There’s a practice known as bibliomancy, where readers will open the Bible to a random page in the hopes that the passage they encounter will provide a needed answer to a dilemma. In Mike Leigh’s “Career Girls,” the collegiate heroines practice their own version, called “Miss Brontë, Miss Brontë,” wherein they ask a question and then open “Wuthering Heights” in search of counsel.
How the powerful and provocative “Wuthering Heights” came to be the single novel produced by a relatively sheltered woman who died at the age of 30 is the subject of “Emily,” a powerful debut feature from actor and filmmaker Frances O’Connor. Craftily combining fact, fiction and conjecture, O’Connor captures the inner life of Emily Brontë, a writer presented here as carrying within her the same wind and storms that she immortalized on paper.
The writer-director is aided immeasurably by lead actor Emma Mackey (“Death on the Nile...
How the powerful and provocative “Wuthering Heights” came to be the single novel produced by a relatively sheltered woman who died at the age of 30 is the subject of “Emily,” a powerful debut feature from actor and filmmaker Frances O’Connor. Craftily combining fact, fiction and conjecture, O’Connor captures the inner life of Emily Brontë, a writer presented here as carrying within her the same wind and storms that she immortalized on paper.
The writer-director is aided immeasurably by lead actor Emma Mackey (“Death on the Nile...
- 2/17/2023
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
Beats (Brian Welsh)
What exactly are Johnno and Spanner? There are moments when the two Scottish teens hate each other’s guts with bilious fervor, others when they’re the “dream team and that,” inseparable and co-dependent best friends à la Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal in Y Tu Mamá También, others still when their bromance veers into an uncharted, emotionally complex terrain. Brian Welsh’s rollicking Beats thrives on these ambiguities, on a greater-than-life friendship between an introvert and his volcanic and beguilingly ruffian neighbor as they brace for a night out that’s likely to be their last–or at any rate, the...
Beats (Brian Welsh)
What exactly are Johnno and Spanner? There are moments when the two Scottish teens hate each other’s guts with bilious fervor, others when they’re the “dream team and that,” inseparable and co-dependent best friends à la Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal in Y Tu Mamá También, others still when their bromance veers into an uncharted, emotionally complex terrain. Brian Welsh’s rollicking Beats thrives on these ambiguities, on a greater-than-life friendship between an introvert and his volcanic and beguilingly ruffian neighbor as they brace for a night out that’s likely to be their last–or at any rate, the...
- 6/26/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Welcome back to Cannes Check, In Contention's annual preview of the films in Competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14. Taking on different selections every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Jane Campion's jury. Next up, the first of two British veterans in the lineup: Mike Leigh's "Mr. Turner." The director: Mike Leigh (British, 71 years old). Few filmmakers have essayed the mundane woes (and occasional joys) of Britain's working-to-middle classes with the vivid specificity of Mike Leigh, though given his distinctive vernacular and customarily heightened sense of the everyday, it's not quite accurate to classify him as a kitchen-sink realist. Either way, as both a playwright and filmmaker, he's as significant and influential a figure on the UK cultural lanscape as John Osborne or Alan Bennett. A Rada acting student turned art school graduate,...
- 5/11/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
Gaye’s feature debut Des Etoiles will get its world premiere at Toronto.
The Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Award has been awarded to director Dyana Gaye at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Gaye’s short Dewenti screened last night to a packed crowd at one of the city’s open-air venues.
The annual bursary, given to a new voice in cinema, was awarded by Danny Glover.
French-Senegalese director Gaye’s feature debut Des Etoiles will premiere at Toronto.
Previous winners of the award include Cary Fukunaga, Juanita Wilson and last year’s winners Diana El Jeiroudi and Orwa Nyrabia.
For the last nine years the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation, which aims to promote new talent and new voices, has appointed a curator, selected from among Cartlidge’s friends and colleagues, who in turn chooses a recipient of the annual bursary.
English actress Katrin Cartlidge, who died in 2002, is well known in the Balkans for her performances in Milcho Manchevski’s [link...
The Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Award has been awarded to director Dyana Gaye at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Gaye’s short Dewenti screened last night to a packed crowd at one of the city’s open-air venues.
The annual bursary, given to a new voice in cinema, was awarded by Danny Glover.
French-Senegalese director Gaye’s feature debut Des Etoiles will premiere at Toronto.
Previous winners of the award include Cary Fukunaga, Juanita Wilson and last year’s winners Diana El Jeiroudi and Orwa Nyrabia.
For the last nine years the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation, which aims to promote new talent and new voices, has appointed a curator, selected from among Cartlidge’s friends and colleagues, who in turn chooses a recipient of the annual bursary.
English actress Katrin Cartlidge, who died in 2002, is well known in the Balkans for her performances in Milcho Manchevski’s [link...
- 8/23/2013
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Seventeen years after being nominated for an Oscar for her role in Mike Leigh's award-winning Secrets & Lies, Londoner Marianne Jean-Baptiste has returned to the London stage. Here she talks about her own brand of spirituality, motherhood and why she chose to pursue her career in America
Marianne Jean-Baptiste is back. She is about to play the lead in the National's production of James Baldwin's The Amen Corner, and there is a feeling that she is, at last, in her rightful place. Jean-Baptiste made history: she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies (1996) and was the first black British actress to be nominated for an Oscar. Yet we have not seen her on stage here for years. Her return is a cause for celebration. I hear her generous laughter in the theatre's upstairs corridor before clapping eyes on her – and know,...
Marianne Jean-Baptiste is back. She is about to play the lead in the National's production of James Baldwin's The Amen Corner, and there is a feeling that she is, at last, in her rightful place. Jean-Baptiste made history: she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies (1996) and was the first black British actress to be nominated for an Oscar. Yet we have not seen her on stage here for years. Her return is a cause for celebration. I hear her generous laughter in the theatre's upstairs corridor before clapping eyes on her – and know,...
- 6/2/2013
- by Kate Kellaway
- The Guardian - Film News
It's almost impossible to estimate the impact Gollum has had on Andy Serkis. Playing the wizened creature in Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning adaptation of Jrr Tolkien's fantasy The Lord of the Rings was more than just another role. "It changed the course of my career," Serkis admits. Before Gollum, he was a respected British actor, gaining good notices for Mike Leigh films like Career Girls and Topsy-Turvy. Then along came Jackson. "That was a gift that came my way," he adds, looking very natty today in a brown and yellow check waistcoat. "I happened to be in the right place at the right time."...
- 12/7/2012
- The Independent - Film
Chicago – Mike Leigh is now widely recognized as one of the best living directors, delivering yet another critically-acclaimed gem last year in the excellent “Another Year” (also recently-released on Blu-ray and DVD). Before “Secrets and Lies,” “Vera Drake,” and “Happy-Go-Lucky,” there was a searing, riveting howl at the moon known as “Naked,” the first film that really drew international attention to both Leigh and star David Thewlis. The film was recently given the upgrade treatment by Criterion, releasing it on Blu-ray for the first time.
Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0
A good way to draw international attention is to win prizes at Cannes and Leigh and Thewlis won Best Director and Best Actor in the Spring of 1993 at the festival on the Riviera. Leigh had a strong background in theatre and had made some notable television plays and a few feature films (including the highly-underrated “Life is Sweet”), but “Naked” really changed his trajectory.
Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0
A good way to draw international attention is to win prizes at Cannes and Leigh and Thewlis won Best Director and Best Actor in the Spring of 1993 at the festival on the Riviera. Leigh had a strong background in theatre and had made some notable television plays and a few feature films (including the highly-underrated “Life is Sweet”), but “Naked” really changed his trajectory.
- 7/19/2011
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
I love that a heated discussion over Titanic’s infamous Oscar sweep of 1998 has already begun over at Laurent’s excellent retrospective. I guess it’s just the nature of this particular film. There is something about Titanic that hits a raw nerve in people and they feel a need to defend/criticize it so passionately.
