I hope everyone is having a great week!

To keep the excitement in your life, I have a fantastic giveaway for the movie Another Year. The Blu-Ray/DVD release is happening June 7, 2011. It is definitely a movie worth seeing, which has received accolades from critics and film festivals.

Screenhead is hosting an online giveaway. We have (1) copy of the DVD/Blu-Ray Combopack to giveaway to the winner.

The movie arrives from seven-time Oscar nominee Mike Leigh. He delivers another critically acclaimed slice of life starring Academy Award winner Jim Broadbent (Best Supporting Actor, Iris, 2001), Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen.

A happy couple for over thirty years, Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen) act as a steady anchor to their unmarried circle of family and friends. But as the seasons change and another year passes, Tom and Gerri’s support is put to the test in this masterful look at life, love and the meaning of friendship.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winner June 18, 2011.

Mike Leigh has championed the social-realist style of film-making throughout his career. Growing up in the harsh working-class area of Salford tends to influence your world view, and Leigh’s films offer an uncompromising position on the drama of everyday reality, warts and all. But while there are many similar film-makers who tend misrepresent social realism as glib cynicism, Leigh has recently veered away from that. After All or Nothing and Vera Drake Leigh slipped out of the trap of grimness and made Happy-Go-Lucky, a film which challenged our attitudes towards the routines of existence. And now we see Leigh tackle issues of age and social confinements in Another Year.

While Leigh’s films are never plot heavy, Another Year centres on aging couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), who live a modest but rather fulfilling life as a geologist and counselor respectively. Only their happiness is contrasted with their friends and relatives. Gerri’s work colleague Mary (Lesley Manville) is single, aging, and in deep denial as she covers her unhappiness with a smile and plenty of booze. Ken, Tom’s workaholic friend, is too afraid to retire and spends most of his free time downing cans of lager. And when Tom’s brother Ronnie becomes a widower, we fail to see any emotions and regret behind the blank façade.

This is all introduced by a stand-out and independent scene which sums up the movie. Gerri has an impromptu session with a working-class woman (Imelda Staunton, on one of her best performances) who can’t sleep. Gerri works hard and carefully on the woman’s feelings, but she’s defensive and resistant. And here we’re introduced to the theme of the film: denial. For it is denial that seems to be the key factor for unhappiness in all of Tom and Jerri’s friends. Mary, the most fascinating of the film’s characters (and if Manville is denied an Oscar it will be a tragedy), is in denial about her unhappiness, convinced she’s living the free and fun life of a bachelorette, forever pining for Tom and Jerri’s son Joe (who is many years her junior), as if he’s the gateway to sharing the family self-satisfaction. Ken doesn’t understand life out of work, and Ronnie was devoid of emotion, as a father and a husband. It’s a moving but sad portrait of how the working-class can cover up their emotions and ruin their lives in doing so. READ ON »

I posted the first trailer for Mike Leigh’s Another Year some time ago after In Contention brought my attention to the film. 

The poster gives a pretty accurate sense of the film’s delicate pitch between dry comedy and crushing drama. If you look at all the praises on the poster, you have to sense that Leigh has delivered a unique film again. The British movie stars Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen.

First trailer for Mike Leigh’s Another Year, according to In Contention, gives a pretty accurate sense of the film’s delicate pitch between dry comedy and crushing drama. The British movie stars Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen.