Lesley Sharp is bob's wife in Rita, Sue and Bob too!
― Acting Crazy (Instrumental) (jed_), Tuesday, 19 February 2019 21:49 (five years ago) link
doesnt fit me anymore but it's probly somewhere
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 19 February 2019 22:48 (five years ago) link
Rewatched Naked just the other day. Then randomly saw Wonder Woman (2017) and stupidly amused myself thinking of it as a sequel of sorts.
― *there's (Noel Emits), Wednesday, 20 February 2019 10:53 (five years ago) link
Or prequel, I guess.
― *there's (Noel Emits), Wednesday, 20 February 2019 10:55 (five years ago) link
I’ve made four period films. Vera Drake is in a slightly different department because it’s set during a time, and in a world, that I remember. And all of the other films are set around the nineteenth century, which is recent enough to sit in our received memory, if not our actual memory. If I were to make a film that was set in the ninth century, I would find it very difficult. The nature of how people would be talking and behaving would be a concoction. But while making Peterloo, Topsy-Turvy, or Mr. Turner there was a great deal to find out about, even how people talked and what language they used. Whatever film we make, whether it’s contemporary or not, the amount of research that goes on is always colossal. People research everything they can think of to make those characters three-dimensional....
All processes, creative and otherwise, involve laying foundations and doing all the donkeywork, which can be very tedious. Nothing beats the actual filmmaking or shooting and being on set. And the postproduction, which is a glorious thing always.
First of all, that’s where you make the film. Secondly, if you’ve been rehearsing for six months, then shooting for four months and getting up at four o’clock in the morning, it’s like a rest cure! It’s very exciting, and I go backward and forward between the editor and composer, and then we start. People say to me, “You must love the rehearsals best.” I don’t. I hate the rehearsals because it’s donkeywork and you haven’t got anything to show at the end of the day. You’re just preparing and preparing and sometimes it can be quite grueling. On all of my films, and Peterloo is no exception, all the preparation work has happened, but I can only construct each scene in the location. I can’t write it without seeing it. So we do that by improvising and then pinning it down and distilling it and then finally writing it through rehearsal. And the whole business of shooting and working with the cinematographer and all the rest—that’s marvelous. It’s a privilege.
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6275-a-sit-down-with-mike-leigh
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 3 April 2019 16:34 (five years ago) link
Pinkerton diggin' Peterloo (opens in US today)
The characterizations throughout have more than a touch of Hogarth-like caricature to them, but Leigh reserves true grotesquerie for the ruling classes, whom he’s never made a secret of his feelings about—I direct you to his 1992 short A Sense of History, in which the fictional 23rd Earl of Leete (Jim Broadment) gives a guided tour of his splendid estate, gradually leaking details of his murder of his entire family along the way. Here, too, the gentry are found with blood on their hands. Significantly, it’s only when the film arrives at the fateful sixteenth of August that the speechifying stops, that words fail—Joseph’s family are unable to make out Hunt’s speech from the hustings; a magistrate’s reading of the riot act from a window over the square is lost to the wind; and when Yeomanry and cavalry advance suddenly with sabers drawn, actions speak louder. The carnage that follows is genuinely awful, as overwhelming in its way as the Battle of Shrewsbury is in Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight (1965)—a comparison not to be wielded lightly. Leigh isn’t shooting for you-are-there-“immersivity,” but rather for a clarified confusion; he doesn’t seek to do dubious honor to the dead by trying to approximate the firsthand experience of their final moments, only to show how these things might very well have happened, in all the panic and clumsiness. (Among other things, Leigh captures the very indignity, the awkwardness, of finding one’s self killed.) After a film so heavy with conference and conversation, the eruption of violence is as shocking as that abrupt cut to the pounding of the looms in the mill—a reign of savagery after so much talk, talk, talk attesting to high-minded civilization. And when the smoke has cleared, it remains only to coin still another word: “Peterloo.”
https://www.artforum.com/film/nick-pinkerton-on-mike-leigh-s-peterloo-2019-79196
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 5 April 2019 16:18 (five years ago) link
so anyone seen it?
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 11 July 2019 11:59 (four years ago) link
it's terrible. ludicrous.
