Article: les Anti-miserables; Mike Leigh rejects fashionable pessimism.(Entertainment)

BYLINE: Jonathan Romney

One hates to harp on about Mike Leigh's reputation as a curmudgeon, but there's undoubtedly a certain, let's say, brand recognition attached to it.

The 65-year-old director scowls out from the cover of his new DVD box set in a passport-booth mugshot that makes him resemble a man who once planned an minor British bank heist.

You suspect Leigh quietly relishes his image. On the table in front of him at his Soho office, his coffee mug bears the legend "Crabbit": a Scottish dialect word meaning "ill-tempered, grumpy, curt, disagreeable". "It was a gift," Leigh says, "from a humorous actress who used the word when talking ...

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