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.

Have you read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates? Huh? You have? Then why the hell haven't you told me about it? What's your problem, anyway? And where has this book been all my life?

There's a movie version of Revolutionary Road on the way, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and directed by Sam Mendes. It's set to be released at Christmastime, and is widely expected to be a major player in the Oscar race. But here I have to betray this column's reason for being. F*** the movie. Read the book.

Published in 1961, Yates's first novel was more acclaimed than popular. It is a merciless, intense and pitch-black social satire – funny only in the most uncomfortable way, like being cleverly mocked by someone who sees clean through to your soul. The jacket pitches it as being about "the opulent desolation of the American suburbs," but Revolutionary Road is not another of those books that merely mocks the empty lives of well-to-do suburbanites. It's about our attitudes toward life and love and each other. Almost a half-century after it was published, it contains as much devastating insight into human nature as just about anything else I've ever read.

Well here's something you don't see every day: A big, flashy summertime "tentpole" movie that A) takes chances, B) bucks convention, and C) takes some real risks with its subject material. Obviously the safe approach is for Will Smith to do (yet another) easily-digestible (if somewhat mindless) blockbuster like I, Robot or I Am Legend or Independence Day -- but this time the endlessly profitable Will Smith is working with a rather distinctive director who refuses to cater to formula. That director would be Peter Berg, and this guy has yet to make a bad film.

Unfortunately the production history on Hancock is not a fantastic one. There was a revolving door of directors and script polishers before Columbia finally started production -- but there were still marketing issues, last-minute reshoots, and MPAA miseries to deal with. And yet, despite all that, Hancock arrives like a breath of weirdly fresh air for moviegoers who like a little heart and soul mixed in with their hyper-kinetic action mayhem. Toss some sharp wit and an impressive display of edge into the mix, and I think you may have one of my favorite movies of the summer. (Although one can plainly tell that there was some late cutting done to the flick, all in the name of the almighty PG-13 rating, of course.)

Drug consumer par excellence, Hunter Thompson's legendary hallucinogenic and boozy escapades have by now been sufficiently documented, not to mention brought to pitch-perfect cinematic life by Terry Gilliam's 1998 adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Less well known, however, is his lifelong political conscientiousness, which receives the lion's share of attention in Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Alex Gibney's (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) loving yet even-handed non-fiction bio of the notorious father of Gonzo journalism. Narrated by Johnny Depp (Gilliam's Fear and Loathing star), and overflowing with archival footage and interviews with friends and enemies, the film lays out the vital details of its subject's life, from his outcast adolescence in Louisville, Kentucky to his suicide in 2005. Comprehensiveness, however, isn't necessarily the goal, and thus while most prime topics are tackled, the greatest focus is paid to Thompson's failed attempt to run for governor of Aspen, Colorado on a legalize-drugs platform, and his coverage of the 1972 presidential election, which resulted in the classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

This one's a little heartwarming, folks, especially if you're predisposed (as I am) to admiring pretty much everything about the Pixar company.

Last fall, a young woman named Courtney saw the WALL-E teaser -- the one where Andrew Stanton talks about the meeting in 1994 where the story was first conceived -- and was reduced to a puddle of tears by its adorableness. Seems she has a soft spot for robots, and in particular for lonely, child-like, wide-eyed robots. So she videoed herself watching the trailer on her computer, knowing it would have the same effect on her again, and then she posted the video on her blog and on YouTube. (We've got it here after the jump.)

The video made its way around the Internets, as these things do, and Courtney began to get e-mails from people within the Pixar family who had seen it and appreciated her enthusiasm. Then one of the film's producers sent her a Pixar jacket as a Christmas gift, along with a note thanking her for the video.

And then they invited her to the film's wrap party in San Francisco.

If you have a girl between the ages of 4 and 12 in your life, chances are pretty good you've heard of American Girl. The wildly successful franchise has spawned a whole series of high-end dolls, doll clothes, doll furniture and accessories, books, cookbooks ... and, of course, movies. American Girls are enormously popular with both girls and parents seeking a wholesome alternative to the freakishly-thin Barbie doll image or the hooker-in-training look of those wretched Bratz dolls. As an added bonus, they encourage girls to learn a little history, without even realizing it .

The whole thing with American Girl is that each of the dolls comes from a different time period: there's Kristen, an immigrant girl from Sweden; Felicity, an American Revolution girl whose father is a Patriot, while her best friend's father is a Loyalist; Samantha, being raised by her wealthy grandmother in the 1920s, when women's suffrage and class difference were big issues; Molly, a girl whose father, a doctor, is off serving in the Second World War; Addy, who escapes slavery with her mother to search for her father and brother, and so on. Each doll has her own set of books: there's the intro book, the birthday book, the book where so-and-so learns a lesson, the Christmas book, and even a line of mystery books.