As it happens, I fall in the ‘unconditional love’ category and I’m not afraid to admit it. To this day I have a passion for Titanic, a film that so perfectly matches what a glorious, spellbinding, big spectacle romance against an historic backdrop should be, and those films are so rare, especially when they are made with such precise and meticulous detail from James Cameron.
We shouldn’t be embarrassed over how much we loved Titanic in the 90′s. We should embrace it. So as our third ‘Choose The Winners’ article, we are...
As it happens, I fall in the ‘unconditional love’ category and I’m not afraid to admit it. To this day I have a passion for Titanic, a film that so perfectly matches what a glorious, spellbinding, big spectacle romance against an historic backdrop should be, and those films are so rare, especially when they are made with such precise and meticulous detail from James Cameron.
We shouldn’t be embarrassed over how much we loved Titanic in the 90′s. We should embrace it. So as our third ‘Choose The Winners’ article, we are...
- 12/24/2010
- by Matt Holmes
- Obsessed with Film
Mike Leigh's films are renowned for their formidable female characters. We get some of his favourite actresses, from veterans Alison Steadman and Brenda Blethyn to the stars of Another Year, together to discuss the special magic of creating a character with Leigh – and talk to the man himself
When Mike Leigh has anything to do with a party, it tends to be dangerous: everything, in his films, starts to unravel. But at this get-together of women who regularly act in them, all is well. They are opening the champagne, getting ready to smile for the camera, and someone – I think it is Alison Steadman – shouts: "To Mike!". Everyone – Imelda Staunton, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Marion Bailey, Karina Fernandez – lifts their glasses. There is much laughter and noisy conversation. I know how many of his regulars regret not being here because I have been talking to some of them – Brenda Blethyn,...
When Mike Leigh has anything to do with a party, it tends to be dangerous: everything, in his films, starts to unravel. But at this get-together of women who regularly act in them, all is well. They are opening the champagne, getting ready to smile for the camera, and someone – I think it is Alison Steadman – shouts: "To Mike!". Everyone – Imelda Staunton, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Marion Bailey, Karina Fernandez – lifts their glasses. There is much laughter and noisy conversation. I know how many of his regulars regret not being here because I have been talking to some of them – Brenda Blethyn,...
- 11/1/2010
- by Kate Kellaway
- The Guardian - Film News
Several stories set to the four seasons is where Mike Leigh went with Another Year -- a hard follow up act to follow in the eyes of those who can't think before the cheery go lucky portrait with Sally Hawkins. I kept thinking of Bergman's later films -- and was comforted like what a quilt would on a winter's day by the on-screen pairing of thesps Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent. They portray just a healthy, super supportive couple growing old together with a mutual respect for one another and those around them. Love the supporting work from Leigh veteran actress Lesley Manville who doesn't go off the deep end but might be as brittle as former Leigh characters as in Secrets & Lies' Brenda Blethyn or Career Girls' nutty perf from Katrin Cartlidge. Side note: I was sort of surprised that Imelda Staunton doesn't occupy much place in the slice of life portrait.
- 5/16/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
When it comes to the British writer-director Mike Leigh, I have a series of likes and dislikes that will strike some as perverse. His most popular films tend to leave me cold. Secrets & Lies (1996), for instance, was the first movie I ever saw at the Cannes Film Festival (back in 1996), and I thought then, and still think now, that it’s an irritatingly sitcomish, bloke-ified Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, with Brenda Blethyn in a performance as annoying as it is brilliant. (I know that’s supposed to be the point, but annoying isn’t a quality that allows for a lot of ambiguity.
- 5/15/2010
- by Owen Gleiberman
- EW.com - The Movie Critics
He's very good at playing bad guys, so how will he handle a punk poet turned posthumous national treasure?
Lefties among us might recognise Andy Serkis. Of course he was bug-eyed hobbit Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Sure, he gave us a supremely tender King Kong. Yes, he was terrifyingly eloquent as serial killer Ian Brady in the television drama Longford, horribly creepy as French prisoner Rigaud in Little Dorrit and simply monstrous as the interrogator in Extraordinary Rendition. But there's something else. Wasn't he the fella who sold the Socialist Worker on the streets of London back in the early 90s?
