24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE

Starring: Steve Coogan, Lennie James, Paddy Considine, Sean Harris and Danny Cunningham
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Running Time: 115 mins
Certificate: 18

Available to buy on DVD January 27th

Manchester 1976, Tony Wilson (Coogan), a local reporter for Granada TV goes to a gig that will go down in history. He, along with another forty-two people, witness the first ever performance of The Sex Pistols and it changes Wilson's life forever. Inspired by the event he introduces his TV audience to Punk, New-Wave and Indie music. Seeing the untapped potential, Wilson and an unsigned, up and coming band called Joy Division start Factory Records and the Hacienda Club. This leads to the explosion of the Manchester scene and the new Drugs, Indie and Rave cultures.

Inspired by real events and filmed in a unique style of a documentary/biopic/extreme music video, this movie is a must see for anyone would grew up with Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays.

Steve Coogan gives his best performance in a long time, a more mellowed out version of Alan Partridge, he acts as both the film's narrator and it's central character. By constantly talking to camera and then interacting with the events in the movie, the character throws out the rulebook on biopics and brings the audience with him on his up and down journey that was Tony Wilson's life.

Special mention has to go to the performances of Sean Harris as the tragic Joy Division lead singer, Ian Curtis and Danny Cunningham as Shaun Ryder, the outrageous front man of the legendary Happy Mondays. Both of these performances are central to the two distinct halves of the movie, the first charting the rise of Factory Records and the Manchester culture in the late seventies/early eighties and the second covering the excess and subsequent collapse of the business in the late eighties/early nineties.

The soundtrack is, as you'd expect, absolutely superb. The Sex Pistols, The Jam, The Stranglers and more, as well as the featured bands, are all in abundance and make the film worth seeing on it's own.

If you grew up in the time this is the movie for you, as it will bring back memories of a time when mobile phones were the size of bricks, drugs culture was everywhere, everyone lived to excess, music was everything and the centre of the world was Manchester.

Tony Wilson commentary, Commentary with Steve Coogan and Andrew Eaton, Artists' commentary from Peter Hook, Rowetta, Leroy Richardson, Bruce Mitchell, Miranda Sawyer, Bobby Langley and Martin Moscrop, Sleeve notes, 'White Rabbit' style guide, 24 deleted scenes, 'Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches' documentary (47 minutes long), 'Portrait of a Filmaker' documentary (23 minutes long), Peter Saville gallery and New Order music video 'Here to Stay'