* Sometimes audience members' post-screening questions to actors or directors are just downright stupid. At a Q&A after Sunday's premiere of "Thumbsucker," someone asked Keanu Reeves if he prepped for his role as an orthodontist by watching Laurence Olivier in "Marathon Man" or Steve Martin in "Little Shop of Horrors."

Reeves, wearing a long black coat and a scraggly beard, looked dumbfounded.

"No," he said.

He did add, however, that he got some tips from a real-life orthodontist in Beaverton, Ore., where the movie was filmed. Reeves has a supporting role in the film as a dentist who works on the 17-year-old main character, played by Lou Pucci.

Apparently, Reeves needed the advice.

"The first time I was working with [Lou]," he said, "I almost poked his eye out."

* Director John Maybury got some unintentional laughs during his introduction Sunday night of "The Jacket," his psychological mystery starring Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley.

"I want to thank the Riverdance - er, I mean the Sundance Film Festival for showing my film," he said.

* Speaking of "The Jacket," the film contains harrowing scenes in which Brody, as a mental patient, is locked for hours in a dark, silent morgue-like drawer. Brody said he prepared for the role by talking to William Hurt about that actor's experience shooting scenes in a sensory-deprivation tank for his 1980 film, "Altered States."

Brody, who won an Oscar for "The Pianist," also experimented with a sensory-deprivation tank himself on the film's set in Glasgow, Scotland. Brody said the experience, which involved floating in water for hours, heightened his mental and spiritual awareness.

"If you stay in there long enough, you don't need drugs," he said.

* One of the festival's most popular films so far has been "Kung Fu Hustle," a brilliantly inventive Hong Kong martial arts comedy by actor-director Stephen Chow that got a standing ovation Sunday.

The film features a nasty group of Chinese gangsters whose trademarks are stove pipe hats and the axes they use on their victims. To celebrate the movie's Sunday premiere, producers passed out dozens of stove pipe hats to Sundance staffers and volunteers. Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore even wore one as he introduced the film.

The movie was a dream come true for a group of Stephen Chow fans from Provo. The four young men - longtime friends from high school - wore matching T-shirts that said, "Devotees of Chow" and sat near the front of the theater, then got to tell their idol afterwards how much they love his films.

They even had a modest moment in the spotlight when a TV crew interviewed them later outside the theater.

"It was awesome," one of the guys said, still starry-eyed 30 minutes after the movie ended.

"Kung Fu Hustle" is expected to hit American theaters in March.

* Another buzzed-about festival film has been "Hustle & Flow," about a pimp trying to make it as a rapper.

Director Craig Brewer kicked off Saturday's debut screening by asking the audience to participate in an impromptu homage to the movie's Memphis locale. He asked audience members to create a beat by snapping their fingers, then brought two actresses from the film onstage to sing a soulful version of "Proud Mary."

* Apparently, winning NBC-TV's "The Apprentice" has perks beyond working for Donald Trump. Spotted heading to the VIP lounge at Saturday night's crowded Blender party at Harry O's: Season One winner Bill Rancik.

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Do you have an entertainment news tip, celebrity sighting or comment about pop culture in Utah? Send it to griggs@sltrib.com.