I was a New Order fan way before I was a Joy Division fan. I know most people would claim the other way around. I am sure you hear some people born in 1985 who claim to have liked Joy Division before they liked New Order, but it is just not possible for some of us. Joy Division was formed in 1976, when I was 2 years old. Ian Curtis committed suicide days after my sixth birthday. We simply didn't cover this event in my Kindergarten class. Joy Division were not on Sesame Street. It really was not until 1987 when I started getting into New Order. The double album Substance came out in 1987. It still remains one of my favorite albums. It was one of the albums that shaped who I am today. It probably was also one of the first albums that I was absolutely obsessed with. I am sure it has a special place in the heart of many. The first album by them I remember actually buying was Technique, which came out in January of 1989. I was in ninth grade and not really ready for the 80s to be over. I actually think I had a dubbed cassette of Technique and Substance before I actually bought any album by them. Within the next couple of years I picked up most of the New Order albums and the two studio albums of Joy Division. I quickly fell in love with Joy Division as well, but for different reasons. I was also a Morrissey fan before being a Smiths fan. It was always exciting to go back and discover a band that was over before I was old enough to actually listen to them while they were happening. I fell in love with New Order-- there was just no avoiding it. They were everything I wanted in a band. They were also really unavoidable during the 80s and 90s. New Order were all over the radio and you would most likely hear them everywhere else you went. You would hear them in the mall or at your friends' house. DJs loved New Order. You would most likely hear them at any school dance, dance club, party, wedding, or bar mitzvah that you went to. They were a band that was easy to fall in love with. Joy Division captured that inner depression and angst that many of us felt, but New Order captured that more fun and optimistic side that many of us also identified with. Joy Division and New Order were sort of two sides of a coin. They have both remained with me ever since. I still never get tired of hearing "True Faith" or "Blue Monday."

In a creepy crime similar to an incident that happened to the late Mac Dre's resting place three years ago when the slain Vallejo rapper's headstone was stolen, the gravestone of former Joy Division front man Ian Curtis was stolen sometime between yesterday and this morning from the Macclesfield Cemetery in Cheshire, England.

As reported earlier today by the BBC, "Detectives said the stone, which has the inscription "Ian Curtis 18 -5 -80" and the words "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was taken...There is no CCTV in the area and there are no apparent leads as to who is responsible for the theft."

The local authorities went on to speculate that the recent surge in interest in the singer might have led to the unusual theft. Last year's biopic on the singer, Control, and the documentary, Joy Division, which was released earlier this year, have both undoubtedly led to an increase in interest in the talented Curtis, who hung himself in the kitchen of his nearby Macclesfield home back in May 1980 when he was 23. Cheshire police have pleaded with anyone who has information to contact them.

This incident brings to mind both the theft of Jim Morrison's headstone from P’re Lachaise Cemetery in Paris in 1990, and the aforementioned Andre (Mac Dre) Hicks graveside robbery from Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery in 2005.  Despite the fact that a large reward was posted for the recovery of Mac Dre's headstone (and a beat-down promised if the perp was ever caught), the headstone was never recovered. Eventually it was replaced with a new one that was tightly secured.

It is now officially the week of Coldplay. I knew the album would be huge but it has seriously done better than anybody's expectations, and the week is not even over yet. It will for sure be the Sex & the City of the summer. Everyone is expecting it to do well, but this is just craziness. I think it might end up being the biggest debut at Amoeba ever. However, the most exciting release of the week for me would have to be the new Joy Division Documentary. Control really left me wanting more Joy Division in my life, and now I can finally have it.