― Funky Isolations (jed_), Thursday, 11 July 2019 15:52 (four years ago) link
well
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 11 July 2019 16:36 (four years ago) link
Missed it when it played here for a week
― flappy bird, Thursday, 11 July 2019 17:02 (four years ago) link
Should've made the effort but "a lesser Topsy-Turvy" was all I heard
I loved it, y'all should watch it. I cried at the end.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 July 2019 12:35 (four years ago) link
Now on Amazon Prime (in the UK at least). I think it's fair to say that Jed's is the majority opinion.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 12 July 2019 12:37 (four years ago) link
Yeah, I saw the comments.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 July 2019 12:40 (four years ago) link
"a lesser Topsy-Turvy" was all I heard
uh, the tone is rather different....
I could've done with a little less hyperventilating by the villains (that one spitty guy in partic), but he delivered the goods with that climax (never thought I'd see that many extras in a Leigh picture). Also liked the vanity and ego of the Rory Kinnear reform star, and moments like the maid asking "Am I in the picture?" No, you are not.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Monday, 30 March 2020 00:04 (four years ago) link
I can't believe Amazon funded it.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 March 2020 00:17 (four years ago) link
when the two shrews in the doorway yelled "GO 'OME TO YER 'USBANDS!" one can't help but mutter "Trumpists"
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Monday, 30 March 2020 00:25 (four years ago) link
i'm sure Amazon will get the National Guard to take care of their packers in a pinch.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Monday, 30 March 2020 00:28 (four years ago) link
one of my top five films of 2019
https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2020/02/01/the-best-films-of-2019/
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 March 2020 00:29 (four years ago) link
I agree re: Rory Kinnear's performance/character is a wonderfully drawn and played classic melt poseur arsehole! The aftermath scenes are so hard hitting, it's quite a powerful finish. It really stayed with me did this.
― calzino, Monday, 30 March 2020 00:34 (four years ago) link
it's terrible. full of people explaining what they are going to do, v. embarrassing exposition. Leigh at his worst when he's allowing the upper classes to be utterly ridiculous (as long as he's imagined/written the text) - I'm sure they were, fwiw. There was one scene that made me laugh out loud where one of the magistrate reads a letter to a maid and she says "oh dear" (or something) then walks offscreen, never to be seen again. She's only in the film to listen to the speech. also, the cgi is utter shit.
― current (jed_), Monday, 30 March 2020 02:23 (four years ago) link
lol
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 March 2020 02:35 (four years ago) link
you laughed at that scene as well?
― current (jed_), Monday, 30 March 2020 02:41 (four years ago) link
no no I'm just startled we disagree so hard
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 March 2020 02:42 (four years ago) link
me too man! I'm confused!
― current (jed_), Monday, 30 March 2020 02:44 (four years ago) link
when he is good, he is very very good. But when he is bad he is awful.
― current (jed_), Monday, 30 March 2020 02:47 (four years ago) link
I'm not sure his good ones are not awful either, fwiw. Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake have some awful stuff about them. Abigail's Party does but it was written as a play so the too-big-stuff about it is excusable. Some people like Nuts in May, after al and I'll never understand that. Career Girls, same. I know Katrin Cartlidge died tragically young but still.
― current (jed_), Monday, 30 March 2020 03:02 (four years ago) link
Didn't notice any bad CG, don't be such a fucking gearhead tosser.
I still own a Career Girls t shirt.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Monday, 30 March 2020 03:05 (four years ago) link
in life, people explain what they are going to do quite often
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Monday, 30 March 2020 03:06 (four years ago) link
While okay and great Leigh is hard to distinguish, it's hard to think of awful in the last 20 years. Can you give me, jed, examples of awful writing or direction?
(Not an assignment, just genuinely curious!)
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 March 2020 03:35 (four years ago) link
Career Girls and Nuts in May are two films I will never tire of.
― Wuhan!! Got You All in Check (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 30 March 2020 06:43 (four years ago) link
when he is good, he is very very good.But when he is bad he is awful.
Ken Loach
― Vegemite Is My Grrl (Eric H.), Monday, 30 March 2020 12:51 (four years ago) link
Nuts in May is untouchable. I wonder why jed hates it – maybe because it's too broad a caricture too caricatured – but God it doesn't matter in this case. But talking of caricature, CG is bad ML imo.
As for Peterloo, for some reason I'm reminded of Americans liking Match Point. I haven't seen either!
― Alba, Monday, 30 March 2020 13:43 (four years ago) link
Nuts in May should've had a Brexit remake
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Monday, 30 March 2020 13:59 (four years ago) link
lol I can't stand Match Point. Someone should've clubbed Allen to death with a tennis racket.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 March 2020 13:59 (four years ago) link
Match Point is awful.
