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This Month's Featured Equipment Reviews |
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Past DVD Hardware / Software News |
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24 Hour Party People
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DVD Drama
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Written by Abbie Bernstein
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Tuesday, 21 January 2003
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title:
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24 Hour Party People |
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studio:
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MGM DVD |
| MPAA rating: |
R |
| starring: |
Steve Coogan, Shirley Henderson, Lennie James, Sean Harris |
| release year: |
2002 |
| film rating: |
Four Stars |
| sound/picture: |
Four Stars |
| reviewed by: |
Abbie Bernstein |
Talk about your added-value DVDs. “24 Hour Party People” doesn’t have
nearly the amount of supplemental material of, say, the “Lord of the
Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” set (although the two films do have
something in common – more on that later), but it does have something
that the movie itself makes you crave. This is an audio commentary from
its principal subject, Tony Wilson, who adds a few more notches of
usually hilariously dry perspective (and fact-checking) to this
docudrama-style lesson in real-life rock ‘n’ roll history.
Directed by Michael Winterbottom and scripted by Frank Cottrell Boyce,
“24 Hour Party People” encompasses the years 1976 through 1992, showing
us events that range from the truly tragic to the somewhat magical to
the spectacularly ridiculous, as seen through the eyes of Manchester,
England music promoter Wilson (played in the film by Steve Coogan). If
you remember bands like Joy Division and the Happy Mondays or heard of
Factory Records, here’s the balls-out, slightly absurdist lowdown. If
none of this rings a bell, imagine if Spinal Tap were, real, the poor
fellow who’d taken responsibility for them had some with and
intelligence to go with his obvious insanity and decided to tell you
everything that happened in his interactions with that band and similar
acts, and you’ll have a notion of what “24 Hour Party People” is like.
Then again, maybe you won’t. Director Winterbottom and screenwriter
Boyce show positive glee in startling us by having our protagonist and
narrator Wilson occasionally do things like interrupt a scene in
progress to tell us this isn’t quite what happened or happily point out
the real Wilson in a bit part. The fact that the onscreen Wilson, as
portrayed by Coogan, sounds almost identical to the real Wilson on the
commentary track in tone and content speaks highly of both the accuracy
of the filmmakers’ ears and the genuine cleverness of both factual and
fictionalized personages.
When we first meet Tony is 1976, he’s a high-profile but dissatisfied
reporter for the BBC, trying out the new sport of hang-gliding (as
we’re told on both commentary tracks, the sequence is interspersed with
the actual news footage of the real Wilson crashing into a stand of
trees) and doing video features on zoo elephants (somewhat less
dangerous to Tony’s health, but taking a toll on his dignity). One
night, Tony and his wife Lindsay (Shirley Henderson) see the Sex
Pistols perform for an audience of 42 souls in a mostly empty hall in
Manchester (among other members of the numerically tiny crowd are the
Buzzcocks, Mick Hucknall and members of the band that will become Joy
Division). Never mind the lack of bodies in the venue – Tony is
galvanized. Here is the sound of the future, the sound of today – how
can he get it out to people and how can he be a part of it?
Tony starts out by teaming up with pal Alan Erasmus (Lenny James) to
run showcase nights for favorite bands at a local club in Manchester.
This is an uneven venture, but the two men nevertheless join with band
manager Rob Gretton (Paddy Considine) to form Factory Records. In 1982,
Tony and Co. branch out further, buy a building and open the Hacienda
nightclub. Tony is doing what he loves, but the bands are not only
controversial – Joy Division, named for a Nazi rape squad, attracts
racists and angers a lot of other people – but hard to handle. The
musicians are often emotionally volatile (there are losses to suicide),
taking massive amounts of drugs, or both. Tony’s wild enthusiasm for
the possibilities around him and his own indulgence in drugs cause him
to make questionable decisions and just plain freak out on occasion.
The outcome is foreseeable, but still quite a train wreck.
