In Contention

Tag: Happy-Go-Lucky

  • 9/4 Oscarweb Round-up

    Sean Penn in Milk• Tom O’Neil responds to the “Milk” trailer. [Gold Derby]

    • So does Seth Abramowitz. [Defamer]

    • “Appaloosa” director Ed Harris will receive the 3rd annual Kirk Douglas Award at this year’s Santa Barbara Film Festival. [Variety]

    • Peter Sciretta wonders whether “Slumdog Millionaire” stole “Happy-Go-Lucky”‘s thunder at Telluride this year. [/Film]

    • James Rocchi begins his sure-to-be-insightful Toronto coverage. [Cinematical]

    • John Horn looks at acquisition hopefuls in Toronto this year. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Sam Adams profiles “Waltz with Bashir” helmer Ari Folman. [The Envelope]

    • Susan Wloszczyna seems to think Toronto isn’t its Oscar-forecasting self this year. [USA Today]

    • Similarly, in addition to contending that “award-winning contenders appear to be fewer and far between this year,” Anthony Kaufman indicates that “recent market forces” could dampen the buying and selling of films at this year’s fest. [Wall Street Journal]

  • 9/2 Oscarweb Round-up

    Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler• Todd McCarthy does cartwheels for Danny Boyle’s “Sulmdog Millionaire.” [Variety]

    • Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrestler” track chokes Darren Aronofsky up every time he hears it. [darrenaronofsky.blogspot.com]

    • Peter Sciretta gives a quick, somewhat lacking review of Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” seems to be mixed. [/Film]

    • Across the pond, Penélope Cruz talks “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and working with masters. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Not really awards-related (yet), but, wait…they’re turning “The Wave” into a German language film? Cool! News to me… [Empire]

    • Andrew Pulver separates the cheers from the jeers in Venice. [The Guardian]

    • If you’re looking for one hell of a spiffy awards section… [Rope of Silicon]

    • Rupert Friend makes one creepy Nazi in “The Boy in Striped Pyjamas.” [The Times]

    • Scott Bowles runs down ten fall flicks bursting with potential. [USA Today]

  • Jeff Wells buys into the Hawkins hype

    As Kris pointed out earlier today, Jeff Wells is no fan of Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky.” I suspected from the get-go that the film and Poppy, its gobby, exaggeratedly high-energy protagonist, would polarise audiences – but I still find Wells’ argument does a disservice both to the film and to his own critical perspicacity.

    In his extended critique, Wells judges the film to a rather alarming extent simply on the basis of his loathing for Poppy herself – going so far as to call her, with typical Wells dramatics, an “emotional fascist.” More crucially, he makes the error of assuming that the perspectives of Poppy and Leigh himself are interchangeable – an interpretation that, in my view, ignores a considerable portion of the film’s irony and pathos. (If anything, the film’s fundamental message is that even the most oppressive optimists are incapable of changing the world around them.)

    But no matter. For all his personal dislike of the film, Wells can see the skill involved in the whole endeavour, and is quick to credit the achievement of Best Actress contender Sally Hawkins:

    It is probably inevitable that Sally Hawkins … will be talked up as a Best Actress nominee once the film starts showing around. An elementary-school teacher who happy-vibes just about everything and everyone, Polly is an unstoppable alpha dispenser — spirited, effervescent — and Hawkins certainly inhabits her whole-hog.

    She carries “Happy-Go-Lucky,” she carries its spirit, and she does handle herself well in the sad-shock scenes at the end of the film with Eddie Marsan, the driving instructor with the correct manner and ferociously uptight, anti-immigrant attitude. In fact, the last 15 to 20 minutes contain the best stuff in the film, and I throughly respect Hawkins for her performance in this section. She handles her scenes with quiet maturity and resigned grace.

    This kind of reluctant admiration suggests to me that Hawkins in conclusively in the race, even if the film could still go either way. As Kris said, this one is gonna divide people right down the middle. For every Jeff Wells, there will be a Patrick Goldstein. At the very least, after an incredibly dull spell for specialty film, it’s nice to have a title that provokes some argument.

