darkmatter

Courting angst is always an unsettling business but rarely more so than when the flirtation is a salve for other types of meaning. In an age of short termism, where the quick fix is king, there’s something almost quaint about the notion that life can be an artistic process, in motion, incomplete and crucially, imperfect; an apprenticeship to be served whatever the cost. Of course this is pure anachronism when set against the contemporary backdrop of machine tooled MOR pop records and a cast of millions for whom the ultimate act of pop rebellion is to challenge the omniscient X Factor judging panel. And even that small gesture only seems notable through its absence. Hard to imagine a Leona Lewis or Will Young or let’s face it any other aspiring contestant walking up to Simon Cowell, calling him a cunt and then hovering menacingly in his grill until he’s agreed to their demands. Yet that’s precisely what Ian Curtis achieves in a now legendary encounter with Tony Wilson - founder of Factory Records, the kingmaker at Granada TV and therefore Simon Cowell-esque figure bestriding the late 70s Manchester music and cultural scene like a lank haired colossus . It’s also a vignette that’s lovingly recreated in the Anton Corbijn biopic of the life and death of Ian Curtis, ‘Control’, currently on nationwide release.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once wrote that “the American city seems to have stepped right out of the movies” by which he meant that the experience of visiting a U.S. city itself is one that is produced directly by experiencing it at the cinema first. Any tourist who has seen the steam rising from manhole covers in new York as yellow cabs roll over them or have dared to negotiate Los Angeles freeways or have even stood by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco will know the feelings to which Baudrillard is referring - a confusing mixture of stored memory-images and bodily affect that can leave the tourist reeling, such is the intoxicating power of celluloid America

East is East has been hailed the British comedy hit of 1999. If the media response is anything to go by, this film has been a run away success:1

A clear audience favorite with the kind of audience reaction which hasn’t been seen since The Full Monty (The Guardian).

Fresh, frank, impudent and self-mocking, it marks a giant leap over the threshold of multicultural casting and ethnic British cinema (Evening Standard).

…but make no mistake, this very English comedy is rooted in snobbery, hypocrisy, dogma, poverty and racism … when it’s hurting, you can only laugh (Time Out).