Big Apple Barn #1: Happy Go Lucky

• ISBN13: 9780439893718
• Condition: New
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Academy Award nominee Mike Leigh (Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, Vera Drake, 2004), delivers the delightfully fresh and cheerful comedy Happy-Go-Lucky. Free-spirited and effervescent, Poppy is a schoolteacher whose unstoppable optimism guides her life. Bubbling forth with giggles, laughter and jokes, life's a bowl of cherries even when she comes across a few pits. Whether it's a cranky driving teacher or a fiery flamenco instructor, Poppy embraces life on the sunny side of the street. It's a joyous, feel-good film you'll find irresistible. Bonus features include: Behind the Wheel of Happy-Go-Lucky, Happy-In-Character, audio commentary by Director Mike LeighMike Leigh has made a career out ! of unusual films--who else would make a biopic about Gilbert & Sullivan?--but Happy-Go-Lucky may be his most unusual yet: A movie about a woman who is almost compulsively cheerful. Poppy (Sally Hawkins, star of the 2007 miniseries of Persuasion) may at first seem like the most annoying human being alive. She can't help but try to get a smile from someone who's ignoring her. When her bicycle gets stolen, she shrugs it off and decides to learn how to drive, which leads her to form a strange sparring relationship with her frustrated driving instructor, Scott (Eddie Marsan). Meanwhile, she takes flamenco lessons, visits with her squabbling family, tries to help a troubled boy at the school where she teaches, and encounters a homeless man--but this bland catalogue of events doesn't capture how Poppy's relentless optimism acts as a rorschach test to the people around her, reflecting back their worst or best feelings about themselves. Poppy, whose natural impulse! is to empathize, discovers she needs to draw boundaries betwe! en herse lf and a world that wants to interpret her cheerfulness in unintended ways. The result is a unique movie experience, one that defies conventional notions of what's dramatic yet grows more absorbing with every moment. Just as it's hard to imagine anyone liking Poppy at the start of Happy-Go-Lucky, it's hard to imagine that anyone doesn't care about her by the movie's end. --Bret FetzerStudio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 04/15/2011 Run time: 118 minutes Rating: RMike Leigh has made a career out of unusual films--who else would make a biopic about Gilbert & Sullivan?--but Happy-Go-Lucky may be his most unusual yet: A movie about a woman who is almost compulsively cheerful. Poppy (Sally Hawkins, star of the 2007 miniseries of Persuasion) may at first seem like the most annoying human being alive. She can't help but try to get a smile from someone who's ignoring her. When her bicycle gets stolen, she shrugs it off and decides! to learn how to drive, which leads her to form a strange sparring relationship with her frustrated driving instructor, Scott (Eddie Marsan). Meanwhile, she takes flamenco lessons, visits with her squabbling family, tries to help a troubled boy at the school where she teaches, and encounters a homeless man--but this bland catalogue of events doesn't capture how Poppy's relentless optimism acts as a rorschach test to the people around her, reflecting back their worst or best feelings about themselves. Poppy, whose natural impulse is to empathize, discovers she needs to draw boundaries between herself and a world that wants to interpret her cheerfulness in unintended ways. The result is a unique movie experience, one that defies conventional notions of what's dramatic yet grows more absorbing with every moment. Just as it's hard to imagine anyone liking Poppy at the start of Happy-Go-Lucky, it's hard to imagine that anyone doesn't care about her by the movie's end. --Bret FetzerA singer (Venable) believes her ! marine p ilot husband, accused of treason, has died in the Pacific. She decides to take a singing job in Shanghai, and finds a man who looks exactly like her husband dancing in a club act. Realizing it is her husband, and thinking he must have amnesia, she sets out to help him recover his memory and clear his name.

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), WIDESCREEN (2.35:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Behind the scenes, Featurette, Interactive Menu, Making Of, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: If you know the British filmmaker Mike Leigh's work - early and later titles like "Bleak Moments," "Naked" and "Vera Drake" - you may find yourself watching his most recent movie, "Happy-Go-Lucky," with mounting unease, a tinge of ! dread. Despite the extraordinary human parade that has passed in front of his lens, laughing and raging, yearning for love and asking for cuddles, Mr. Leigh has never been an artist for whom happy (word or idea) has been an easy fit. Life is sweet, as the title of another of his films puts it with a heart-swelling yes, but it's also an eternal fight against doom and gloom, the soul-crushing no. The push and pull between yes and no animates all of his work, investing it with narrative tension and a sense of artistic purpose that is, whether overtly articulated or not, also insistently, vigorously left-leaning. The hard-working and often besieged characters who populate his stories live in worlds partly defined, if not wholly circumscribed, by ideology and the state. Nobody mounts a soapbox or whistles "The Internationale" in "Happy-Go-Lucky," but the film is so closely tuned to the pulse of communal life, to the rhythms of how people work, play and struggle together, it capt! ures the larger picture along with the smaller. Like Poppy, th! e bright focus of this expansive, moving film, Mr. Leigh isn't one to go it alone. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Berlin International Film Festival, British Independent Film Awards, European Film Awards, ...Happy-Go-Lucky ( Happy Go Lucky )

When Happy Go Lucky, a young quarter pony, is moved from his home to the stables at Big Apple Barn, endless adventures await him!

Happy Go Lucky is a young pony. He loves living with his mom at Shoemaker Stables! But when he's sent to help at a riding school called Big Apple Barn, everything in Happy's life changes.

Big Apple Barn is full of new adventures! Happy has never met other horses and ponies before. He has a lot to learn, and he misses his home. Will Happy Go Lucky find his place at Big Apple Barn?