Director Mike Leigh’s social-personal observations of life as it is lived in the U.K. always get to me — this one may simply be a more realistic soap opera, but it’s so good that one pays no attention to technical matters, who the actors are or when they are ‘acting’ … it just ‘is,’ and it’s so involving that one becomes anxious over the smallest thing. Leigh’s most acclaimed picture is the perfect antidote for bloated event filmmaking. And unlike some of his pictures, you walk out with a smile on your face.
Secrets and Lies
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1070
1996 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 142 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 30, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Brenda Blethyn, Claire Rushbrook, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Elizabeth Berrington, Michelle Austin, Lee Ross, Lesley Manville, Ron Cook, Emma Amos.
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Film Editor: Jon Gregory
Production Design: Alison Chitty
Original...
Secrets and Lies
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1070
1996 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 142 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 30, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Brenda Blethyn, Claire Rushbrook, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Elizabeth Berrington, Michelle Austin, Lee Ross, Lesley Manville, Ron Cook, Emma Amos.
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Film Editor: Jon Gregory
Production Design: Alison Chitty
Original...
- 4/3/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
1990’s Life is Sweet is generally considered – when it’s considered at all – one of the lesser lights in writer/director Mike Leigh’s constellation of films. The work’s underwhelming reputation was aided and abetted by the fact that for the last 20 years it’s been damn hard to see. With no official North American rental release, a purchase only, on demand DVD burn from Amazon has been the film’s only means of dissemination for much of the world. Fortunately, Criterion has stepped in to right this injustice with a gorgeous new Blu-ray edition, and life is once again sweet for the legions of Leigh.
In fact, Life is Sweet is the prototypical Mike Leigh film, embodying all that is right and good about the early phase of the director’s career. Before he branched into darker themes and period pieces, Leigh made his name with sharply observed...
In fact, Life is Sweet is the prototypical Mike Leigh film, embodying all that is right and good about the early phase of the director’s career. Before he branched into darker themes and period pieces, Leigh made his name with sharply observed...
- 5/29/2013
- by David Anderson
- IONCINEMA.com
Crucible, Sheffield; Cottesloe; Olivier, both London
For fans of the television series The Wire, it is impossible not to be on patrol, trying to spot detective Jimmy McNulty in Dominic West's Iago and Lester Freamon in Clarke Peters's Othello. But it is to the credit of both actors and to Daniel Evans's triumphant production at the Sheffield Crucible that such distractions do not persist as the tragedy gathers pace. Besides, Dominic West is in complete Shakespearean disguise as Iago. He has grown a beard, cut his hair savagely short, wears curious brown leather knickerbockers with slits in them and has acquired a Yorkshire accent to play the greatest villain of all time. The choice of accent is inspired because it sounds so trustworthy – it turns Iago into Mr Common Sense. Noisy comedy is this Iago's cover. You can imagine him propping up the bar at a 16th-century tavern,...
For fans of the television series The Wire, it is impossible not to be on patrol, trying to spot detective Jimmy McNulty in Dominic West's Iago and Lester Freamon in Clarke Peters's Othello. But it is to the credit of both actors and to Daniel Evans's triumphant production at the Sheffield Crucible that such distractions do not persist as the tragedy gathers pace. Besides, Dominic West is in complete Shakespearean disguise as Iago. He has grown a beard, cut his hair savagely short, wears curious brown leather knickerbockers with slits in them and has acquired a Yorkshire accent to play the greatest villain of all time. The choice of accent is inspired because it sounds so trustworthy – it turns Iago into Mr Common Sense. Noisy comedy is this Iago's cover. You can imagine him propping up the bar at a 16th-century tavern,...
- 9/24/2011
- by Kate Kellaway
- The Guardian - Film News
Hampstead; Theatre Royal Haymarket; Vaudeville, all London
Ecstasy: by which Mike Leigh means desperation under a candlewick bedspread. His restaging of this 1979 play, originally devised at Hampstead with Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters, is a significant occasion. It's the first time Leigh has returned to one of his old plays. It is, in terms of tickets sold and cash taken, the most successful production in the theatre's history. It is also a blazing demonstration of Leighland.
