Mr. Good, meet Mr. Evil. How sweetly ironic.
posted by jessie at 11:44 AM on October 10, 2001

Is it just me or does Dali look like a twisted version of Disney?
The Good (Disney)
The Twisted (Dali)
posted by flammableskirt at 11:59 AM on October 10, 2001

By evil, i meant Disney of course.

Come to think of it, i've never seen them in the same place....at the same time. Oh wait, yes i have. The postcard on my closet wall.
posted by jessie at 12:03 PM on October 10, 2001

I can see the pitch:

"So, meester Deesney, my new film will feature burning giraffes, a singing crab with my wife Gala's torso, and a tuna fishing boat made out my own feces."

What? What'd I say? Hey! Come back!
posted by Kafkaesque at 12:11 PM on October 10, 2001

So.. if they had completed this animation, and someone tried to watch it while on acid, would it cause their head to explode, or would it just make more sense?
posted by Hildago at 12:13 PM on October 10, 2001

Dali couldn't distinguish the [re-draws for animation of Dali's originals] by John Hench from his own work.

now there's a compliment!
posted by o2b at 12:14 PM on October 10, 2001

you mean there's something out there more trippy than Fantasia?
posted by KnitWit at 12:45 PM on October 10, 2001

Destino is one of the Holy Grails of animation, but I understood that the footage was destroyed. This is very cool news indeed.
posted by briank at 12:55 PM on October 10, 2001

Dali has done some strange work in film, I agree. Anyone taken a film class in college and seen Un Chien Andalou ? Classic film, indeed. For a film made in 1929, this one had it all. Eyeballs sliced in half, sexual mania (nudity! woohoo!), and ants crawling out of a guy's hand.
Damn, I would like to see that again, come to think of it...
posted by bradth27 at 1:08 PM on October 10, 2001

I'm not terribly excited to see this. By the time Dali teamed up with Walt to work on Destino, his most original work was already years in the past and had since pretty much degenerated into a series of repetitive cliche images.

If you want to an exhaustive account of Dali's many collaborative efforts in film, theater, opera, and ballet that came to naught, check out a copy of "The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali" by Ian Gibson.
posted by MrBaliHai at 1:19 PM on October 10, 2001

bradth27, I remember renting that at, of all places, a Blockbuster a few years ago. Of course we have that film to thank for Debaser by the Pixies which is reason enough to like it.

There was another pseudo-documentary about Dali (called, predictably enough "Dali") which was anrrated by Orson Welles and featured exciting scenes such as a baby sitting in a hollowed out pig carcass with a bible. As my art history teacher was wont to say "Oh! That wacky Dali!"

His autobiographical Diary of A Genius sheds light on interesting matters such as the sounds of his farts, which at one point he describes as being like the trumpet of Gabriel.

I also have a first edition of his novel "Hidden Faces", which I have tried to read on occasion but have been stymied by the fact that it is boring as hell.
posted by Kafkaesque at 1:28 PM on October 10, 2001

I love the Soft Self-portrait of Salvador Dali, and I've rented it at my blockbuster at least five times.

Destino sounds really intriguing. In the soft self-portrait, Dali uses the paranoid technique repeatedly. It's wild, especially in how detailed the hidden figures are. He also speaks his crazy language which he proclaimed was something like a superior form of English.
posted by zangpo at 2:00 PM on October 10, 2001

Dali was almost commissioned to do a sculpture for Monument Avenue here in Richmond, VA. For those unaware of Richmond, Monument Avenue is dotted with Civil War statues that us northerners like to refer to as second place trophies. Woulda been pretty neat, and definitely more aesthetically pleasing than the Arthur Ashe statue we are currently enduring. Get away you pesky children, get away!
posted by machaus at 3:22 PM on October 10, 2001

I hope the webmaster for the original link has permission to plagiarize an entire column from The Straight Dope...
posted by web-goddess at 3:49 AM on October 11, 2001