And the rest of the festival...

Well, I only went to two films after "Oldboy", which is still my favorite from the small handful of movies I saw this festival.

On Friday night, I saw "Cutie Honey", a Japanese film based on a Go Nagai anime series from the 70's, with one of my buddies. Let me tell you: this was, as one film festival intern described it, the Power Rangers on acid!... It was that bizarre. The hero (or heroine, in this case) is an android whose superhuman (can you call it that?) powers are stored in a necklace - supposedly the product of nanotechnology. She goes against the "Panther Claw", a gang of weird, color-coded (that's right - color-coded) nanotech-enhanced miscreants who kidnapped her uncle. My favorite villain was "Black Claw", a Michael Jackson/harlequinn knockoff with pop-star as well as murderous tendencies. Let me explain - before he starts attacking, he goes into this karaoke number with the central part of his trident as a dettachable microphone. Tres bizarre!

As for today, I just came back from another Japanese film, "Survive Style 5+". Another bizarre film, this time with a wife who just won't stay dead and a salary worker who thinks he's a bird after a botched hypnotist show (the hypnotist was "whacked"). It was visually stunning, and some of the scenes were really funny. The end result, although delightful, was more odd than anything else. Although it was funny seeing the bird-guy freak out after his family presented him with a Christmas turkey.