― Vegemite Is My Grrl (Eric H.), Monday, 30 March 2020 14:00 (four years ago) link
Can well imagine people disliking Nuts In May tbh. Not me though.
― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.), Monday, 30 March 2020 14:02 (four years ago) link
I get why some people don't like Career Girls, it has the conspicuously affective performance ramped up to 11, but it's all-time for me, really captures a place and a time in a unique way, and has so many brilliant moments - I kind of see it as a companion piece to Naked.
― Wuhan!! Got You All in Check (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 30 March 2020 14:03 (four years ago) link
I apologise for tarring Alfred and Eric with the Match Point-appreciating brush.
― Alba, Monday, 30 March 2020 14:34 (four years ago) link
I was reading this thread on my phone and thinking have I gone through some wormhole where Mike Leigh directed the godawful Match Point. Was very relieved after a frantic IMDB check.
― calzino, Monday, 30 March 2020 14:48 (four years ago) link
Ha ha. Sorry fo polluting the whole thread.
― Alba, Monday, 30 March 2020 14:59 (four years ago) link
jed otm itt. Watched this last night and it was sortof enjoyable in a deadeyed bbc way with loads of semi-recognisable actors hamming it up but was complete antithesis of everything I like about topsy turvy (its baggy improvisatory feel, its digressary construction).
worst things: the score! twee and saccharine and overbearing.maxine peake and her exposition-spouting family (I usually like maxine peake, although I'm starting to get sick of her playing the exact same character and wearing the exact same hat). There are a number of these 2-dimensional 'noble' characters (such as the guardian journalists excitedly founding theguardian.com at the end) prattling on flatly throughout. They sortof appear every now and then, as if Leigh has been reminded that he needs to connect the plot more explicitly to historical context and often results in tritely presented scenes like the egg bartering at the beginning (we do not remain interested in the household accounts of the maxine peakes, this single egg-buying experience is supposed to account for quite a bit here.). The film seems as bored of these characters as I was but prefers to snigger at the hammy 'characters' in a way I found pretty repulsive and boring.casual mysogyny: unless you are a saintly pragmatic female main character, you are likely to be an imbecile or a shrew. I find this to be the single most damning thing in leigh's films, and doubly weird that he made such a complex film about the politics of abortion (vera drake) considering how frequently his characterisations of women are so hateful. in this one the 'dimwit maid' character really stood out. How can someone insert characters like that and still be considered (a) interested in realism and (b) to be some sort of figurehead of progressivism in britain*?
Its disappointing because the historical events are interesting, and the contemporary resonances many (the spying on progressive movements, the authoritarianism and paranoia of the british ruling class etc) and at the very least the film seems to have somewhat restored the events to more mainstream knowledge in the uk (hopefully somewhat durably).
*don't answer this one
― plax (ico), Wednesday, 28 October 2020 09:52 (three years ago) link
Fascinating, and I couldn't disagree more strongly.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 28 October 2020 12:25 (three years ago) link
I suspect that some of the things I find most egregious about Leigh might not be so legible if you haven't spent much time in the UK (especially England), although I think his weird women issues would be obvious to an alien.
― plax (ico), Wednesday, 28 October 2020 18:45 (three years ago) link
Just watched Career Girls for the first time, having seen most of his other films. This seem quite poor. The student year scenes I found excruciatingly bad and the mature years were ok - but not just enough chemistry between Hannah and Annie to make it interesting. The 'coincidences' or meeting former college acquaintances just seemed to be mostly a mess (or a miss).
― Luna Schlosser, Saturday, 31 October 2020 23:44 (three years ago) link
The acting in the "young" scenes in Career Girls must be some of the worst (or most misguided) ever done by talented actors. I literally could not understand why they were talking and gesturing in such contrived ways. 20 years later, I'm no wiser. Was it meant to show how precocious they were? Were the viewers meant to hate the characters as much as I did?
― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, 1 November 2020 02:34 (three years ago) link
Didn't expect to read Mr. Turner as an idiosyncratic exegesis on creativity, depression and the anguish that runs through them but by the end I was kinda wrecked by it.
Really need a supercut of Spall's variety of grunts - whether as exclamation, criticism, joy, sadness, or all the nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and conjunctions.
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 23 August 2022 02:08 (one year ago) link