  • Jeff Wells finds ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ to be “oppressive”

    Eddie Marsan in Happy-Go-LuckyUh-oh.

    I’ve expressed my sentiments for this film. So has Guy. I think there’s something to the “oppressive” comment because Poppy will no doubt be a character that grates on the nerves of plenty of viewers. But I found charms here and there and, with a second viewing, I think I might settle into it more.

    Here’s Wells:

    Just got back from Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky, a movie about a quirky, plucky lady (Sally Hawkins) given to laying spirited, feel-good emotional fascism upon others, including the audience. If this sort of thing lights you up, you may do cartwheels. (As Patrick Goldstein did.) If you find it oppressive, as I did, you’ll be in hell. And yet this is a very assured, self-aware film. Respect must be paid to Leigh, who knows his characters and their world and precisely how to make it all unfold in just the right way.

    I think the real story of “Happy-Go-Lucky” will be Eddie Marsan, who is creepy but diabolically human, if you’ll forgive an odd adverb choice.

    The question still remains, though. How will Miramax position this? Can it be a Best Picture contender (I don’t think so). Is the studio really willing to put all its eggs into “Doubt?” It’s an interesting scenario this year for them, to say the least. Lots of “small,” it seems.

    Anyway, I don’t personally think Wells was ever going to be a lover of this one, for what it’s worth. Not his thing. Too big a target for him to take aim and shoot it down, etc. But it will have its followers and I think they will be avid.

    UPDATE (10:45 a.m.): Well’s goes a bit deeper here.

  • Revisiting ‘Naked’

    I’m pleased that at least one person correctly identified Tuesday’s mystery quote (despite my initial absentminded misquoting) as coming from Mike Leigh’s 1993 film “Naked,” a brilliant, bruising urban portrait that still stands, for this writer, as the auteur’s finest film to date. It won Leigh and lead actor David Thewlis richly deserved awards at Cannes, though unsurprisingly, its talkiness (the film is less a narrative than it is a series of ingeniously constructed conversations) and unrelenting pessimism never really caught fire with audiences, least of all Stateside.

    Incredibly, it is only this week that the film has been released on DVD in its home country – a move that, however overdue, at least cunningly coincides with the local DVD release of Leigh’s latest, “Happy-Go-Lucky.” Bringing them out simultaneously is a clever move, not least because the films complement and inform each other so nicely. Very much two sides of the same coin, the films examine the fragile moods and  tensions of middle-class London society through the eyes of two protagonists (dissolute bum Johnny in “Naked” and cheery schoolteacher Poppy in “Happy-Go-Lucky”) poles apart in terms of perspective and ideology.

    Watching the films together, as I did back in April (thanks to the wonder of VHS), puts into quite striking relief the changes (physical, political and sociological) that Britain and its capital have endured in the space of fifteen years. Some would say the contrast points to a change in Leigh himself, though I’m not so convinced – partly because “Happy-Go-Lucky” isn’t as optimistic in its worldview as the title suggests, and partly because “Naked” was preceded by the infinitely warmer and gentler “Life is Sweet,” the closest tonal match for the new film in Leigh’s oeuvre. Like any artist, the man’s moods don’t follow a regular arc.

    (more…)

  • Patrick Goldstein falls for ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

    With “Happy-Go-Lucky” out on DVD today in my corner of the world, it’s odd to think that America has yet to discover its charms. Early Stateside rumblings, however, suggest that’s just what might happen, as Miramax’s marketing campaign goes out of its way to portray Mike Leigh’s unruly, bittersweet comedy as the cutest thing since newborn kittens.