There has not really been a good Joy Division documentary yet-- a least not one that I have seen-- so it is nice to finally have one on DVD. I just got the DVD yesterday but I have not had a chance to watch it yet, so I can't exactly talk all that much about it, but it is "Fantastic" according to Russ Fischer from Chud.com. This is the quote on the back of the DVD. I really hate quotes on the packaging of DVDs. At least CDS usually have little quotes on stickers on the outside of the plastic. I know they are great marketing tools but it really ruins the artwork. I should be happy at least they put the quote on the back of the DVD. I would think that they could get a quote from somebody more well known than chud.com... but I guess not. I had not really heard of chud.com, so this quote did not influence me to buy the dvd but it did make me check out their website. I might now be a fan of chud.com. I had been looking for some other movie blogs to check out and I think I might have found one. C.H.U.D. stands for Cinematic Happenings Under Development. It seems to be a website/blog for comic book and sci-fi/horror nerds, but I will have to do some more investigation. I do believe them though. I bet the DVD is fantastic. It includes the documentary with all the surviving members of Joy Division and also 75 minutes of additional interviews.

Control is finally out on DVD this week! However there is no Blu-ray. This just might have been the movie to push me over the edge and buy a Blu-ray player. I still am not completely sure what a film looks like on Blu-ray since I have yet to see one, but I imagine that this film would look amazing in high definition. It seems like it was out in theater like forever ago, but I guess it was only last November. The film was scheduled to come out a month or 2 ago but was pushed back until this week. I am really excited-- as excited as I can be about one of the most depressing films that I have ever seen. If you are in the mood for another depressing movie you should also check out The Bridge. I had been wanting to watch this movie ever since it hit the theater last year, but I just could not bring myself to watch it until recently. I normally love intense and disturbing documentaries, but this one was especially hard for me to watch. The movie is about people who have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Maybe it was hard to watch because I love that bridge so much. I guess this is sort of selfish, but I have spent many days walking across it and I just didn't want to associate it with death. I will for sure not feel the same next time I cross the bridge.

At least you know what you are getting with the Joy Division movie. You know how it ends. And if you are a fan of the music then you know how the music can affect you. Joy Division is a very unique band for its fans. Many of us didn't even start listening to the band until after Ian Curtis killed himself. I was still too young to be listening to anything but Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse Club records when Ian Curtis took his own life, so I never had that period of enjoying the band while he was still alive. At least with bands like Nirvana there was a significant period when Kurt Cobain was still alive for his fans to still enjoy him. So Joy Division is always associated with death in my mind. I always can hear his depression and confusion in all of his songs, but for some reason I can completely disassociate New Order from that feeling, maybe because they ended up sounding so different.

If you did not have a time to watch this movie in the theater. Now is the time. Just get it over with it. I guarantee that you will like this film if you like Joy Division even a little bit. The film is shot so beautifully that you could even appreciate it without liking the movie. I was a bit worried about the movie since I knew it was based on the book by the wife of Ian Curtis. Deborah Curtis consulted on the film so I really worried that the film would not be completely accurate in regards to the relationship between Ian and his wife. While I am sure that it is not really completely accurate, the film does not exactly portray Deborah Curtis as a saint. I tend to always side with the female character in movies, but this was not the case in Control. The movie really made you side with Ian and feel bad for him. I really just wanted to jump into the movie at certain points and tell him that it was going to be OK. We all have had our own relationship problems. Of course, it becomes a bit more serious when you throw marriage, kids, fame, drugs, and epilepsy into the mix. While the movie ends like you would expect with his suicide, I was surprised at how they portrayed his final moments with his wife. It almost seems like it was her fault and as if it could have been avoided...but even if she had acted differently in these final situations, it also seems like he would have eventually killed himself regardless.

The film is cast perfectly. Sam Riley is absolutely amazing as Ian Curtis. He seriously amazed me by how fantastic he was in this film. The whole film just looks like one continuous amazing black and white photograph. They managed to find four guys that looked very similar to the actual guys in Joy Division, if not a bit more attractive and movie-like. The film somehow captures the feeling of a Joy Division song. It seriously gave me shivers as I was watching it. I ended up forgetting that this was a cast of actors and not the actual people.