Although parts of “24 Hour Party People” are fictionalized (as the film
even sans commentary is happy to point out via the on-camera narration
by Coogan-as-Wilson), it is absolutely convincing in its view of the
big picture. Tony’s observations and the continually outrageous
situations make for an engrossing filmic environment – we feel like
we’re in the room, fascinated and amused and dismayed by what we’re
seeing without any power to alter it (just like most of the other
spectators at the time). Director Winterbottom plays with the look from
scene to scene, realistically portraying both poverty grunge and ‘80s
punk-hip excess, but also whimsically using sepia to denote “the past”
(even when “the past” is only a few minutes before “the present”).
Boyce’s dialogue is ever-sharp, realistic and quotable.
The movie is almost unimaginable without Coogan’s central performance
as Tony Wilson. Coogan gives us the man’s considerable ego without
making him off-putting, and manages the harder-than-it-sounds feat of
making Tony’s passion for the music seem endearing rather than
pretentious. He also persuades us that this guy really can see the
funny side of his own problems without turning him into Yoda – we get
self-pity and self-awareness in the correct proportions. The entire
supporting cast is excellent, especially Sean Harris as turmoil-ridden
Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. Wilson cheerfully points out in his
commentary that Andy Serkis, in a pitch-perfect turn as eccentric sound
engineer Martin Hannett, plays Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” films,
noting that the real-life Hannett was “significantly weirder than
Gollum.”
Besides Wilson’s comments, there is a second audio commentary track
with star Coogan and producer Andrew Eaton, which is agreeable if not
quite as informative, with Eaton sometimes serving as interviewer. On
both commentary tracks, the comments are in the center channel, with
the main audio track lowered in the mains and rears, raised back to
almost full volume when the commentators pause. There is also an
entertaining and reasonably comprehensive 11-minute “making of”
featurette and another featurette on Wilson.
There are 49 individual songs listed on the soundtrack – New Order,
Happy Mondays, the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, lots of Joy
Division – many of which are guaranteed to bring the period back to the
viewer. The sound mix choices on the live sequences are intriguing here
– in Chapter 2, when Wilson first sees the Sex Pistols live (the scene
is filmed on the location where it really happened), there’s a nice
grungy surround effect, putting us in the room with what is credibly
the not-state-of-the-art sound system on the premises and people
chatting around us. There’s a great, smooth transition between Chapters
2 and 3, as we go from the din of the performance hall to a private
room, with good, specific paper crunches as posters are ripped off a
wall and dialogue sounds cleanly in the center. A montage of bands
later in Chapter 3 from Wilson’s TV show has sound that is primarily in
the center and mains, going for a plausible high-quality bootleg effect
rather than a sonic immersion which would remove us from the experience
of being in the ‘70s with the attendant technology of the day. A
concert sequence in Chapter 5 has a good mixture of the onstage band –
the actors playing Joy Division – and the excited audience, with the
intriguing choice not to punch Harris’ vocals higher than the
instruments, so that the drama comes from the performance and the
situation rather than just the sound. In Chapter 9, there’s similarly
judicious balance between the crowd sounds and the music.
The music locks us into its various eras as thoroughly as any other
element of the film and irresistibly prompts the curiosity of anyone
who wonders about these things – okay, how did these sounds reach the
general public, once upon a time? “24 Hour Party People” provides part
of the answer, just about as entertainingly and credibly as any
non-documentary can.
| more details |
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sound format:
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English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround |
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aspect ratio(s):
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1.85:1 |
| special features: |
Audio
Commentary by Actor Steve Coogan and Producer Andrew Eaton; Audio
Commentary by Tony Wilson; Deleted Scenes; Making-Of Featurette;
Biographical Featurette on Tony Wilson; Photo Gallery; Theatrical
Trailer; English, Spanish, French and Portuguese Subtitles; English
Closed-Captioning |
| comments: |
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| order today: |
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| reference system |
| DVD player: |
Kenwood DV-403 |
| receiver: |
Kenwood VR-407 |
| main speakers: |
Paradigm Atom |
| center speaker: |
Paradigm CC-170 |
| rear speakers: |
Paradigm ADP-70 |
| subwoofer: |
Paradigm PDR-10 |
| monitor: |
27-inch Toshiba |
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