An animated short that began in 1945 (but didn’t premiere till 2003) will finally make it to DVD by next year, along with a documentary about Dali and Disney's history together.

The film, Destino, began as a collaboration between the two artists and ended as a seven-minute long love story of Chronos and his ill-fated longing for a mortal female. While Dali started working on storyboards in 1945, the studios’ financial troubles from World War II put the project on hold. In the late '90s Disney, animators took another look at Dali’s storyboards, but only 18 seconds of Dali’s original animation remains (the turtle people at the end).

The idea of Dali and Disney together seems like an odd cultural leap, but the 2003 result is beautiful.

The following is an expanded version of an interview with David Wain that's running in the June 9 issue.

Since the early '90s, writer-director-actor David Wain has been one of the premier ambassadors of absurdist, intelligent, and wonderfully random comedy on TV and in feature films.

A founding member of The State, whose comedy show aired on MTV from 1993 to 1995, he is also a member of the comedy troupe Stella (with fellow The State alums Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black), and is the director of the cult classic Wet Hot American Summer. He also helmed last year’s hilarious Paul Rudd comedy Role Models, and is the creative force behind the award-winning Web series Wainy Days.

On the eve of the long awaited release of The State on DVD, I talked to Wain about the groundbreaking show, his movies and future projects.

Hi David Wain. Do you remember the correspondence we had earlier this year?

I sure do not, but I love the fact that we had one.

I'm the dummy who wrote about the Stella guys being justifiably grouchy on the autograph line after their show. You wrote to us when you saw the article.

Oh, yes…of course I remember. Now I remember. It’s all good.

Actually, you are not supposed to read your own press. What are you doing?

Show me anyone who doesn’t.

It was online for, like, two minutes, and you caught me!

See?

Artist Howard Salmon just finished a comic series on legendary Tucson rocker Al Perry.

Salmon, no stranger to the Tucson music scene, was drummer for the legendary Phantom Limbs on the band's first two albums, and has played with Al Perry and the Cattle, as well as Rainer and Das Combo. From 1980 to 1983, Salmon wrote and published Slit, a fanzine about Tucson's early punk scene.

Al Perry Comix is a 24-page tribute to Perry following a series of interviews Salmon did with the guitar hero. Read Salmon's own description of the comic after the jump.

These are photographs of Lazlo Layton's Deardorff studio camera, which he used to shoot the work he's now showing at Etherton Gallery alongside works by Holly Roberts and Elizabeth Ernst. "Well Told Tales" continues through June 6.

Etherton's Hannah Glasston tells The Range:

Laszlo Layton restored this gorgeous mahogany Deardorff studio view camera (it has its own levels on the side!) that produces 11 x 14-inch negatives which he makes his contact prints from. He remembers seeing a collection of rare birds at the Arizona State Fair as a kid and actually tracked it down to the International Wildlife Museum here in Tucson to make the images we have on display.

One more photo, plus more details on the show, after the jump.

Hank Stephenson interviews Daniel Carrillo, a junior at Pueblo Magnet High School and president of a team that's built an award-winning robot, this week. Carrillo brushed off the notion that his robot might one day destroy humanity:

Are you worried about your robot becoming self-aware and taking over the world?

With ours, I'm not too afraid of that, because they don't have any artificial intelligence; it's us telling it what to do. It goes on what we tell it.

But isn't that just what you'd expect him to say, if indeed the robot was planning to enslave all of us?

Cue the Onion News Network:

In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

Attention, all true believers: Stan "The Man" Lee will be visiting Dave’s Comics, Cards & Games in Chandler, Az., this Saturday, May 2.

Postmodern Barney has collected Uncomfortable Plot Summaries. A sample:

BLADE RUNNER: Man with no apparent skill stumbles into escaped robots, fails to kill most, fucks one.

BOOGIE NIGHTS: Deformed boy goaded into life of crime.

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S: Pretty redneck girl fools socialites, flirts with gay gigolo.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: Deranged pedophile big-business industrialist tortures and mutilates young children.

CHINATOWN: Father desires closer relationship with his children.

