When Sean Harris perfectly captured the hope and despair of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, twitching on the stage like a broken electrical cable, in Michael Winterbottom's brilliant 24 Hour Party People, there seemed good reason to assume that it would remain the last filmic word on Curtis and his band for quite a while. Instead, Curtis will be returning to haunt movie screens this fall in two separate projects, both of them labors of love with contributions from Curtis's surviving associates. (Curtis hanged himself in 1980, at the age of twenty-three.) Photographer Anton Corbijn makes his feature-directing debut with Control, a biopic starring Sam Riley, which opens this week; it's based on a book by Curtis's widow, Deborah. (She's played in the movie by Samantha Morton.) Meanwhile, Joy Division, a documentary directed by Grant Gee and written by Jon Savage, features a mix of performance footage, TV appearances and interviews with surviving band members. It's also got interview footage of Tony Wilson, who was played by Steve Coogan in 24 Hour Party People and who himself died last August. Curtis's death threatened to make him the official Rock and Roll Suicide figure of post-punk, a cheesy honor if ever there was one, so it's good to hear Deborah Curtis and other representatives of both films insist that their real concern is depicting the accomplishments of his life, not celebrating his means of leaving it. Even the huckster antihero of 24 Hour Party People, who was not above marketing his dead star as a martyr, finally told the camera that he wished people who never knew Curtis or saw him perform could be made to understand how much fun he was. — Phil Nugent