I'm on a kick to revisit the films of some of my favorite directors. Might as well start off with my absolute favorite, the legendary Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa's unparalleled career spanned over 50 years, created over 30 films, including some of the most highly regarded epics of all time, and influenced countless directors to follow. The fact that the debate for Kurosawa's greatest work regularly involves no less than half a dozen titles, all of which are amazing, is a testament to the quality of his work.

Anyway my itinerary for the next week or two is as follows: The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo, Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, Stray Dog, and my personal favorite Ran. All amazing pictures with terrific writing and immaculate cinematography, and many of which star Toshiro Mifune (I'm an unabashed Mifune fanboy).

My tentative plan is to move on to Ridley Scott after this though plans may change. So who are some of your favorite Directors and your favorite movies of theirs?

A few days ago I saw Mike Leigh's film Happy-Go-Lucky. Like a lot of Mike Leigh's films, it's really good. Great characters, excellent acting, directing and writing, no Hollywood-esque crap like morals or 'teachable moments' or whatever. (He's British, in case anyone's wondering.)

Mike Leigh is great. I think Career Girls and Life is Sweet are probably my favorites. A lot of people seem to like Naked the best... not me, though I do like the film and it has lots of great stuff in it.

For anyone who doesn't know about him: he likes to create/follow really odd/unusual working-class characters just trying to be happy in an England that really isn't any 'healthier' than they are. Love his characters.

Saw Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, too, a few days ago... if it weren't for all that exasperating/distracting singing I'd say it was pretty good... the only other problem being that, like most Hollywood-esque films the narrative eventually loses some of its stamina (though not that badly) and loses itself in the soundtrack. But... the initial story I liked... the writing is pretty good... the directing, cinematography and acting (Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Timothy Spall (also a Mike Leigh favorite, incidentally)) are all excellent. But the singing... oh hell, make them stop!

Todd Solondz came out with a new one recently (Life during Wartime) (well... not totally new, but... only just found out about it, so that makes it new to me). I still have to see that one. Anyone seen it?

And as for directors I've been going back to... I'm always going back to Bergman's films. Lots of reasons why he's my favorite filmmaker.