This new documentary covering the brief history of the incredibly influential Joy Division should really come in a two-pack with Control, the fictionalized treatment of the same material, as the two films contain a strikingly small amount of overlap. Control, based on Ian Curtis’ widow’s book Touching From A Distance, covers the internal stresses brought about in the perfect storm created by Ian’s marriage, work, sickness, and ambitions, while Joy Division (really, couldn’t we just have snagged another JD song for the title to make it less confusing and more search-optimizable?) fleshes out the story with a surprising amount of actual performance footage of the band and lengthy interviews with the surviving band members and hangers-on, including Curtis’ former mistress — probably accounting for Deborah Curtis being represented here only by quotes taken from Touching From A Distance. Still, it hardly matters, knowing that side of the story is aptly covered in Control. Director Grant Gee (Radiohead’s Meeting People Is Easy) even makes many similar stylistic choices as Anton Corbijn did in Control — no shortage of black-and-white images of crumbling industrial Manchester here, kids! While it’s a shame producer Martin Hannett was unavailable for comment due to premature decease, Tony Wilson’s lively presence here belies the rapidity with which his own mortality was approaching, and sleeve designer Peter Saville lightens up the proceedings markedly with his self-effacing, amusing commentary. While one might wish for a slightly more complete film to tell the entire story, it’s somehow fitting that the Joy Division story is split between the two incomplete halves of Control and Joy Division, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed one not also appreciating the other.
Also newly issued to coincide with the recent spurt of interest in the band is the new compilation The Best of Joy Division. In the wake of the multiple rounds of collections of the band’s work that have come out over the past 25+ years there’s obviously not much new here (this is a band that only put out two actual albums during their existence, after all), but it’s a pretty unassailable 14-track selection and a good starter for anyone not already familiar with the band’s work — although it really could have been sequenced by simply putting Unknown Pleasures, Closer, and Substance into a CD changer and pressing ’shuffle.’ The UK edition does come with a bonus disc collecting the band’s complete recordings for the BBC, including both of their Peel Sessions, but if you’ve already got everything on disc one and don’t feel the need to buy it again for the nice package you could simply get the single-disc collection The Complete BBC Recordings instead, as the contents are identical.
The Onion Movie (2008): I’d heard rumors of The Onion being involved in a movie project several years ago, which never sounded like a great idea considering the wit of the average Onion article tends to begin and end with the headline — rare is the extended Onion piece which doesn’t swiftly beat a good joke into the ground, so how could they possible fill 90 minutes? It was hardly surprising when the project was shelved, which is part of why it’s so surprising to see it finally arrive unheralded in direct-to-DVD form. Some of the gags betray the film’s long gestation period, most notably some horribly dated bits riffing on once-virginal Britney Spears making sexually explicit music aimed at the pre-teen market — though it should be noted that these jokes would have been well past their sell-by date even in 2003, when this was reportedly shot (it’s really not good when even Mad TV beats you to the gag). A few aspects of the final project do come off somewhat unfinished, but for the most part The Onion Movie holds up far better than anyone would have any reason to expect, with many genuinely laugh-out-loud funny moments. The attempts at weaving some sort of coherent throughline into the movie via a thin plot about corporate influence on the news are dead weight (take the time during these segments to go to the bathroom or fix a snack without bothering to press pause; unless you’ve seen Network at least twice, you won’t care at all) and every instance in which a joke is repeated via a callback is one reuse of material too many, but the short-attention-span crowd should find The Onion Movie contains a high enough ratio of hits to misses to be worthwhile. If nothing else, it’s all worth it for the batter-dipped kitties.