Why Watch? It’s weirdness wrapped up in the grainy elegance of the 1980s. This isn’t the surrealist Monkees film of the same name, but it might induce the same WTF reaction. In Benjamin Wong‘s odd short, a young man (Don Chao) is passed over for yet another job promotion because he’s got something strange on top of his neck. After the humiliation, how far will he go to be liked, fit in, and snag the job? What does it cost? Just 3 minutes of your time. Trust us. You have time for more short films.

Why Watch? Because when Disney and Dali team up, it’s a good idea to pay attention. The surreal, flourishing art of Salvador Dali comes to life here in a collaboration the mustachioed one began with Disney in 1948 that wouldn’t be completed until 2003. The animation team breathed life into several iconic Dali images (with a story taking place in his wasteland setting). The tale of a young woman floating through this dream world has a strangely calming effect, and it goes without saying that the visuals are stunning. What Will It Cost? Just 6 minutes of your time. Check out Destino for yourself:

Acts of spontaneity have been an essential component of artistic expression in the twentieth century, based in the notion of a perceived “purity” within the spontaneous act that allows art to be directly articulated without mediation or interference from social pressures and constructs. From the improvisatory paintings of Jackson Pollock to the idea of the rewrite as heresy within Jack Kerouac’s prose, spontaneity in many cases is seen as the only way to make art that has any “real” meaning. According to Daniel Belgrad, mid-century efforts toward artistic spontaneity provided a means of expression free from the constrains enforced by an oppressive, conformist hegemonic culture: “This new avant-garde shared the belief that cultural conditioning functioned ideologically by encouraging the atrophy of certain perceptions and the exaggeration of others…In the recovery of such an alternative “reality”…they saw the only basis for constructively radical social change.” Spontaneity through art then doesn’t alter perception as much as its restores it to its ideal original state, allowing artists and spectators of art to see beyond a regime’s oppressive confines.

Culture Warrior is our weekly walk on the wild side with actual film school graduate (now with even more Doctoral candidacy!) Landon Palmer. In this week’s installment, he takes on the biggest film of the summer, name drops Andre Breton, and tackles the notion of art dealing with the real world. Not that Armond White’s anti-for-anti’s-sake, straw-man-constructed brand of film criticism deserve the merit of serious examination, but there was something in White’s review of Inception that struck me as particularly problematic…