A Joy Division weekend in Toronto

I can't say I was cool enough to get Joy Division in their day, but you can't be a music fan and escape the influence -- and myth -- of the band's lead singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide at 23 on the eve of what would have been their first tour to America.

"Control,'' a Curtis biopic directed by rock photographer Anton Corbijn, recounts the story beautifully. Shot in luscious black and white, it follows the intense Curtis and his goofier mates on the short ride to legend. Not only is actor Sam Riley sensational as Curtis, but he and his fellow actors play and perform most of the songs on the soundtrack. ("We're lucky,'' Riley told me later, ''they weren't virtuosos.'')

The movie got me interested enough to check out the next morning a documentary on Joy Division, directed by Grant Gee, who made the Radiohead doc "Meeting People is Easy.'' The Joy Division films make for fascinating bookends: Corbijn's movie is based on a memoir by Curtis's widow, while the documentary features extensive interviews with his Belgian-journalist girlfriend, not to mention the surviving members of the band, who went on to play as New Order.

Two things for sure: Riley really got down Curtis's peculiarly magnetic stage moves, seen in a handful of blurry but unforgettable clips in the documentary. And "Atmosphere" is one of the best rock songs of all time