggle against, but maybe that's what made their art so intense and meaningful.
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Paula - 2007-10-21 22:52:46
Hi Philip--Blog readership is kind of low on Sundays--even I didn't check in til now. So hopefully people will be more comment-y on Monday.
Anyway, Coal Miner's Daughter is a wonderful bio movie--great performances, and definitely not a hagiography.
Not bio-pics but "rock movies" that I love are School of Rock and my all-time favorite movie Light of Day.
I need to ponder this some more.
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Sharon - 2007-10-21 23:00:30
I really hated Sid and Nancy -- especially the last scene where he uses black kids as props!!
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Philip - 2007-10-21 23:26:19
Oh, I wasn't bemoaning lack of overall response -- I was "speaking "directly to Greg. I think it's sad we couldn't think of even one unqualified winner off the top of our heads.
So, I guess Sid & Nancy is booed off the court, but I'm encouraged about Bird which I only ever saw drunk -- I need to see it again. Love Clint, Love Forrest...
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Philip - 2007-10-21 23:34:36
Who played Munch in the '77 bio?
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Philip - 2007-10-21 23:59:43
PS: Paula -- That literally true (perhaps even famously known) about you and Light of Day?
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Paula - 2007-10-22 07:39:39
Oh, yeah. It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's MY movie. I love the way it, on the one hand, de-romanticizes the music world, and on the other hand, really gets the joy and--here it comes--redemptive power of playing music!
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Sharon - 2007-10-22 16:24:17
Philip, the actor is Geir Westby. All the actors are Norwegian. The director was a Brit, Peter Watkins.
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Philip - 2007-10-22 22:26:08
Thank you, Shaon. Seeing that movie is now high on my list.
(Maybe make a good Sunday afternoon double bill with LoD?)
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Sharon - 2007-10-22 22:44:22
Philip, hope it lives up to my hype. Hope it turns out to be your cup of tea. I wouldn't plan on a double bill, though...It's about 3 hours long! You may have to take a walk afterwards to snap yourself out of Munch's head. But I think it's worth seeing not just for the subject matter, but as a work of art itself. (P.S. Sorry I dissed Sid and Nancy, I get a little carried away...)
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