HA! Great minds, etc., Tom.

I've heard that Hansard and the girl who played the love interest are dating in real life.

If Death at a Funeral is still on in your area it might be a good overlap movie, flea. The Jane Austen Book Club is also good,but might fall too far on the chick-flick side of things.

I'd vouch for Once. I thought it was a great movie. Funny and touching. And it was made guerilla style on the streets of Dublin for only a few hundred grand, so it's go the indie cred.

I was waiting for Death at a Funeral to come out on DVD, since I thought it missed us, but it seems it's being release in Canada in November. It's strange because generally they release things in Canada at the same time as the US. (Except for Canadian movies.)

I've heard that Hansard and the girl who played the love interest are dating in real life.

They are. They claim they only started dating while doing publicity, but I wonder if they just waited until she was legal. (She was 17 when they made the film.)

And as Beatrice, a woman whose name I forget, but who was the female lead in "Blackpool"

Sarah Parrish. Who is awesome.

Lewis is hilarious in the role. He never struck me as a comedic actor, so that was an eye-opener. Although my favourite in the series is the updated version of "Taming of the Shrew" with Shirley Henderson and Rufus Sewell, because Henderson is so tiny and full of RAGE, and the skanky gender issue is mollified the fact that Katarina is a member of the British Cabinet and Sewell's Petruchio shows up in his wedding in a dress.

The Jane Austen Book Club is also good, but might fall too far on the chick-flick side of things.

Yeah, it's definitely chick-flicky. But it's not quite as the nauseatingly saccharine as some of the other chick flicks I've seen. Still, it's more of an "outing with a girlfriend" type of movie than one with DH.

Are these BBC Shakespeare on DVD? Region 1 DVD?

If it weren't for the Depressing aspect, I'd suspect that Into the Wild would fit your requirements nicely.

Looks like Amazon has them available.

Once is lovely and fun and totally worth seeing. Plus, go see Lars and the Real Girl when it comes near you.

I loved Once more than anything I've seen since Pan's Labyrinth and maybe more than that, but it might be kind of hard to find. I saw it at a tiny second-run indie theater in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago, it it was one of only two NYC theaters still showing it. Now it's the only NYC theater still showing it. So unless you live in a town with as much filmage as here, it may be gone.

If not, though, run don't walk. SO good.

I'm looking forward to getting Once and Paris, Je T'aime on DVD when they're released.