aMERICAN nIHILIST: . . . Yeah, I know, I am such a big old LEZZY!?!

This picture gives me such shpilkes I can't even say!

I've been eating up Jane Fonda's blog, It's so wonderful and it's been such nice treat since Rosie hasn't been blogging as regularly as she was.

Speaking of shpilkes I just finally got to watch last night the great Mike Leigh's latest joint, "Happy-Go-Lucky". And b/c he is at the tippy top of my list of favorite directors I had high expectations for the new movie and I have to say it was at least as wonderful as I hoped it would be. Looking forward to the new movie's DVD release I re-watched his last few movies over the last month or so. The last two, "All or Nothing" and "Vera Drake" were so dour in a lot of ways, this new one was a nice change. Being very familiar w/ most of his film work, while watching this last movie I really started seeing Mike Leigh as a sort of British Yasujirō Ozu (another of my all time favorites). Which isn't really such a great leap both of their movies deal primarily w/ the modern family. What I was thinking about though, while watching this new mike Leigh movie is how not being a Japanese speaker all of the Ozu movies seem so similar and the same could be said for Leigh but being an english speaker the differences and nuances are much more understandable. I couldn't help thinking about how the dialogue of Mike Leigh's female characters (or male for that matter) is always so Mike Leigh, I started thinking of the late great Katrin Cartlidge and how Sally Hawkins character in this new movie was a happier and toned down (a bit) version of the roles Katrin Cartlidge played in "Career Girls" and to a lesser extent "Naked". One last thing I was thinking is that "Happy-Go-Lucky" pretty much ended where a more conventional movie would have begun, I really wish it could've been about 45 minutes longer. I really felt like that w/ his last one, "Vera Drake" as well. My main problem w/ any new Mike Leigh movie though is that now the great wait begins for his next movie (I just hope it won't be four years again!)!!!