Twentieth Century Fox has changed the release date on the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker again, but I think this move might be for the best. Maybe. We'll see. What do I know?

The flick, in which Wilson plays a former rock drummer who gets a new chance at stardom when he joins his teenage nephew's band, was originally slated for Friday, Aug. 1. Then they decided a Wednesday was better, so it became July 30. But now Fox has announced that it's been pushed back three weeks to Wednesday, Aug. 20.

Why the shuffle? Fox didn't say, but I would guess it's to avoid the raucous comedies Step Brothers (due on July 25), Pineapple Express (Aug. 8), and Tropic Thunder (Aug. 13). A July 30 release would have put it in the middle of a comedy war zone, and The Rocker -- which got so-so reviews (including my own) when it played at CineVegas and doesn't have nearly as much star power as those three -- would have gotten trampled. It would have been a PG-13 David against three R-rated Goliaths.

By Aug. 20, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express will have already done most of their box office damage, leaving Tropic Thunder as the only big-name comedy competing with The Rocker. I think it's smart to stick with a Wednesday, too, as three more comedies -- The House Bunny, Hamlet 2, and The Longshots -- open on Friday, Aug. 22.

What do you think? Is there too much comedy competition between now and Labor Day? Or are the films different enough that they won't be stealing each other's audiences?

Last week, I did some reporting from the CineVegas Film Festival, where I served as a juror. The winners were announced this weekend, and they have me wishing I had been able to see more stuff. She Unfolds By Day, Rolf Belgum's film about "a frustrated middle-aged son trying to manage his misanthropic 80-year-old mother," took home the Grand Jury Prize. A Special Jury Award went to Dark Streets, which our own Eric D. Snider gave a decent review to here. Bill Pullman took home a Special Jury Award for his performance in Your Name Here, reviewed by Eric here. The documentary jury, which included Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock, selected Beautiful Losers, about "the lives of a loose-knit group of artists in the '80s who created their own art movement outside the mainstream." Hi, My Name is Ryan, focusing on "the clown prince of the downtown Phoenix art scene," picked up a Special Documentary Jury Prize.

There are many things to admire about Dark Streets, a film noir set against a 1930s backdrop of jazz, blues, and booze. Unfortunately, the story isn't one of them. It's your basic Chinatown-inspired tale of double crosses and femmes fatales, with dialogue that has the form of the classics but not the content. Take this exchange, for example, between a nightclub owner and the singer who has been displaced in his affections by a new girl:

HIM: You're a great belter, but we've got a real chanteuse now.
HER: She can chanteuse my ass!

Yeah. Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame you ain't.

But plot and dialogue aside (and sometimes those elements really are secondary), Dark Streets effectively creates its world in other ways. Sharone Meir's sumptuous cinematography and smooth, fluid camera movements bring the nightclub performance scenes to life, while the rest of the film plays with light, shadows, and colors. Director Rachel Samuels, in her third feature, shows a singularity of vision that will serve her well later, when she gets a better script to work with. (This one is by Wallace King, based on a play by Glenn Stewart.)

Most of the individual components of Visioneers are not new, nor are the film's ideas particularly deep. Yet somehow the combination, written and directed by brothers Jared and Brandon Drake -- in their first film, amazingly -- feels fresh and invigorating. It's a high-concept comedy, but it's down-to-earth and accessible, even a little touching. It's a terrific start for a pair of new filmmakers.

The setting is a dystopian version of modern-day America, where the Jeffers Corporation is the most powerful entity in the world. Even the U.S. president kowtows to the monolithic company, whose employees are called "tunts" and "goobs" and work at ill-defined tasks at various bureaucratic levels. As with most firms in dystopian movies, it's never established what, exactly, the Jeffers Corp. does, but its influence is felt everywhere. Common people greet each other with the "Jeffers salute," which looks suspiciously like flipping the bird.

Our hero is a Level 3 tunt named George Washington Winsterhammerman (Zach Galifianakis). He's the supervisor of a little pod of employees who work in a depressing office where an automated voice announces, every 60 seconds, how many minutes remain before the weekend. Everyone is generally disheartened and depressed, but this has been enhanced in recent weeks as citizens have been spontaneously combusting due to stress.

Finished with my jury responsibilities, I managed to check out some features. A favorite of mine was Chelsea on the Rocks, by Abel Ferrara (director of Bad Lieutenant and a terrific little mob flick called The Funeral). It's a documentary about the infamous Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, but it's far from traditional. There are lots of odd transitions and edits, the interviews are beyond casual (Ferrara says something along the lines of "No shit!" every ten seconds while listening to the stories of those living in the building), and there are some utterly ridiculous and unnecessary re-enactments of notorious events in the hotel's past (actors play Sid and Nancy, Janis Joplin, and assorted hangers-on). Truth be told, the whole thing was kind of a mess. But watching it felt a lot like spending a night in the hotel, and it's a ride I'm glad I took. I didn't learn a thing, but it brought me inside a place full of fascinating characters, a place I walked past countless times in Manhattan without a second thought.

