"High School Musical," with swords

With Jill in New Orleans for the week, it was up to me to take the girls to the Western Dubuque High School performance of "High School Musical" this afternoon.
Brianna Hoffmann and Adam Sullivan starred in the school's staging of the play, an adaptation of a made-for-television Disney movie.
The girls were mesmerized by the singing, the dancing and the story they knew well from repeated viewings of the movie.
As the cast performed, I kept thinking about "Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke (Samurai Spy)," the Masahiro Shinoda chanbara (samurai film) that I watched on DVD until it was time to leave for the play.
Subsequent posts on the Internet Movie Database Web site ask:
"Why is this movie good?"
and
"Why are IMDBers so stupid?"
Apparently there is some debate as to the merits of Shinoda's 1965 film, which adds thick layers of complex political intrigue to a ninja flick with dark, film-noir tendencies.
I would place myself in the "Why are they stupid" camp, as "Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke" never fails to entertain me.
I have had to watch it multiple times to figure out the plot, mind you, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It is a film that makes the viewer work, but the work pays off for me.
As a side note, the film offers a pair of supporting roles to a couple of my cinematic heroes:
* Kei Sato is one of the classic Japanese character actors of the 1960s. He played Serizawa in "Daibosatsu Toge (The Sword of Doom)" and Takanosuke Nojiri, a rather ruthless killer, in "Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke."
* Shintaro Ishihara plays a bit role as Saizo Kirigakure, a friend of protagonist Sarutobi Sasuke.
Ishihara wrote "Kurutta Kajitsu (Crazed Fruit)," one of my Top 5 favorite films and was the brother of Yoshiro Ishihara, the "Kurutta Kajitsu" star known as the "James Dean" of Japan.
Ultimately, Shintaro Ishihara became mayor of Tokyo.
As far as I know, however, he never sang "Get'cha Head in the Game."