Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.

Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou (where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Or attest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.

There has been a lot of heated debate about that second Hobbit film. Many Lord of the Rings fans will take anything Middle-Earth, even if it's two hours cobbled out of appendices. Others see it as a betrayal of the Tolkien canon, and a blatant money grab by all involved. I readily admit I fall into the first category -- but I certainly don't want to see a bad film just to get a visual Middle Earth fix.

No matter what camp you fall into, however, Guillermo del Toro just made a statement that should please everyone. According to Defamer, he promises they are looking at adapting The Hobbit first and foremost -- and that a second film may not even happen. "We believe there is a second movie," del Toro said. "If there isn't, there will not be. If we find it, we will shoot it, but by God, if we do not find it, we will not shoot it. I am anxious to shoot the book, and I'm willing and able to dedicate myself to shooting the [second film]. In the four books that are in the domain of the copyright, there are appendices and ideas and things that can be traced without risk. But I have to be careful not to overstep. We believe there is a way to create this film and make it interesting, but it's too early."

On the heels of the terrible Universal Studios fire comes word of another landmark movie location gone up in flames. San Diego's Kansas City Barbeque, which can be seen in Top Gun (watch one of its memorable scenes, dubbed in Italian, above), was been gutted by a fire that started yesterday in an open cooking pit. According to the AP article reporting on the fire, the restaurant was used for the scene in which Maverick (Tom Cruise) first picks up Charlie (Kelly McGillis) by singing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," but this is incorrect (that scene was shot in Coronado, at the Officer's Club at Naval Air Station North Island). Kansas City Barbeque was used for the above scene in which Goose (Anthony Edwards) and Maverick are singing "Great Balls of Fire," as well as the final scene when "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" is playing on the jukebox.

The restaurant had capitalized on the fact that Top Gun was filmed there, and as you can see on its website, people referred to it as the "Top Gun Bar." You could even purchase Top Gun merchandise there and see props from the film, including the piano that Goose plays on and the jukebox from the end. Although the fire was reportedly extinguished in only 20 minutes, the restaurant has been destroyed and apparently those props are now lost forever.

A bit of math tells me that after this weekend, 2008 will be halfway over. But here at The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar, we prefer to think that 2008 has only halfway begun. There are still six months left to participate in the many cool film-related events that happen every week outside the nation's multiplexes! If you know of something coming up -- special screenings, retrospectives, mini-festivals, etc. -- send me a link! My e-mail is Eric.Snider (at) Weblogsinc (dot) com.

This week, even if WALL-E is what you've always Wanted, try to make room in your life for these...

INDIE THEATRICAL RELEASES

• Gunnin' for That #1 Spot is a doc about the nation's top high school basketball players competing in a tournament -- and the film was directed by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, so you know it's hip. Cinematical's Scott Weinberg gave it a rave review at Tribeca. It opens today in places where basketball is big, just in time for the NBA draft: New York, L.A., Phoenix, Portland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C.

• Finding Amanda stars Matthew Broderick as a TV producer who goes to Las Vegas to convince his niece (Brittany Snow) to enter rehab. Our Erik Davis tried to find something nice to say about it at Tribeca but was unsuccessful. Opens today in NYC, L.A., Chicago, Boston, Philly, D.C., San Francisco, and Palm Desert, Calif.

After the jump, more indie theatrical releases, plus the city-by-city list of special events....

One of my favorite classic novels, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, is coming your way in a new adaptation starring what looks to be a perfectly suited cast. Matthew Goode, (Match Point, The Lookout) stars as Charles Ryder, the tale's protagonist and narrator, who befriends the wealthy Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw). When Sebastian brings Charles for a visit to his family's estate, Brideshead Castle, Charles meets Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell, Cassandra's Dream).

Emma Thompson plays Lady Marchmain, Sebastian and Julia's aristocratic mother, a Roman Catholic for whom her husband, Lord Marchmain, converted his faith from Anglican; in the book, at least, Catholicism is an influence on both the lives and conversations of the characters, especially Lady Marchmain, who uses the duel thumbscrews of guilt and manipulation to control others ... this is a character Thompson can really sink her teeth into, and I look forward to seeing her take on the role.

Steve Carell and Mike Myers are going head-to-head at the multiplexes this weekend, but over here at The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar we're more interested in the art houses and independent theaters. If you know of something coming up that ought to be on the calendar -- special screenings, retrospectives, mini-festivals, etc. -- let me know! We're always looking to add new stuff to the list. My e-mail address (or "addy," as the kids say) is Eric.Snider (at) Weblogsinc (dot) com.

So let the other suckers fight over whose big-budget comedy is less funny! Focus your attention on these...

