The Rule Of Three: Its Mike Leigh

i have to admit ive been confusing this guy with mike nichols for years - which always made nuts in may really confusing for me because it makes me think of elaine may and etc.

Man, TamTam, if that's only the third Leigh film you've seen, you're in for a treat.

I've only seen Naked, Secrets and Lies and Career Girls but I liked all of them v much.

Reading through this thread I noticed mention of a movie I've never seen . . . Nil by Mouth? Directed by Gary Oldman and Staring Ray Winstone? How have I never even heard of this? It sounds like it could be my favorite movie I've never even watched.

i have to admit ive been confusing this guy with mike nichols for years -

― weed hitler poop fart obama (Princess TamTam) Friday, February 11, 2011 10:45 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

me 2. i'd previously only seen Naked, which i dont recall doing much for me, though i watched happy-go-lucky today & loved it tbh

ha remember when eddie marsdan was on everyone's oscar list as like dark-horse 9th-place best supporting actor for "happy go lucky"

Mr Turner

: O

amplify plz

(great Spall, good fillum)

Yeah he was fantastic and it was overall very good to excellent. I am a big turner fan and there were also specific resonances for me so I may be more inclined to overlook any flaws. But I felt like I wanted to see it again after it was done.

This was kind of the first time I had seen Leigh work so much with wider, grander cinematography, he may have done so in other films I haven't seen but I always associate him mostly with tight closeups on expressive and weathered faces and small interior spaces. This had all that too but I had never seen him work with dramatic landscapes and brilliant outdoor light and I was impressed with what he did.

The only complaints I had at all were the occasional "see, he is progressive" moments like the slavery discussion, but even that wasn't so jarring as it related to a painting.

big turner fan here too, wanna see this

prob literally no one i know will see it with me :/

Love Turner. Loved the film and yeah, can't wait to see it again. Pretty spot on.

i'm seeing this today.

The Internet makes it so hard to just unabashedly, unreservedly love things sometimes but I really loved this film

CAD I will see it with you! I am super excited for this movie!

I think mike Leigh is not properly marketed in the US. No one I know here seems to know his films. I was introduced by my wife who grew up much more on British and European media. Some youngster I was talking too the other night seemed to think from the trailer it was something in the vein of a bbc Jane Austen adaptation.

I've had the screener on my table for about ten days. Movie doesn't get a South Florida release for another ten days.

Loved this movie.

CAD I will see it with you! I am super excited for this movie!

― dr bronner's new and improved peppermint (soda), Friday, December 26, 2014 9:20 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey maybe we should do this! appears to open on the 9th here.

Didn't know that Ruskin was Elmer Fudd about his r's -- reminds me that I haven't read his art crit since my college Victorian lit class.

needs theater viewing fer chrissakes

agreed

Yeah, this was really impressive.

interview

First of all, what was for sure, is that I wasn’t gonna start at the beginning.... So here we are, spanning 26 years, you know. I was not turned on by the idea of the film starting with a baby being born in ‘75. Apart from anything else, we’d have had to find a small fat boy who looked like Tim Spall, who could draw and paint. I find that very boring, really. You don’t need to go through all that thing of having a younger actor and then changing to an older actor. I can’t be bothered with all that, and it’s not necessary, because the thing is to drop anchor. We’ve managed, I think, to put in backstory information laid into what you see without it being crass and crude, you know. Apart from anything else, it’s just to allow Tim Spall, within his acting range, to go through that phase. I think it’s more interesting to come in when it’s all happening, and then to move on from there. Anyway, all the interesting things that I wanted to deal with were from his father’s death, his relationship with Mrs. Booth, certain famous events, like the famous event that did actually happen, in the Royal Academy, where he puts a red blob on a painting; all that actually happened. And other things, and also that period, most importantly, where he was being more radical, and people were reviling him, not least amongst whom Queen Victoria, who loathed his stuff! There are no Turners in the royal collection to this day in London.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/thats-fairly-silly-question-interview-mike-leigh

OTM about starting from childhood being boring -- a thing I hate not only about biopics but the whole genre of biography.

It's a small thing, but for some reason I keep thinking about the Ruskin scene, the moment where Ruskin is describing the ocean painter he finds boring (claude something, forget the name), and Turner is kind of sitting there thinking the guy is full of hot air and finally weighs in that "Claude ___ was a genius," and the other painters agree. It just rang true for me somehow, the way there's always that artist's artist that the artists speak about in reverential tones but not many other people seem to get, someone otherwise out of fashion or "boring," but who does something subtle or technical that other artists appreciate. Anyway it just seems like a good example of a way that the movie gets artists right where most other movies about artists fail.

I loved this movie.

Really want to go see it again while still in theaters, if it is. Probably won't get a chance.

it hasn't even opened in South Florida.

In that scene there is also that flippant, pie comment from Spall, another even smaller thing but still good!

Man alive, Ruskin himself was an artist and a very great one at that.

The envy and suspicion among artists who are generally on friendly terms was also portrayed beautifully, subtly. Plus the scenes of his father buying pigment, grinding pigment, stretching canvas... All things I had read about Turner's old father actually doing and not quite understanding how he could get his dad, of all people, to do such laborious work. It was beyond poignant for me to see this come to life.

I wouldn't call Ruskin a great artist, an influential thinker and accomplished design artist maybe?

excellent writer and terrifying husband

"There have been various representations of Ruskin and they are always, by definition, incredibly dull. … I just thought it would be a good wheeze to render him in this way," Leigh states. "There is no suggestion on my part that that is a documentary representation of Ruskin."

It's a shame that people may see this and assume Ruskin was some kind of fool. I've no idea what Leigh means by "by definition... dull".

The Ruskin scenes were really funny. I'm so glad they were in there.

I watched the movie bearing the criticism in mind and I didn't see a fool so much as an artful (heh) hustler, ponderous like many mid Victorian men and thus typical.

An overindulged spoilt Edwardian child was my reading, a prodigy ruined by his parents, but still pretty fucking good at what he does.

^^ this

"Edwardian" means seventy years later, no?

I should have said Georgian, sorry.

I didn't think it was portraying Ruskin as a fool, just a bit of a self-sniffing windbag.

needs theater viewing fer chrissakes

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 5, 2015 4:33 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Absolutely. Finally saw this this weekend -- it's just now made it to our flyover screens. Really enjoyed it all the way through. Spall is so much fun to watch, getting multiple meanings out of every grunt and snort. No idea if that's anywhere close to the real Turner, but that doesn't matter, it works for the film's conception of him. And the way the landscapes and seascapes are shot not so much to look like his paintings as to suggest what he saw in them that he carried through to his paintings -- seeing the world through his eyes.

This and Topsy Turvy are my favorite Leigh films. He should do more period biopics! One thing I love is that he really tries to give the details of daily life in another time -- to the degree that it is disorienting at first, it feels like a somewhat alien place. Which is what it would do, of course. That's something a lot of period films don't even bother to try, they just give you modern people and mores in period dress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxEqqRa_Tn4

Y'all should watch Hard Truths!

Genuinely excited to see it, and I’m not a particular Leigh fan, even though Keith in Nuts in May was apparently based on my high school maths teacher. It’s not out here till the end of the month.

As ever, Mike Leigh somehow talks engagingly for an hour without really giving much away.

i know the ending of hard truths was intentionally open-ended to make you think about what could happen next but i'm enjoying thinking it's a setup for the big sequel harder truths