reading week and my feelings for Mike Leigh / by Sarah Deller

it's reading week!

it's terrible to see the whole week stretched out before me and imagine all the personal artistic / academic projects I'd love to work on.. and then realize I have to catch up on school. 

HA HA HA

hopefully I'll be able to set aside some time every day for my own projects... I'd also like to read / watch plays for my own pleasure. There are some sweet theatre video / digital theatre databases I have been checking out. So my goal is to do one "input" thing and one "output" thing every day just for me. Watch one play and write one poem, for instance. And spend the rest of the day doing input / output for school. 

Also, there's a TON of movies I want to see right now!! I hope they all come to Halifax! Every couple of years there will be two months when there are so many films I am interested in. And then the other 22 months of those 2 years I hate absolutely everything. Mostly I really like historical dramas, and movies about art... So there's some great ones coming this way. 

I really want to take a film / photography class... I can imagine shots (either for film or photography) and I can never achieve them because I don't have the knowledge, or technique, or something. And it's so baffling and frustrating for me to see something with such exactitude in my mind and then not be able to create it or replicate it. Which is the reason I gave up painting and drawing.

Anyway, I think about that all the time but what got me thinking of it this time around was the trailer for Mr Turner. 

In Cinemas October 31

There's so many beautiful shots! I can't! And so many fantastic actors. Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen.... And of course it has to do with Turner. Even though I just said I gave up painting, deep down I do still consider myself to be a painter. And I love art history so much.... 

love Mike Leigh films. Love them. Visually the movies are always stunning, and the characters are fascinating. Vera Drake had a really profound impact on me - I'll write about that and Imelda Staunton at some other time because this post is long enough as it is - and when I found out about his style of working I was so intrigued. And from what I've heard / read, he applied so many of the same principles to this, even though it was a historical drama... Very cool. 

Thankfully Mr Turner is playing at the Oxford Street theatre, so maybe I'll be able to see it this week, if I get enough school work done... speaking of which...