"Topsy-Turvy" is Leigh's grand display of gratitude. It takes up Gilbert and Sullivan's career at a volatile time. Sullivan (Allan Corduner) is impatient with Gilbert's penchant for suggesting scenarios "rich in human emotion and probability" only to turn them topsy-turvy with magic pills and potions. And Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) views Sullivan's reluctance to continue on this path as an insult. It's Mrs. Gilbert (Lesley Manville) who comes to the rescue when she drags her husband to an indoor re-creation of a Japanese village, including imported Japanese people. The pleasurable jolt of this exotica stimulates Gilbert to cook up "The Mikado" -- and though it's hardly richer "in human emotion and probability" than, say, "Princess Ida," it amuses Sullivan immensely and ends up salvaging the partnership.

Leigh's liner notes say he aimed to fashion "a film about all of us who strain and struggle to make other people laugh" that would also be "a celebration of Gilbert's wit and a feast of Sullivan's music." But with rounded depictions of performers as different as the droll, neurotic George Grossmith (Martin Savage) and the tremendously humorous Richard Temple (Timothy Spall), he also achieves a portrait of the actor's craft as inspiring and poetic as Jean Renoir's "The Golden Coach." And Leigh does it his own way -- from the ground, and greasepaint, up. […]

Gilbert: Every theatrical performance is a contrivance by its very nature.
Sullivan: Yes, but this piece consists entirely of an artificial and implausible situation.
Gilbert: If you wish to write a Grand Opera about a prostitute, dying of consumption in a garret, I suggest you contact Mr Ibsen in Oslo. I am sure he will be able to furnish you with something suitably dull.

Gilbert's Father: Am I to understand, sir, that you have been in communion with your mother?
Gilbert: No, father. Not for some considerable time, I'm glad to say.
Gilbert's Father: You are a liar, sir!
Gilbert: No, sir. I assure you, papa, that the very last person with whom I wish to have any communication at all is your estranged wife - the vicious woman who bore me into this ridiculous world.
Gilbert's Father: How dare you, sir? Have you no respect?
Gilbert: Don't misunderstand me, father. Nobody respects my mother more than I do, and I can't stand the woman.

Sullivan: This work with Gilbert is quite simply killing me.
Richard D'Oyly Carte: Working with Gilbert would kill anybody.

PASADENA, Calif. -- This week's Leonid meteor shower may be the largest such display until the end of the century, with possibly hundreds of meteors visible in the sky Tuesday morning.

The annual meteor shower usually delivers only a few visible meteors. But hundreds per hour might be visible as they burn up in the atmosphere this time, scientists say.

"Even with the full moon, this year's Leonids will probably be better than any other for the next hundred years," Don Yeomans, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said in a statement. "If you're ever going to see them, this might be the year to try."

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SPRINGFIELD, Vt. (AP) A family-owned ice cream company plans to buy the Ben & Jerry's plant and hire workers there.

Ellsworth Ice Cream, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., will make ice cream bars and other novelty products after Ben & Jerry's leaves in the spring, officials said Thursday.

Ellsworth plans to hire 56 local employees, mainly from Ben & Jerry's. […]

Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU - message board) confirmed today that it's canceled its SpringTide Service Switch series. "We're discontinuing feature development and ceasing all active marketing," spokesman Steve Loudermilk told Light Reading today.

The news is no surprise. Industry observers had long expected to hear the last of the SpringTide IP service switch, particularly now that the company's aggressively combing its product line with an eye to saleable or ditchable items (see Springtide Ebbing Away? and Lucent Clarifies Product Strategy). Indeed, last week's news that Lucent's stopping support of its TMX 880 multiservice switch served to fuel speculation that the end of the line was in sight for SpringTide (see Lucent Chops TMX 880). […]

[…] At Mexico City's witchcraft market, shoppers crowd a growing number of costume stands, shunning tables that sell Day of the Dead supplies like papier-mache skeletons, sugar skulls and bright orange flowers used in offerings to the dead.

Halloween is especially popular in Mexico's north, where U.S. traditions are often brought by returning migrants. In Ciudad Juarez, which borders El Paso, Texas, television ads urged Mexicans to celebrate Day of the Dead and stop going north to trick or treat.

Day of the Dead traditions are stronger in rural, southern states like Oaxaca, where Ajas and her family used to build elaborate altars and spend the early morning hours of Nov. 1 at the graves of dead relatives. […]