There are a few films at film festivals that everyone sees. Largely put up with, sponsor ads preceding every screening are ubiquitous at most film festivals. The amusing commercial on day one often becomes by day seven a dreaded test of audience mettle. Filmex runs the same three ads before every film screened. Here’s some quick reviews.

Keirin Ringring. This obnoxious minute and a half promotes the Ringring efforts of the Japanese Keirin Association. Let me explain. Keirin is a bicycle race that is a popular betting sport in Japan. Competitors follow a pacer for one or two laps jockeying for position. As soon as the pacer leaves the tracks it’s sprint time to the finish. Ringring is the do-good promotion of the Keirin Association - working with kids, the elderly, and the blind.

The commercial cuts between kids on bikes and trikes, old people, a seeing-eye dog, a few happy workers, all overlaid with floating bike wheel graphics and a few katakana phrases. It’s frenetic, doesn’t make a whole lot of visual sense and has an incredibly shrill soundtrack. I shudder whenever I see the first images of happy kids.

Meiji Probio Yogurt LG 21. A high angle shot of Beat Takeshi, poker-faced. Cut to Beat looking up at an oversized poster of himself. The music goes a little whacky. A voice over. Beat does a somewhat lame kung fu kick. Cut to Beat tapping his stomach, grinning. Cut to the money shot, a close-up of a spoon dipping into yogurt. And out with the high angle shot of Beat looking at the camera with a smile. It looks OK. It’s got Beat, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it’s all about. And what is Probio Yogurt LG21 anyway?

Air France. When I asked my girlfriend, “What about that stupid Air France commercial?” She said, “What Air France commercial?” An ad’s job is to get the brand stuck in a person’s brain. This one obviously fails. A beautiful lake in the country. A beautiful woman lounges on a dock. A frog. A dragonfly. A pan across the landscape. It looks professional, totally insipid, uninspired. The worst of advertising “art.”

And what about the real movies today? Well, there was The Bride from Hades, a 1968 Ugetsu style story from Yamamoto Satsuo, that had a huge influence (and still does) on Japanese horror movies. It still looks great after all these years. And then there was Jia Zhang-ke’s Dong, a strange documentary on art-making, work, and the human condition. Intriguing, difficult, the images are sticking with me, though I’m still perplexed by the whole thing. Unfortunately I missed the special session Angela Mao Ying (Lady Kung Fu). She played Bruce Lee’s younger sister in Enter the Dragon, and had a long career as an action star. She’s here with a Shaw brother’s classic, Hapkido. Word up, she was gracious, funny, and still very much a star.