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This is a biography of Mike Leigh, one of Britain's most original film makers and playwrights, and the creator of High Hopes, Abigail's Party and Naked. He is well-known for the unique methods that he uses.
Collected interviews with the British filmmaker of High Hopes, Life Is Sweet, and Secrets and Lies
Swingers and swappers, strippers and streetwalkers, sadists, masochists, and sexual mavericks of every persuasion; all are documented in this legendary expose of the diseased underbelly of '60s American society. The legendary sexology book that lent its name to the seminal New York rock'n'roll group THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, led by Lou Reed, whose songs were to mirror its themes of depravity and social malaise. Subjects range from mail-order pornography and prostitution to bondage and SM parties, orgies, and clandestine sex clubs. In 1966 the book was picked up on by Lou Reed, a young New York musician who had just formed a band, The Falling Spikes. Reed immediately changed the band's name to The Velvet Underground, became Andy Warhol's house band, wrote a raft of songs based on sleaze and the demi-monde, and the rest is history...
This new edition updates Mike Leigh's career to his most recent films, Mister Turner and the epic masterpiece Peterloo. Five-time Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, the only British director to have won the top prize at both Cannes (for Secrets & Lies) and Venice (for Vera Drake) - Mike Leigh is unquestionably one of world cinema's pre-eminent figures. Now, in this definitive career-length interview, he reflects on all that has gone into the making of his unique body of work. In their commingling of bleakness and humor, Leigh's films recreate the tragi-comic world of people whose everyday lives are far from glamorous: a world in which 'the done thing' usually prevails, contrary to our inner hop...
Mike Leigh may well be Britain’s greatest living film director; his worldview has permeated our national consciousness. This book gives detailed readings of the nine feature films he has made for the cinema, as well as an overview of his work for television. Written with the co-operation of Leigh himself, this is the first study of his work to challenge the critical privileging of realism in histories of the British cinema, placing the emphasis instead on the importance of comedy and humour: of jokes and their functions, of laughter as a survival mechanism, and of characterisations and situations that disrupt our preconceptions of ‘realism’. Striving for the all-important quality of truth in everything he does, Leigh has consistently shown how ordinary lives are too complex to fit snugly into the conventions of narrative art. From the bittersweet observation of Life is Sweet or Secrets and Lies, to the blistering satire of Naked and the manifest compassion of Vera Drake, he has demonstrated a matchless ability to perceive life’s funny side as well as its tragedies.
1957. War widow Dorothy lives in a London suburb with her 15-year-old daughter Victoria and her older bachelor brother Edwin. More and more isolated from her married friends with their successful children, Dorothy tries to cope with Victoria's increasingly hostile behaviour. But is she doing her best, as she thinks, or is she in fact responsible for what threatens to become an unendurable situation?'A exquisitely observed, profoundly quiet slice of 1950s suburban life.' The Sunday Times'Meticulously evocative' Independent'Manville is magnificent in this broodingly muted family drama.' Sunday Express'Leigh makes you laugh and laugh - until you cry.' Time Out'A haunting portrait of loss and loneliness, exquisitely acted throughout and led by a riveting performance by Manville.' Financial Times'Leigh's meticulous production potently captures the pain that lurked behind stiff upper lips in the England of the Fifties.' Daily Telegraph'Nobody gets more truthful performances from actors than Mike Leigh.' The Times'The acting is superb.' Guardian'Leigh directs with sensitivity.' Evening Standard'Extraordinarily poignant' Independent on Sunday
A keen observer of British manners and mores, Mike Leigh has been hailed as a celebrator of 'ordinary' people. Comparing and contrasting all his films from Bleak Moments and High Hopes through Naked, the Oscar nominated Secrets and Lies and Topsy Turvy to All or Nothing, Garry Watson considers this claim, examining both their influence and their effect. Through careful textual detail and wider social and literary comparison with the works of Charles Dickens and T.S. Eliot, he argues ultimately for the aritistic and cultural significance of Leigh's work as one of Britain's most respected film-makers.
Renowned for making films that are at once sly domestic satires and heartbreaking 'social realist' dramas, British writer-director Mike Leigh confronts his viewers with an un-romanticized dramatization of modern-day society in the hopes of inspiring them to strive for greater self-awareness and compassion for others. This collection features new, interdisciplinary essays that cover all phases of the BAFTA-award-winner's film career, from his early made-for-television film work to his theatrical releases, including Life is Sweet (1990), Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), Career Girls (1997), Topsy-Turvy (1999), All or Nothing (2002), Vera Drake (2004), Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and Another Year...
This book revisits the trajectory of one section of Patrick Leigh Fermor's famous pedestrian excursion from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This S.O.E. officer walked into Hungary as a youth of 19 at Easter of 1934 and left Transylvania in August. "A cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene" as the New York Times obituary put it in 2011, this intrepid traveller published his experiences half a century later. Between the Woods and the Water covers the part of the epic journey on foot from the middle Danube to the Iron Gates. It has been a bestseller since it was first published in 1986. O'Sullivan reveals the identity of the interesting characters in the travelogue, in...
Rex Weasel, owner of the Vermination Pest Control Company, has returned home from holiday unexpectedly and without his wife. Hoping to lay low, his plans are rudely interrupted when one of his employees, Vic Maggot and his wife, Charmaine, drop in to check on the apartment. They're not even supposed to be there as Vic is filling in for another of Rex's employees. To complicate matters further, the Weasels' estranged son, Rocky shows up with his girlfriend, Melanie-Jane.