    Meanwhile, advance press, like this preview from the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein, plays right into their hands. Goldstein likes the film a great deal, going so far as to portray it as a lone ray of hope in a “calamitous year for specialty films.” Right off the bat, he dismisses the comic competition from the indie sector (“Synecdoche, New York” is “murky,” while “Hamlet 2” runs into into comic “dead ends,” apparently), before singing the praises of Leigh’s film:

    So now for the good news. After a four-year layoff since “Vera Drake,” which earned three Oscar nominations, Mike Leigh is back with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a film about an irrepressible free spirit named Poppy (played by Sally Hawkins) who manages to giddily bounce around London, full of life-affirming good cheer, but without an ounce of cloying or mawkish sentimentality. (After all, it’s still a Mike Leigh movie.)

    So far, so familiar. Anyone who hasn’t seen the film (and indeed, many who have) must be sick to death by now of hearing umpteen variations of the term “life-affirming” in connection with it. Refreshingly, however, Goldstein sees in the film the emotional depth and complexity which is so far escaping the general blogosphere, not to mention the Miramax marketing department (though that’s deliberate on their part):

    It being a Leigh film, the story is chock-full of oddball characters, from a high-strung flamenco instructor to a troubled child in the kindergarten class Polly teaches. But the best part of the film is the way it so casually allows us to grasp how intertwined each relationship can be. No one is easily stereotyped. Mike Leigh’s world, even a world dominated by a character who appears full of way-too-much unquenchable optimism, is always a world full of surprises.

    (more…)

  • NYFF reveals full line-up

    Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerThe full schedule of the 46th annual New York Film Festival was released today.  indieWIRE has the scoop.

    The big showcase I’m looking forward to is, of course, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” (which I touched on yesterday).  But also landing in the Big Apple will be Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che.”

    Time will tell if the latter remains distribution-less after a North American bow.  Something tells me, given Soderbergh’s tenacity, that it will.

    I’m also interested in Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” (with an “h” this time), which was a considerable favorite at this year’s Cannes fest, as well as Wong Kar-Wai’s “Ashes of Time Redux.”  Despite a personal distaste for the Chinese helmer, this project has a special something keeping my interest piqued.  Ari Folman’s Canne fave “Waltz with Bashir” will also make the trip.

    And then there is Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” a meditation on the IRA hunger strike that made Bobby Sands a national hero in Northern Ireland.  I spent a weekend in Belfast while I was overseas this summer and remember coming across a giant wall mural of Sands, part of a guided tour with one of his former compatriots who also participated in the protest.

    I’ve been hearing fantastic things about Michael Fassbender’s performance in the film.  He dropped an amount of weight that supposedly makes Christian Bale look obese in “The Machinist.”  It might be one of the lowest flying turns on the awards radar so far, and if IFC Films can spin a valiant campaign around the actor, watch out.

    Check out the full roster of NYFF titles here.  The festival begins September 26 and runs through October 12.

  • A tale of two trailers

    Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-LuckyA journo friend sent a note tonight asking my thoughts on the Miramax trailer sell of Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” given that I’ve had a chance to see the film over in the UK before the domestic marketing machine took hold.

    It’s really interesting, actually.  This trailer is completely different from the original trailer, of course, and is geared toward the populist sell.  The earlier package seemed increibly limited in scope, if packed with considerable amounts of indie charm.

    But only now do I sense Miramax almost wilfully gunning for the “‘Juno’ slot” (a slot that we all know doesn’t exist beyond the hypothetical, but bear with me).  Meanwhile, with some negative whispers on the Hollywood winds for John Shanley’s “Doubt,” one has to wonder what last year’s Best Picture victor is working with.

    “Happy” is headed to Toronto, where it is likely to find a niche of followers that the studio could spin into a bigger phenomenon if the money is there.  What’s more, the fest seems to be a forum for smaller content…”Appaloosa” is the biggest film announced so far, really.  If “Happy” can stand out in that crowd, it could walk away from Toronto as the indie champion of the season as early as mid-September.

    Ultimately, the new trailer is a step toward diversifying their available awards content in the eyes of voters and audiences alike.  If anything can be considered the “‘Juno’ spot” at this point, it has to be the film that sldies in on the charm of being unique.  It goes a long way.

