Ellis Leigh Savage

Mike Leigh’s brilliant and controversial Naked stars David Thewlis as Johnny, a charming, eloquent, and relentlessly vicious drifter on the lam in London. Rejecting all those who would care for him, the volcanic Johnny hurls himself into a nocturnal odyssey through the city, colliding with a succession of the desperate and the dispossessed, and scorching everyone in his path. With a virtuoso script and raw performances from Thewlis and costars Katrin Cartlidge and Lesley Sharpe, Leigh’s panorama of England’s crumbling underbelly is a showcase of black comedy and doomsday prophecy, and was the winner of the best director and actor prizes at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.

A change of outfit can do wonders for one’s outlook on life. Just ask Robert Ellis. Never one to be bashful about the pleasures of a good suit — witness his specially made space cowboy threads from recent years — he wears that flair firmly on the sleeve of his new LP, Texas Piano Man. Donning a sharp white tuxedo that gleams like a blank slate against the blue skies and rolling hills of Marfa, Texas, it’s a turn that Ellis comes by honestly.

Americana/country singer-songwriters Kelly Willis, Melissa Carper, and Brennen Leigh team up for the Wonder Women of Country and release their first EP.

Throughout the '90s, the U.K. music scene was filled to the brim with nerdy cockney types sporting messy threads and even messier hair. Fresh-faced Sophie Ellis-Bextor was among the first Brit-pop stars to break with this trend. She made it onto the stage in 1997 as the teenage vocalist behind new wave outfit theaudience. Smartly dressed (often in black) and boasting an alluring, posh voice, she caused quite a stir on London's alternative circuit. Theaudience became known the world over as a groundbreaking pop act and even enjoyed success on the crowded U.K. singles chart with such imaginatively titled numbers as "I've Got the Wherewithal." Due to internal conflicts, however, the group split up and Ellis-Bextor went searching for success on her own.