It’s a movie about the singer in a band, and it hangs on the music. The music is pretty good. The singer -songwriter is Ian Curtis, and the band is Joy Division. Joy Division, which transmuted into New Order after Curtis’ death, were after my time, and I was not familiar with any of their music. Bowie tunes in on the soundtrack early on; there’s a touch of Kraftwerk, Iggy Pop, The Buzzcocks and Various Artists of the period. Joy Division feature, not unexpectedly, and New Order provides a track or two, plus incidentals. Some of it illustrates the unreasonableness of showing this movie in any venue without a dance floor. The actor-musicians—or musician-actors—roll their own in all scenes of the band playing, and a fine fist they make of it. I could be persuaded that the development of New Order‘s music influenced the covers on-screen, especially in the drive of the drumming. Continue reading “Joy. Division.”
Category: The culture
Posts about Western and world culture and the ramifications of culture for society.
Jesse and Bob
Peter and I went to the movies last Tuesday to see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
We came out pretty much shell-shocked, so to speak. Neither of us had any problem with the length of the movie, although Peter started to wonder how things would develop while the first scene—in the forest on the afternoon before the train robbery— was being played out. With nightfall, the movie wrapped itself around our attention and didn’t let go until the credits were rolling. Continue reading “Jesse and Bob”
The Turn of the Worm
There’s been much brouhaha about the pulling of Channel 9’s coverage of the Howard-Rudd debate because 9 insisted on showing the “uncommitted voters” responses to the debate in the form of the “worm”, a continuously updated graph of said responses, overlaid on the bottom of the image. This despite Howard’s setting it as a condition of the debate that the “worm” not be used. Continue reading “The Turn of the Worm”
Tell me why
I’ve started going to Mass again, although I am not in communion, and I don’t know that I will be able to take that step. I feel the pull of it again though, and I feel a great deal calmer than I have for some time. The pressure of existence, especially the pressure of time, is not now so unrelenting. The wreckage of the past is not now so intolerably present. These benefits are, for the moment, associated with being present at Mass. They are a mild form of the consolation of prayer. Continue reading “Tell me why”