  • Gold Derby backs ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

    All us awards-watchers know that Tom O’Neil’s Oscar prognostications can be a little wacky (let’s just forget that he predicted “Sweeney Todd” would sweep the top four awards last year, shall we?). Still, he knows the game better than most, and his mid-year list of frontrunners (with assistance from Pete Hammond) in the top three categories makes for interesting reading.

    All the usual suspects (“Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Revolutionary Road,” etc) are present, though there are some surprising choices – he still has “Blindness” and “Synecdoche, New York” (still without a distributor) in his Best Picture shortlist, and “W” crops up there too.

    O’Neil clearly isn’t buying into “The Road,” though Viggo Mortensen makes an appearance in his Best Actor list. Meanwhile, two unexpected choices stood out for me in his acting lists: Eric Bana in the bestseller adaptation “The Time Traveller’s Wife” (a fairly unknown quantity that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere), and the terrific Melissa Leo in Sundance champ “Frozen River.”

    What interested me the most, however, is that O’Neil singles out “Happy-Go-Lucky” for discussion, calling it:

    (The) film you may be most underestimating … Mike Leigh’s little flix are often big players (“Vera Drake,” “Secrets and Lies”) and this perky one could be the next “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Juno.” Sally Hawkins already won the Best Actress trophy at the Berlin Film Festival.

    I’ve been predicting big things for Leigh’s delightful film (which, incidentally, gets better the more I contemplate it) for a while now, so I’m pleased to see O’Neil shares my faith in it – though I’m not sure I quite agree with his comparison. It’s certainly a warm and very funny film, but there’s more melancholy and bite to it than either “Juno” or “Little Miss Sunshine.”

    Back in June, Kris wondered where “Happy-Go-Lucky” would land in Miramax’s awards priorities. Since then, the picture has cleared a little bit. With “Doubt” now seemingly the only other prestige contender on Miramax’s slate, Leigh’s film looks well-positioned to get an awards push from the studio – particularly in the event of “Doubt” disappointing. (I still don’t buy the latter as a Best Picture contender.) And with its profile further raised by its inclusion in the Toronto Film Festival lineup, the prospects for “Happy-Go-Lucky” are starting to look as sunny as its title.

  • New Toronto films announced

    Miramax Films\' Happy-Go-LuckyThe press office of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF for future purposes) announced some new titles for the line up at this year’s festival yesterday.

    Two Gala Presentation announcements include “The Secret Life of Bees” with Dakota Fanning, Paul Bettany, Jennifer Hudson and Queen Latifah, and “The Duchess” featuring Keira Knightley in the biographical role of a woman who brought sweeping political change to England with her progressive attitudes.

    In the Special Presentations Program we have “Every Little Step,” looking to be a fascinating documentary about the making of the Broadway sensation “A Chorus Line,” which dominated American Theatre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was royally screwed up as a film by the vastly over-appreciated Sir Richard Attenborough.

    From the great Wong Kar-Gai comes “Ashes of Time Redux,”  while Mike Leigh brings to us the highly anticiapted “Happy-Go-Lucky”. Guy Ritchie will unveil “RocknRolla” to audiences here with Larry Charles bringing to our fair city his new picture “Religulous”.

    “Ghost Town” sounds promising, as the story follows a man portrayed by Ricky Gervais who dies unexpectedly and is revived with the powert to see ghosts. And as expected, “Waltz with Bashir” will make its North American premiere here at TIFF.

  • ‘Cheri’ to be released in 2009

    In response to the most recent Oscar update I received a note from Miramax publicity this afternoon, regarding Stephen Frears’s “Chéri.”  It seems the film is staying in 2009, narrowing the studio’s awards hopefuls to Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” and John Shanley’s “Doubt.”

    The critically thumped “Blindness” is still lingering as a possibility, while Julian Jarrold’s “Brideshead Revisited” needs to overcome the widespread opinion that Evelyn Waugh’s novel has already been filmed definitively.

    As for the current Oscar charts, I’ll update them at some point this week to strike “Chéri” from the record.  Tell a friend.