Serkis says it was his days in the Swp, and his subsequent rejection of the party line, that made him the actor he is today. As a young socialist he was angry about so much: Thatcher, unemployment, racism, you name it. Actually, his anger went back further.
Lefties among us might recognise Andy Serkis. Of course he was bug-eyed hobbit Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Sure, he gave us a supremely tender King Kong. Yes, he was terrifyingly eloquent as serial killer Ian Brady in the television drama Longford, horribly creepy as French prisoner Rigaud in Little Dorrit and simply monstrous as the interrogator in Extraordinary Rendition. But there's something else. Wasn't he the fella who sold the Socialist Worker on the streets of London back in the early 90s?
Serkis says it was his days in the Swp, and his subsequent rejection of the party line, that made him the actor he is today. As a young socialist he was angry about so much: Thatcher, unemployment, racism, you name it. Actually, his anger went back further.
- 1/2/2010
- by Simon Hattenstone
- The Guardian - Film News
It might surprise you to learn that Mike Leigh has earned five Oscar nominations in the past 12 years, both as a writer and director. There's every likelihood that more nominations will follow for his latest homegrown effort, Happy-Go-Lucky. The film focuses on a tremendously positive character named Poppy, and for her work, Sally Hawkins seems destined for one of those nominations.
Leigh makes no bones about...well, anything. He's completely upfront and a complete original. We had a chance to talk to the famed British director on his first visit to the Arizona desert. And, as always, he had plenty to say.
Happy-Go-Lucky, even though it seems very much like a Mike Leigh film, is playing different notes than we've heard from you in the past decade or so.
Maybe it is, but I try to do something different every time I make a film. I mean, Naked was startlingly...
Leigh makes no bones about...well, anything. He's completely upfront and a complete original. We had a chance to talk to the famed British director on his first visit to the Arizona desert. And, as always, he had plenty to say.
Happy-Go-Lucky, even though it seems very much like a Mike Leigh film, is playing different notes than we've heard from you in the past decade or so.
Maybe it is, but I try to do something different every time I make a film. I mean, Naked was startlingly...
- 10/24/2008
- by Colin Boyd
- GetTheBigPicture.net
Happy-Go-Lucky Directed by: Mike Leigh Cast: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Samuel Roukin Time: 2 hrs Rating: R Plot: Poppy (Hawkins) is a woman who is always wearing a smile on her face. She walks through life always looking for the positive spin on things in North London with her friends. Who’s It For? Are you convinced that sunshine always beats rain? This is a film that will test the theory. It's actually tough to say if this is for people who can't stand the annoying over-talker in the group, or for those who have no idea they are the one who just can't shut up. Expectations: I have been a fan of Leigh but it comes down to one film: Topsy-Turvy. Otherwise Secrets & Lies and Career Girls underperformed for me.
- 10/24/2008
- The Scorecard Review
No Man's Land star Katrin Cartlidge has died suddenly at the age of 41. The British actress, who played a TV reporter in the Oscar-winning Bosnian movie about life on the frontline during the Balkan conflict, is believed to have died of complications resulting from pneumonia and blood poisoning. Cartlidge was a regular collaborator with UK director Mike Leigh, and appeared in several films following a stint in TV soap Brookside. She starred in From Hell, Topsy-turvy, Before The Rain, Career Girls, Naked and Breaking The Waves.
- 9/10/2002
- WENN
Variety reports that Actress Katrin Cartlidge, best known for her roles in British director Mike Leigh's films, has died. She was 41. Cartridge's credits include Leigh's Naked, Career Girls and Topsy Turvy; this year's best foreign film Oscar-winner No Man's Land, in which she played a journalist; the multiple award-winning and criticallly-acclaimed Breaking the Waves; and the Johnny Depp thriller, From Hell. According to her agent, Cartlidge died over the weekend, but no cause of death was given. It is reported that she succumbed to complications from pneumonia and septicemia.
- 9/9/2002
- IMDbPro News
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