It begins with electric simplicity. When Siân Brooke and Sinead Matthews – the one with a gin bottle in the cupboard and sexually grumpy visitors, the other waving some pink, slippery tops she's just nicked from C&A – yelp on to the scene, they are bright outlines. The audience chortles, and bring to mind Dominic Cooke's project at the Royal Court: he thinks it grisly that the middle classes should huddle in the stalls to...
Ecstasy: by which Mike Leigh means desperation under a candlewick bedspread. His restaging of this 1979 play, originally devised at Hampstead with Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters, is a significant occasion. It's the first time Leigh has returned to one of his old plays. It is, in terms of tickets sold and cash taken, the most successful production in the theatre's history. It is also a blazing demonstration of Leighland.
It begins with electric simplicity. When Siân Brooke and Sinead Matthews – the one with a gin bottle in the cupboard and sexually grumpy visitors, the other waving some pink, slippery tops she's just nicked from C&A – yelp on to the scene, they are bright outlines. The audience chortles, and bring to mind Dominic Cooke's project at the Royal Court: he thinks it grisly that the middle classes should huddle in the stalls to...
- 3/20/2011
- by Susannah Clapp
- The Guardian - Film News
After Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh swore off middle-class drama – but he's broken his promise. He tells Xan Brooks about the personal issues that made him return
It's 9am at a Soho production office, downstairs from a flat occupied by a trio of French glamour models. The tea is served, the seats are taken and now, for the sake of argument, Mike Leigh and I are playing Hollywood deal-makers. The director has come to pitch his latest picture, Another Year, and I'm here to listen, puffing on a metaphorical cigar as he outlines the plot. "Another Year," he says. "Well, it's about a very nice couple who are really, really happy. And they have an allotment and a friend who's a drunkard and a son who doesn't have a partner." He breaks from the script to peer over his teacup. "This is moment where you're meant to show me the door."
Leigh...
It's 9am at a Soho production office, downstairs from a flat occupied by a trio of French glamour models. The tea is served, the seats are taken and now, for the sake of argument, Mike Leigh and I are playing Hollywood deal-makers. The director has come to pitch his latest picture, Another Year, and I'm here to listen, puffing on a metaphorical cigar as he outlines the plot. "Another Year," he says. "Well, it's about a very nice couple who are really, really happy. And they have an allotment and a friend who's a drunkard and a son who doesn't have a partner." He breaks from the script to peer over his teacup. "This is moment where you're meant to show me the door."
Leigh...
- 10/28/2010
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
Pioneering director of theatre-in-the-round and musical shows in the Potteries
Once described by Simon Hoggart as the "furry caterpillar" because of his habitual woolly sweaters, Peter Cheeseman, who has died aged 78, offered a unique vision of the role of theatre in the community. He pioneered theatre-in-the-round and, as the artistic director of the Victoria theatre in Stoke-on-Trent and then the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme, installed a vibrant, creative hothouse in the industrial sprawl of the Potteries.
English regional theatre in the late 1950s was still dominated by the Edwardian values of the West End, the star system and the cosy conventions of the French-windows farce. Peter's passionate commitment to breaking the fourth wall of the proscenium arch stage, and rooting a resident company of actors, writers, musicians and designers in the local community, was revolutionary. He became involved in 1961 with the Studio Theatre Company, founded by Stephen Joseph. Peter put...
Once described by Simon Hoggart as the "furry caterpillar" because of his habitual woolly sweaters, Peter Cheeseman, who has died aged 78, offered a unique vision of the role of theatre in the community. He pioneered theatre-in-the-round and, as the artistic director of the Victoria theatre in Stoke-on-Trent and then the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme, installed a vibrant, creative hothouse in the industrial sprawl of the Potteries.
English regional theatre in the late 1950s was still dominated by the Edwardian values of the West End, the star system and the cosy conventions of the French-windows farce. Peter's passionate commitment to breaking the fourth wall of the proscenium arch stage, and rooting a resident company of actors, writers, musicians and designers in the local community, was revolutionary. He became involved in 1961 with the Studio Theatre Company, founded by Stephen Joseph. Peter put...
- 4/29/2010
- by Robin Thornber
- The Guardian - Film News
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