  • Early predix: Nat Rogers pipes in

    So the ever-worthwhile Nathaniel Rogers at The Film Experience has joined in the predictions game – check out his thoughts here. Like many others, his list has “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” ruling the roost with eight nominations, with “Defiance,” “Doubt,” “Milk” and “Miracle at St Anna” rounding out the Best Picture list.

    The latter is a particularly interesting choice – one wonders whether the controversy-shy Academy voters will be put off by Spike Lee’s increasingly ridiculous quarrel with Clint Eastwood. Of course, January is a long way off, and if “Miracle at St Anna” turns out to be great, chances are this whole debacle will be forgotten by then. I fear it will not – but with “Changeling” not making his Best Picture list, Nat clearly sees Spike having the last laugh here.

    Elsewhere in Nat’s list, most of the usual suspects are present. I’m particularly pleased to see that he shares my faith in a Best Actress nomination for Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”) – I’m going to be banging this drum all year, so get used to it. Nat, meanwhile, is evidently beginning the campaigning early for Michelle Pfeiffer in “Cheri,” going so far as to call her a “legendary actress.” I admit there won’t be any complaining from me if she finally cops a statuette.

    (more…)

  • ‘Happy’ season for Miramax?

    I’ve been meaning to write about Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” ever since I saw it some three weeks ago, but I haven’t found a window until now. I’m off to Berlin on the weekend and I’d really like to get this off my plate before I leave, so amid all the packing, I thought I’d hammer out some brief thoughts.

    I’m never really let down by a Leigh film. Even his lesser efforts seem to exist on some simple but probing level that makes argument a fool’s errand. More often than not, his work sparks appreciation during the awards season, and he even managed a second Best Director nomination for “Vera Drake” in 2004, which surprised more than a few people.

    “All or Nothing” was one of my absolute favorite gems of 2002, yet it was ignored completely, while going back to the epic year in cinema that was 1999, we find perhaps Leigh’s most ambitious effort in “Topsy-Turvy.” Then, of course, there was “Secrets & Lies,” which captured the hearts of many in an Oscar year dominated by independent film.

    Leigh’s pre-“Secrets & Lies” work is a slightly different breed, but still fundamentally the work of the same artist and, at times, the same vision of the world. And he has come back to it with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” the shrewd observation of which Guy made in his April review of the film.

    Something feels even more off-the-cuff about “Happy” than Leigh’s recent films. There is an even greater sense of spontaneity and improvisation lurking between the frames that can be both exciting and off-putting, but the purpose is served throughout: bringing the audience into the devil may care world of a woman hell-bent on saving the drama for your mama.

    (more…)

  • REVIEW: “Happy-Go-Lucky” (***)

    The common line in the British press so far on “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mike Leigh’s alternately fascinating and frustrating new film, is that it’s a departure for him — an exuberant comic revelation following the spare, precise despair of “All or Nothing” and “Vera Drake.” How quickly we forget.

    Only nine years ago, Leigh gave us the similarly punctuated “Topsy-Turvy,” a period romp that in some moments rivalled “Shakespeare in Love” for broad music-hall humour. Even his biggest crossover hit, the 1996 Best Picture Oscar nominee “Secrets & Lies,” had a much more explicit comic tone than many seem to recall.

    However, the most accurate precedents for “Happy-Go-Lucky” date farther back still: the film is not so much a new direction for Leigh as a throwback to the gentle character-oriented comedy and wispy, free-form narrative of his breakthrough features “High Hopes” and “Life is Sweet.” It’s a welcome move. As immaculately crafted and performed as “Vera Drake” was, it didn’t, for me, play to Leigh’s strengths as a writer: his witty ear for vernacular language and his preoccupation with the tensions and absurdities inherent in everyday conversation.

    These qualities re-emerge with a vengeance in “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a film bursting with rapid-fire banter, cathartic outbursts and occasionally didactic speechifying. The inimitably fluid language of London’s multicultural, multi-class population is woven through the film’s every exchange; if Leigh could snag a Best Original Screenplay nomination for a film as comparatively underwritten as “Vera Drake,” it’s difficult to see him getting passed over for this.

    (more…)