Mike Leigh

There are few movies that famed British director Mike Leigh has wanted to see out in the world as much as his real-life story of British artist J.M.W. Turner. Now it appears he'll get his wish. Sony Pictures Classics, the distributor that released the seven-time Oscar nominee's aging drama "Another Year" in 2010, has acquired U.S. and select other international rights to Leigh's new film about the artist. Leigh has been developing a Turner movie for more than a decade and aims to shoot this spring.

There are few movies that famed British director Mike Leigh has wanted to see out in the world as much as his real-life story of British artist J.M.W. Turner. Now it appears he'll get his wish. Sony Pictures Classics, the distributor that released the seven-time Oscar nominee's aging drama "Another Year" in 2010, has acquired U.S. and select other international rights to Leigh's new film about the artist. Leigh has been developing a Turner movie for more than a decade and aims to shoot this spring.

"I always have a problem giving films titles," Mike Leigh says, thinking about it. "That comes last, and this film was a real tough one, a bummer. At some stage we thought we should just call it 'Life,' but you can't call it that, it's bloody pretentious." "Another Year" was the appropriate title eventually selected, but the truth is that Leigh's exceptional new film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, really is about the turning wheel of life as dramatized by the hand of a master, about the pleasures and jealousies, disappointments and insecurities, destroyed dreams and rekindled hopes that make up our daily lives.

One hundred years after the 1885 premiere of "The Mikado" in London, the most popular Gilbert and Sullivan operetta still readily resonated with modern audiences. Peter Sellars set it in modern-day Japan for Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1983. Jonathan Miller made a flapper "Mikado" three years later that was seen at Los Angeles Opera and elsewhere. The G&S operettas are now less frequently produced, but such stalwarts as Opera a la Carte in L.A. or the Lamplighters in the Bay Area carry on still.

When we talk about unforgettable characters, often they are characters we'd give almost anything to forget, savage malcontents who leave pain and anguish in their wake. Characters, at first glance, much like Johnny, the sour and dissatisfied protagonist of Mike Leigh's remarkable, unnerving "Naked." A refugee from Manchester who in the film's opening minutes flees to London in a stolen car after committing a rape, Johnny is a raging nightmare.

Mike Leigh leaves you speechless. His marvelously eccentric "Life Is Sweet" is at once surreal and very real, a film in which nothing happens and everything is experienced. You feel protective about Leigh's work because its almost indescribable virtues touch the heart, yet far from being some delicate flower, "Life Is Sweet" has the wild, brazen, anything-goes energy of a 2-year-old, willing to take chances that would freeze the blood of another, more timidly conventional film.

During the course of his 30-year feature film career, director Mike Leigh has portrayed the British blue-collar life in a style he calls "heightened realism." A true independent who finances his own movies primarily with European money, he's also a master of improvisation -- letting his actors inhabit their roles months before the cameras roll. His latest work, "All or Nothing," was just released on video after a brief theatrical run. It focuses on three families in a London housing project coping with substance abuse, achieving intimacy and the challenge of keeping love alive.

The subject is British director Mike Leigh, and the conclusions defy categorization. An overnight sensation who just happens to have 20 years of exceptional work behind him, a critical favorite whose films disconcert audiences almost as often as they delight them, the master of a revolutionary method of filmmaking who doggedly applies it, to borrow Jane Austen's conceit, to nothing wider than the same little bit of well-worked ivory, Leigh seems to fit everywhere and nowhere.

If Mike Leigh had been given the chance to direct "Die Hard 2," he would have cut away all that stuff about terrorists and machine guns and hand grenades and planes blowing up. For him, the movie would have started as soon as Bruce Willis got Bonnie Bedelia out of the airport and went home to spend Christmas with the in-laws.

What if Arthur Miller felt there was nothing shameful about being in the lower middle class and he had a sense of humor? And he was 30? Would he be Justin Tanner? No, better let a young writer more concerned with morals, like Jon Robin Baitz, inherit the heavy mantle of the American Playwright.

"Another Year" is about the turning wheel of life, an examination of the pleasures and jealousies, disappointments and insecurities, destroyed dreams and rekindled hopes that make up our daily existence. It may sound commonplace, but in the hands of master filmmaker Mike Leigh, the everyday becomes extraordinary. The film is also further proof ? if proof is necessary after six Oscar nominations for writing and directing, a Palme d'Or and a best director award from Cannes, and a Golden Lion from Venice ?

Mike Leigh's filmography is not lacking in emotionally draining high-wire performances ? Brenda Blethyn in "Secrets & Lies," David Thewlis in "Naked," Imelda Staunton in "Vera Drake," to name just a few. But there's a frayed-nerved quality to Lesley Manville's performance in Leigh's "Another Year" (opening Dec. 29) that's as raw as any of those. Manville plays Mary, an unattached middle-aged woman whose friendship with happily married co-worker Ruth Sheen grows increasingly desperate as her life falls apart.

"I always have a problem giving films titles," Mike Leigh says, thinking about it. "That comes last, and this film was a real tough one, a bummer. At some stage we thought we should just call it 'Life,' but you can't call it that, it's bloody pretentious. " "Another Year" was the appropriate title eventually selected, but the truth is that Leigh's exceptional new film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, really is about the turning wheel of life as dramatized by the hand of a master, about the pleasures and jealousies, disappointments and insecurities, destroyed dreams and rekindled hopes that make up our daily lives.

"Happy-Go-Lucky" is something different from virtuoso British writer-director Mike Leigh. For what feels like the first time in his more than 35 years of bringing an exceptional level of insight and intensity to the exploration of human behavior, Leigh has put a thoroughly happy person front and center in one of his films.

AS POPPY, the fluttering, free-spirited elementary school teacher at the heart of director Mike Leigh's new film, "Happy-Go-Lucky," British actress Sally Hawkins glows like a miniature sun, radiating an infectious sense of joy and a ravenous hunger for life. But as Hawkins has recently learned, unchecked eagerness can be a dangerous thing.

MIKE LEIGH'S reputation for a unique creative process and for fiercely resisting compromise comes at some cost to the director. In making a film, Leigh begins with an idea, naturally enough, but then he hires the actors and improvises with them for several months before shooting -- a style he has used from his earliest efforts in 1971 to his most recent film, "Happy-Go-Lucky," which opens Friday. Leigh can work no other way, he says.

Mike Leigh's filmography is not lacking in emotionally draining high-wire performances ? Brenda Blethyn in "Secrets & Lies," David Thewlis in "Naked," Imelda Staunton in "Vera Drake," to name just a few. But there's a frayed-nerved quality to Lesley Manville's performance in Leigh's "Another Year" (opening Dec. 29) that's as raw as any of those. Manville plays Mary, an unattached middle-aged woman whose friendship with happily married co-worker Ruth Sheen grows increasingly desperate as her life falls apart.

British filmmaker Mike Leigh is probably best known in the U.S. for his 1996 drama "Secrets and Lies," but he has been making movies without making compromises for more than 30 years. In the 17 films he's made, he has always had final say. In Leigh's world, there are no outsiders weighing in on content, casting, cutting or music.

The raucous hostess of "Abigail's Party" is a human foghorn whose voice rivals booze in its ability to leave you with a nasty headache. But you'll likely be glad you RSVPed, since the obnoxious words spewing from her mouth were written by the reliably perceptive Mike Leigh. "Abigail's Party," at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, takes place over a single evening at a suburban London home where two couples and a neighbor have gathered to chat, drink and listen to LPs. The play, written in 1977, is a concentrated hit of Leigh's trademark working-class anthropology -- an unflattering comic treatise that both derides its subjects and tentatively envelops them in a compassionate embrace.