DEBBIE DOES DALLAS: Cheerleaders develop valuable entrepreneurial skills.

DONNIE DARKO: Hallucinating teen crushed by airplane engine.

So we're the town that wants to remain Podunk, and as a consequence, we're really good at building some mighty fine inferiority complexes about our sunburned burg—one of which revolves around Tucson native Linda Ronstadt, who gave up the Down-and-Out Pueblo for the Bay Area.

And it seems we just can't forget about it—or at least my mom can't, at least this month as my family and I debated going to the Mariachi Festival to see Linda get her Mexican on. When could we ever see her at home again doing the mariachi gig? But she dissed us in The New York Timesarticle, remember?

But no, she didn't and she certainly didn't say she left Tucson because of a problem with social vampires. But judge for yourself:

In Tucson, where she grew up in a large musical family — the von Trapps with cactuses — she had hoped to give her children a life resembling her own, in which boys and girls rode ponies to the drugstore to buy a Coke. But that Tucson is long gone now. “People knew who my father was and who my grandfather was and whether they welshed on their deals,” she said. “That was very important to me. That’s very hard to establish now.”

So though she maintains a house in Tucson, she moved with the children back to her old neighborhood here in San Francisco, a place with sidewalks where she had lived during much of the ’80s. She keeps her recent Alma Award from the National Council of La Raza in the living room and her Grammys in the basement.

I doubt she can ride ponies to get Cokes in her new digs, but no matter; we're going tonight for the 2009 Espectacular Concert where Linda Ronstadt is the very special guest performer. Tickets are on sale and cost $48-$88. Go to the TCC Ticket Office. (No surcharge!) Don't forget your gritas. And enjoy the video above—the era when Linda was all about bringing Mexi back. And look—Paul Rodriguez, and that amazing time when Mexican-Americans were once on TV.

I had the great pleasure of working with photographer Timothy Archibald here at TW many years ago, before he went off to become a bigshot Photographer of the Year for the Phoenix New Times. He's now in the Bay Area, working in commercial photography.

He's also working on a haunting series with his son, Eli, that he calls "Echolilia." He talks about the series with photography blog 100 Eyes.

Q: Timothy, you describe “Echolilia” as a collaboration with your son, Elijah. Can you tell me more about that?

A: Around the time Elijah turn 5 we started making photographs together. I’d kind of initiate it with some direction, he’d do something that seemed unexpected…something I’d never have been able to think of…we’d look at the images together on the digital camera and try to refine them…try to improve them, try to take them in other directions. The idea of turning the creative control over to a child, while I operated the camera, allowed me to make images that seemed to have this sense of discovery to me. There was also alot going on at the time with Elijah…behavior things that we couldn’t make sense of.

More photos from "Echolilia" after the jump.

The Range got up to Phoenix this weekend for the launch of Calexico's Southwest mini-tour that will include a visit to the Coachella Festival in Indio, Calif., before wrapping up with a show at the Rialto here in downtown Tucson on Saturday, May 2.

The 1,200 or so fans that crowded into Heritage Square for the Calexico's first visit to our state capital in recent years got their money's worth during the nearly two-hour performance. The set featured a lot of material off the new album, Carried to Dust, with a smattering of classic Calexico numbers like "Across the Wire" and "Crystal Frontier," during which the band shifted into a few notes from the Clash's "Guns of Brixton."

As they typically do in the hometown shows, the band brought along many special guests. Salvador Duran played joined the band onstage to reprise his deep and rich vocals on "He Lays in the Reins," a tune from the collaboration between Calexico and Iron and Wine. Opening the show was Sergio Mendoza y La Orkestra, a large crew who clambered back onto a very crowded stage with Calexico for "Roka" and "Crumble." Through it all, John Convertino kept things steady on the drums while Joey Burns delighted in playing bandleader for his expansive crew. The only thing the Phoenix folks missed out on was a "Guero Canelo" jam at the end of the show.

Joey and John are taking the whole crew on the road again for a show a stop at the Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff on Saturday, April 11. If you're in the neighborhood, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night in Northern Arizona.