I wanted to go into Hancock knowing as little as possible, so I deliberately avoided reading anything about it -- at least, as much as that was possible given the amount of movie blog reading I do on a daily basis. Nonetheless, it was hard to miss that early reviews trickling in from places like Variety and Hollywood Reporter were not, shall we say, overly positive. On the other hand, several of those reviews were written by people who often seem to have cinematic tastes directly opposite mine, so I wasn't too dissuaded.

And I'm glad I wasn't, because I'm here to tell you Hancock is both an enjoyable film and one of Will Smith's best performances ever, even if it is a bit schizophrenic in its execution. The film starts out as one thing -- all we know is we're getting a film about a grumpy, alcoholic guy with super powers who's awfully deficient in the social skills department. The film opens on a scene right out of COPS: three bad guys leading police on a chase down an LA freeway, firing away on police and other cars. In between shots of the action, we see a disheveled guy snoozing drunkenly on a park bench.

Sex and Death 101
Finally! I've been waiting eons for Sex and Death 101 to hit the shelves -- ever since there was news that writer Daniel Waters was not only taking another stab at directing, but that he would be reteaming with Winona Ryder. Sure, it wouldn't have her digging into her blue clothes for more Veronica Sawyer, but I take what I can get.

Simon Baker stars as an executive and ladies man whose world is thrown into upheaval by the appearance of an e-mail -- one that includes the names of all the women he's had sex with, plus all the women he will canoodle in the future. Ryder, meanwhile, is "Death Nell," a femme fatale who targets men guilty of sex crimes. Other faces that pop up include Leslie Bibb, Julie Bowen, Sophie Monk, Mindy Cohn (yes, that Cohn), Dash Mihok, Patton Oswalt, and Neil Flynn.

The release includes a commentary with Waters, plus a featurette called "101 Perversions."

Seeing that this is the 20th anniversary for Heathers as well, Anchor Bay is also releasing the 20th High School Reunion Edition today.

Check out Scott's review | Buy the DVD

It seems fairly certain that Hancock will do decent business when it hits theaters this week, if only because Will Smith rarely stars in a dud these days -- especially when it's his face selling the movie before all else. Whether or not the film has staying power after opening weekend, however, remains to be seen, but Sony Pictures clearly has a lot of faith in its potential: Last week, the studio revealed its intentions of releasing the film online sometime after its theatrical run and before its DVD release, but only to users with Sony Bravia TV sets. It's a bold maneuver, one that assumes its core base of consumers actually have an interest in Hancock -- but the movie will make a profit either way, so it's a reasonable choice for this intriguing experiment.

Left in the dust by Apple's iPod, Sony continues to struggle in its search for a piece of the digital revolution. Company head Howard Stringer recently told the New York Times that the strategy for releasing Hancock "vanishes the memory of the failures of the Sony Walkman." Well, maybe. While on-demand technology has changed the way audiences consume their media, they don't like paying more money than necessary. Asking your audiences to buy a special device in order to access what, at this point, amounts to one movie -- well, that's asking a lot. But it's still a step in the right direction.

What do you think?

The media is playing two pointless games of "gotcha" with Pixar's wonderful Wall-E at the moment. Eric Kohn addressed the first -- conservative critics griping about the film's "left-wing" message -- over here. The other, best articulated in this post by CHUD's Devin Faraci and this mind-boggling missive from the New York Post's Kyle Smith, but also showing up in Todd McCarthy's Variety review, is that Wall-E's supposed anti-consumerist bent is "hypocrisy" on account of it's released by Disney. I think that's a stupid and dishonest argument, and here's why.

In its latter half, Wall-E presents a vision of the future in which humanity is fat, lazy, basically immobile but for their hoverchairs, and in thrall to a mega-corporation called Buy 'N Large that tells everyone what to do, what to think, and what to buy. The rest of the film is dedicated to Wall-E, EVE, and the spaceship Axiom's human population defying the corporation and returning back to Earth to recolonize. This is disingenuous, the thinking goes, because the Disney empire bears more than a few similarities to Buy 'N Large and, in fact, cynically counts on unthinking, overweight masses, to see its movies, buy its merchandise, and ride the rides at Disney World.

What you'll notice from the folks making this argument is a coy ambiguity about who exactly is being hypocritical here. If the claim is that Disney is being hypocritical by releasing Wall-E, then that may well be right -- but it's also not surprising, newsworthy, or even worth mentioning. Is anyone really shocked that a large, profit-seeking corporation is being opportunistic and ideologically inconsistent? Where is all the outrage about Disney flicks that push the individuality and non-conformism message, when the Walt Disney Company is dependent on a herd mentality among its consumers?