Mike Leigh
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“We Discover What the Film Is When We Watch It”: Marianne Jean-Baptiste on Hard Truths
Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths is a study in contracts. At the center of the tale are two sisters, Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Chantelle (Michele Austin), who are as dissimilar as possible. While Chantelle, a hairdresser and single mother of two adult daughters, has a cheerful outlook on life, Pansy is brash, gruff and downright mean toward everyone she encounters—from strangers in the grocery store and the local furniture shop to her detached husband Curtley (David Webber) and reclusive son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). Over the course of 100 minutes, it’s easy to despise Pansy because of her shockingly short temper and […]
by Tyler Coates on Dec 13, 2024 -
TIFF 2024: Lázaro at Night, Hard Truths
Bell and Bulgari are gone as sponsors, but Listerine is one of 37 new ones at TIFF 2024. This year, the defining image of the fest’s early days has been the 95-milliliter bottles of Listerine Total Care (Mild Mint) neatly arrayed on mini-shelves next to the sinks in the washrooms of the festival’s Lightbox headquarters. There, the walls are branded with mock-movie poster key art for “Listerine: The Movie,” with a bottle of that pink liquid sandwiched between five-star laurels for “Refreshing Plot Twist” and “Breath of Fresh Air.” An employee stocking those bottles estimated that over a thousand are […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 9, 2024 -
Editor Walter Murch on the Golden Ratio, Recreating a ’70s-era Editing Room and The Conversation
Watching a documentary on film history, editor Walter Murch was struck by how different cinematographers tended to frame faces in close-ups similarly. “I noticed something peculiar,” he said. “No matter what the film was, the eyes of performers in close-up seemed to float along the same line from shot to shot.” Murch tested his theory by tying a string of knitting yarn across his television screen. Dividing measurements from above and below the line gave him 1.618, a number that represents phi, or the golden ratio. Further measurements of faces in close-ups—from the upper frame edges to hairlines, from chins […]
by Daniel Eagan on Jan 18, 2023 -
Back to One, Episode 204: Mike Leigh Returns
Mike Leigh is back in New York City for Film At Lincoln Center’s retrospective of his films, which starts Friday May 27th. He’s doing Q&A’s after three of his best—Naked, Secrets and Lies, and Topsy Turvy. Since he was last on the show (Episode 54), a few of his most treasured actors have been on and discussed the joy of working with the legendary director. There have even been some guests who have talked about the pleasure of working with him just in an audition, even though they weren’t selected. I ask him to break down his audition process and […]
by Peter Rinaldi on May 27, 2022 -
“I’m Not Even Sure Satire Exists Anymore”: Writer/Director Tom Gilroy Talks with Jim McKay About His Dystopic — and Timely — Short, #WaynesvilleStrong
With the rallying cry of its hashtagged title, Tom Gilroy’s #WaynesvilleStrong is a darkly comic and scarily plausible vision of a very near future in which low-wage work, enforced patriotism and the panoptic powers of the internet combine to create a pandemic hellscape that one laid-off meatpacking worker must delicately navigate, one videocall prompt at a time. The short was made quickly, in May and during quarantine, with everyone appropriately socially distanced, and to its great credit that what was political satire just two months ago is now turning into, with the current battles over “reopening,” political reality. The short […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 21, 2020 -
Back to One Special Episode: Mike Leigh
For one year now on this podcast, I have talked to dozens and dozens of actors about their approach to the craft of acting. There are few living non-actor directors whose thoughts on this subject I feel would be worthy for this archive. Mike Leigh is on the top of that list. Listening to actors talk about their working experiences has made me think of an analogy. They are like fish people, showing up on a set expecting some water to work in but mostly finding dry land everywhere, and, for the most part, having to supply the water themselves. […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Apr 16, 2019 -
Glory at Sea: Mike Leigh on Mr. Turner
Within a career that’s now in its fifth decade, Mr. Turner is only the third period film Mike Leigh has made, but, ironically, it’s the first he’s shot digitally. The picture captures the last 25 years of revered British painter J.M.W. Turner’s life — already famous, his days are filled with awkward visits from an ex-wife and daughters, confrontations with both artistic rivals and lesser painters, and the salon visits that constitute the business of being an artist in the mid-1800s. Timothy Spall deservedly won the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his turn as the eccentric Turner, who walks […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Oct 20, 2014 -
Digital Tableaux: Cinematographer Dick Pope on Mr. Turner
“Turner was progressive,” says cinematographer Dick Pope. “He was not a Luddite. He was very forward-looking. And if he was making the decision today, whether to shoot on film or digital, with all the tools and control of the palette [digital] offers, Mike and I felt that he would choose digital.” “Mike,” of course, is Mike Leigh, and “Turner” is J.M.W. Turner, the 19th-century painter of roiling seas and fiery vistas containing a near-religious quality of apocalypse. Together, Leigh and Pope have made Mr. Turner, a rare artist biopic that imbues within its visual strategies a sense of its subject’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2014 -
Cannes 2014: Mr. Turner, Salt of the Earth, Force Majeure and the Art of First Impressions
“What’s your elevator pitch?” people ask — the same people who’d recoil backwards, their body language flashing danger signals, if you actually collared them in an actual elevator and launched into a pitch of your movie. Indeed, it’s a paradox of the film business that the smooth-talking hustler is held up as some kind of model when most film industry types would prefer an approach by someone genuine — personable, even — who understands both the cultural and the transactional nature of their business. I watched one exec from an established production and distribution company last week at the 2014 […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 26, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner
One of several high profile titles premiering this week at Cannes, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner explores the late career of the eccentric 19th century British painter. Foremost regarded for his alternately bleak and hilarious portraits of middle class London, it will be interesting to see Leigh tackle a (period steeped) biopic. Of course, character driven narratives are Leigh’s bread and butter, given his now widely imitated scripting process in which the fruits of rehearsals are folded into the pages. Starring frequent collaborator Timothy Spall, the film premieres tomorrow in Competition and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics on December 10. Watch the trailer […]
by Sarah Salovaara on May 14, 2014
