I meant to chat up some of the better things I saw at the Film Festival, especially during my 6-program weekend over 10/15-16. Best of the bunch was The Hidden Blade. Katagiri is a low-level samurai develops a relationship with his out-of-caste maid, and is later ordered to kill a friend who's turned against the clan. Yoji Yamada makes samurai films focusing on the bureaucracy and corrupt politics of the japanese feudal system, so if you're looking for a more Kurosawan epic, you'll be disappointed. But when action does break out, it carries more weight.

I don't remember why I decided to buy a ticket to Brick, but I'm glad I did. Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds a girl (Emilie DeRavin from Lost) dead in a storm drain. He then tries to figure out who killed her, but the film's gimmick is that it's a teen film noir, played totally deadpan with hard-boiled dialogue. This works to great effect. In one scene Brendan and "The Brain" debate whether to get "bulls" (cops) involved, then in the next line Brendan asks to borrow the Brain's mom's cellphone. And there's a scene with Richard Roundtree as the assistant principal that sends up every rogue detective/commanding officer conversation you've ever seen. Tremendously entertaining.

With lesser aspirations but still thoroughly entertaining was Night of the Living Dorks, a German teen comedy. Yeah...German. Comedy. These three nerds get turned into zombies by a Goth ritual gone awry. Their new-found resistance to pain lets them get revenge on bullies, and their undeadness is mistaken for a hip heroin-chic look. They become popular, until body parts start to fall off...

Other things...saw a couple of very solid shorts presentations, which are unlikely to pop up anywhere. Spike Lee's Jesus Children of America was quite good, but it being a Spike Lee joint, I had goose-eggs on my head for a couple of days from the message. The animated short most likely to pop up come Oscar time is Legend of the Scarecrow, from Spain. Back in feature news, Animal is a French/Portuguese thriller about a timid geneticist researching human aggression. The best thing about it is how it manages to keep its serial-killer character fresh. Other'n that, it's just okay. But far better than Black Brush which was billed as a Clerks-esque tale of Hungarian chimney sweeps. Well, it was black-and-white, anyway, but dull and stupid. I fell asleep. And it was the first of the four things I saw that day.