If a comedy troupe like Broken Lizard or The Whitest Kids U Know had made Lars and the Real Girl, it might have turned out like Happy Birthday Harris Malden, a sweet, funny, and very odd comedy about growing up and accepting reality. It's the work of a Philadelphia filmmaking quintet called Sweaty Robot, and the opening credits are no more specific than that: "Written and directed by Sweaty Robot." I like that. The film is about friendship, and it was made by a group of friends.

Granted, making a movie with a bunch of your friends isn't always a good idea -- Adam Sandler, I'm looking at you -- but Harris Malden benefits from Sweaty Robot's familiarity and camaraderie. While it has some jokes that probably only the guys themselves think are funny, the film is so good-natured and charming, almost innocent, that even when I wasn't laughing I was content. It's a movie that wants to be your pal, and hey, doggone it, what's not to like?

There's no way around it: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson owes at least some of his fame to the way his dominating figure fits the blockbuster action stereotype with near-mechanical sleekness. However, he also offers an alternative to that reductive perspective. Looking sharp in a business suit and speaking with the relaxed professional discipline of a CEO, Johnson showed up at a screening of Get Smart on Sunday at the CineVegas Film Festival displaying sheer confidence. The screening took place at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, where Johnson had recently acted in Race to Witch Mountain ("We just added to the chaos," he said), but on this visit, Johnson got a chance to remind people that he's not just a one-note performer, but someone who plays an active role in the international film community (not to mention the health community, since The Rock Foundation pushes obesity prevention).

Outside of his supremely meta performance in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, Johnson has made his interests in adventurous cinema increasingly clear, and boldly champions independent artists. You can get a small glimpse of this aspect of his personality in Operation Filmmaker, documentarian Nina Davenport's account of an Iraqi filmmaker named Muthana Mohmed whose aspirations tragically fall short of the expectations surrounding him. Landing the opportunity to work for Liev Schreiber on the set of Everything is Illuminated, the 25-year-old Mohmed grows increasingly frustrated with the boring tasks given to him, and continually blows opportunities as a result of his unbalanced work ethic.

Your enjoyment of Your Name Here might depend on your tolerance for mind-bending narratives and acid-trip weirdness. Mine is low, I'll tell you that up front. But "Your Name Here" deserves credit for being different, and Bill Pullman's central performance is probably the most bizarre and demanding of his career.

Written and directed by first-timer Matthew Wilder, our story is set in Los Angeles in July 1974, when a trippy sci-fi writer named William J. Frick (Pullman) -- clearly modeled after Philip K. Dick -- is informed that he owes more than $100,000 in back taxes. If he could finish his latest novel, he could probably pay the bill. Trouble is, he's stuck on putting into words the spiritual epiphany he had on March 2, which he wants to incorporate into the story.

That's about the last part of the film that makes any kind of normal sense. Next thing you know, Frick is being approached by Nikki (Taryn Manning), a hot actress -- "the poor man's Ali McGraw," someone calls her -- who wants him to help her with the disaster epic she's currently shooting. Then Frick is being hurried onstage somewhere to accept an award. Then Frick is in the balcony, watching a version of himself deliver a spiel to an audience. Then Frick is being threatened by Kroger (M. Emmet Walsh), a government operative who demands to read Frick's account of the March 2 thing. Frick insists if they'd just let him go, he could go home and WRITE it, but that's not an option.

My fellow jurors and I selected our short film winners yesterday, but I can not share any results until the award ceremony next weekend. You likely wouldn't know any of the titles anyway, but I can pretty much guarantee you will see the filmmakers' names again in the coming years -- some big talents in the mix. There's a party every night here, and I've been having a blast. One of my favorite past-times has been playing a game I call "Hooker/Not a Hooker." Pretty self-explanatory, basically you try to decide which gals are on the payroll, and which aren't. Here's a hint: If she's gorgeous, 22- years-old and hanging off the arm of a 400-pound dude with a combover ... she's available.

I checked out Get Smart yesterday, at an event for The Rock, excuse me, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, excuse me, Dwayne Johnson's charity. Johnson introduced the film and told the audience that "Steve Carell has very soft lips," which made a lot more sense once we watched the flick. For the most part, I agree with Eric's review. It was no masterpiece, but it was just funny and entertaining enough to have been worth the time. Steve Carell can elevate just about anything, and Alan Arkin was hilarious. Now that I've got more free time, I hope to pry myself away from the video poker (currently $45 in the red) and the pool (my skin is also "in the red") and check out some of the more indie-leaning films screening here. Abel Ferrara's Go-Go Tales screens tonight, and I don't think I can pass up that title. Right now there's yet another two-hour "happy hour" starting, so ah...talk to you later!

Somehow, I have remembered to take photos on my vice-filled journey through the CineVegas Film Festival, and while a lot of them didn't come out as I planned, you can see a couple (along with a bunch from Getty Images) in the gallery below. You'll find shots of the parties, of the fest in motion, of fire-breathers in bikinis, of naked women covered in paint (ahem, see above), of singing sensation Bijou Phillips, and even a candid shot of the world beer pong champion (I think you'll be able to figure out which one that is). Wish you were here!