Bug in 0.83

I recently upgraded from 0.8 to 0.83 and now the x
labels do not rotate.

Here is a chart generated with 0.8
http://eswap.com/goodlabels.png

and here is a chart generated with 0.83
http://eswap.com/badlabels.png

When I revert back to 0.8 the labels are correctly
displayed. I use the following code for formatting the
xlabels:

# make sure everyone has the same axes limits
set(axLower.get_xticklabels(), 'rotation', 45,
'horizontalalignment', 'right', fontsize=textSize)

Thanks,

VJ