I've probably been to the cinema more times in the past two weeks than in the previous two years (which is not to say that I've been living in the Picturehouse like mobbsy and aardvark179, just that I normally don't go to the pictures much at all!), so I suppose I should say a few words about the films I've seen as part of the Film Festival.

Yôkai daisensô, as mentioned, was a lot of fun even though it didn't make much sense. Think "The Dark Crystal" with more irony and better monsters (all the yôkai, or spirits, were definitely more in the Henson mould than CGI creations), including a cute furry thing (sunekosuri -- a spirit that rubs against your shins. Only in Japan...) and a talking umbrella. I think you may have had to be there, to be honest.

Predictably, I enjoyed The Notorious Bettie Page, though it was far more eye-candy than exposition -- the most substantial things in the film were Gretchen Mol's breasts (to be fair, the film is probably worth watching for these assets alone). The plot was heavy on the flashbacks and flashforwards, and I thought it was a wee bit clumsy how the I-♥-the-1950s black-and-white gave way to Glorious! Technicolour! every time the action took place on or near a beach. Very watchable, but not much weight to it.

Finally, there was A Scanner Darkly: a bizarre hybrid of thriller, cautionary tale, stoner movie and nightmare (so, a pretty faithful rendering of the book). The animation was very effective -- as scratchy and constantly-shifting as the characters' hallucinated bugs and their increasingly shaky grip on reality (whose reality?). I confess I don't remember the book having the slightly heavy-handed THIS-IS-A-WARNING afterword, but it's at least 6 years since I read it so I'm happy to blame my memory for that. Very good overall.

I don't have a film icon -- suggestions welcome (yes, I am a shameless comments whore).