INDIE THEATRICAL RELEASES

• Brick Lane, which opens today in New York after playing at a dozen or so film festivals, including Telluride and Toronto, is a British drama about a Bangladeshi woman who moves to London in the 1980s for an arranged marriage. Hilarity ensues?

• Expired is a comedy/drama about a mousy meter maid (Samantha Morton) who has a relationship with a gruff, abusive coworker (Jason Patric). It opens today in New York.

After the jump, our city-by-city round-up of special events and screenings....

I'm not the most knowledgeable man when it comes to dance, but I'm at least a little familiar with Cyd Charisse. As everyone should be. Next to Ginger Rogers, she was possibly the most iconic female dancer in film history. Even those of us cinephiles who skip out on most dance musicals have at least seen her famous number from Singin' in the Rain (above). A few years ago, when Moviefone counted down the Top 10 Best Dance Scenes, it was #2 (just behind Dirty Dancing).

Charisse has died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 86, and she's hopefully joining old partners Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly for some of the best dance scenes ever seen up in heaven. With the former, she was paired up in The Band Wagon, Ziegfeld Follies and Silk Stockings (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination), and with the latter, she danced in Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather, Invitation to Dance and, of course, in Singin' in the Rain.

As a fresh 35mm print of Charlie Chaplin's quintessential 1947 thriller Monsieur Verdoux begins circulating through revival houses around the country, it seems like a good time to remind people that while the late actor is mainly known as a star of the silent screen, he definitely didn't die with it. Although the greatest slapstick artist of all time initially rejected the development of sound film, mocking it with hilariously exaggerated voices in City Lights, he eventually adopted it after realizing that resistance was futile. However, he refused to simply throw in a few lines of dialogue to accompany his beloved tramp shtick, choosing instead to take his career in a fresh direction. While Chaplin made many sound films over the course of several decades, only two of them really qualify as classic talkies (except for Limelight, which deserves a category of its own). Late flops like A King of New York don't really hold together, but Chaplin's initial forays into the world of sound film display his talent as a composer of distinctive prose.

His first work of this era, The Great Dictator, remains a masterpiece that broadened the potential of his tramp character with a modified Prince and the Pauper tale applied to World War II, and Chaplin doing double duty playing both a Jewish barber and an exaggerated Adolf Hitler (or "Hinkel," rather). Monsieur Verdoux, in which he plays a frustrated man whose losses during the Great Depression lead to a twisted scheme where he marries, murders and robs rich women, represented something else altogether: Chaplin's only brooding melodrama, the occasional laughs are almost incidental.

It started as a joke, became a documentary, and now it's on DVD. Comedian Doug Benson undertook a bold initiative: to smoke marijuana every day for 30 days. Of course, he'd already been smoking pot pretty much every day of his life, so to make things really interesting, he first stopped smoking for 30 days and took a battery of tests so he could later compare the results of smoking vs. non-smoking on his thirty-something body. Super High Me is the result.

The stoner crowd laughed much harder than I did at SXSW, but, as Erik Davis wrote, Super High Me is still "funny as hell," and the doc, directed by Michael Blieden, manages to sneak in plenty of social and political commentary. The DVD doesn't appear to have any extras, but it is available with two different covers. See if you can tell the difference. To quote Erik again, "True stoners, however, will most likely place this film on a shelf among their favorites of all time ... then forget it's up there five minutes later."

One of my SXSW favorites also premieres on DVD today. Following on the heels of Anton Corbjin's biopic Control, Grant Gee's doc Joy Division is a rousing, illuminating peek into the lives of the original members of the band, featuring interviews with almost all of the key players.

This week Entertainment Weekly is "Counting Down the New Movie Classics," listing the best films made in the past 25 years. The magazine claims that all 100 are good enough to be considered alongside the usual classics (you know, like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, etc.), but I guess that's relative. I wouldn't consider #99, The Blair Witch Project, to be equated with Poltergeist III, let alone Psycho. But isn't that the fun of these lists? They fuel our excitement about cinema while also angering us that our favorites aren't higher up, or more commonly, that the films we hate most are included on any list, ever.

On the first day of the countdown, EW shows us the bottom 25, which includes such masterpieces as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Breaking the Waves, In the Mood for Love and Full Metal Jacket. When I saw that the last of these was only at #94, I got really excited, wondering what 93 films could possibly be better. And then I was shocked to see that so-so comedies like Swingers and Waiting for Guffman and the fine but poorly aged Moonstruck placed higher. I almost didn't even see those titles, though, because I almost threw my computer when I saw that Napoleon Dynamite was just ahead of Back to the Future. Just another reason to hate Napoleon Dynamite, I guess. Even the Back to the Future sequels are better than ND, but I'm going to now assume they don't even make it on this list.

#s 75-51 will be revealed tomorrow. I wonder what kind of delights and blasphemies will meet us then.