Sameric Benefit (Fri., June 27, 8 p.m., $25, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.ihousephilly.org) Pitch in to the continuing battle to restore the Sameric with this benefit screening, which follows the highly successful one in March. The featured film is International House (1933) starring W.C. Fields and a hodgepodge of rising (and falling) stars, from George Burns and Gracie Allen to Rudy Vallee and Bela Lugosi. Not all the dialogue in this pre-code romp is sparkling -- sample exchange: "Won't you join me in a glass of wine?" "You get in first, and if there's room enough, I'll join you" -- but the prospect of a Fields unfettered by the production code is too good to pass up. Advance tickets, which include a post-film party with food, beer and DJ, are available from UpStages, and $75 gets you a pre-film reception at 7 (wine and light supper included) with architect Robert Venturi.

Ray Harryhausen Weekend (Fri.-Sun., June 27-29, Turner Classic Movies) Even if you don't know Ray Harryhausen's name (and if you're reading this, you probably do), you're familiar with his handiwork. From the battling skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts to the temperamental gorilla of Mighty Joe Young to the slithering Medusa of Clash of the Titans, Harryhausen's stop-motion animation has enlivened many an otherwise unmemorable movie, making him one of only a handful of special-effects craftsmen whose work is distinctive enough to stand out regardless of directorial style. TCM has rounded up a weekend of Harryhausen's movies, along with the debut of The Harryhausen Chronicles (Fri., 8 and 11:15 p.m., Sat., 3 a.m.), an informative (if plodding) documentary directed by Time critic Richard Schickel, which spans Harryhausen's entire career -- and provides generous excerpts from movies that, frankly, you wouldn't want to watch all the way through. Also new (though not if you caught it at the Philadelphia Film Festival) is The Tortoise and the Hare, a vintage animated version of the Aesop fable that Harryhausen began but never completed; the 12-minute film has been finished using Harryhausen's techniques, and airs immediately after the first two showings of the documentary. Though Schickel's documentary emphasizes the sheer amount of work that went into Harryhausen's technique -- Jason's band of skeletons and seven-headed hydra being among the most labor-intensive -- the results don't need to be justified as some sort of pre-CGI curiosity. Fifty years from now, you can bet Harryhausen's work will still look fresher than the PlayStation set pieces of The Matrix Reloaded.

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns (July 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8, 7:30 p.m., $8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) Over the years, They Might Be Giants have gone from quirky to "quirky," gradually becoming so trapped by the impulse to out-weird themselves that they lost the individuality that made them so special in the first place. Excerpted in AJ Schnack's valedictory documentary, the songs from their first three albums, climaxing with 1990's Flood, sound as fresh and unpredictable as they did when I was in high school -- and not coincidentally, seem to be overrepresented compared to their music of the last 13 years. "We get older, but the fans stay the same age," observes one member of the Giants' backing band, which is one way of saying they're perpetually being outgrown. Gigantic offers a few moments of insight, particularly with regard to the relationship between head Giants John Linnell and John Flansburgh, though few of their famous fans -- Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, Michael Azerrad, Gina Arnold and so forth -- have much of interest to say (the exception being This American Life's Ira Glass). But nothing in Gigantic captures the anarchic spirit of the band's early years better than Adam Bernstein's excerpted videos for songs like "Don't Let's Start" and "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head," whose low-budget inventiveness seems almost more groundbreaking now than it did then. (A video collecting them is out of print, but still in circulation.) Hints as to the Giants' demise -- which, for me at least, was simultaneous with the switch from homemade, pieced-together backing tracks to more conventional instrumentation -- can be plucked from Gigantic, but they're hard to hear over all the backslapping. Seeing Harry Shearer recite the lyrics to the band's self-titled theme song is almost worth the price of admission, however. Linnell and Flansburgh will be present at the July 2 screening.

Popeye ($19.99 DVD) Another theory dies an ugly death: I used to maintain that a bad Robert Altman was nearly as interesting as a good one, since Altman's failures stem from the same inspiration as his successes. I stand corrected. The influence of E.C. Segar's Thimble Theater comic strip, where the squinty-eyed sailor made his debut, is barely discernable. Altman's attempt to create a live-action cartoon is as unwieldy as Robin Williams' prosthetic forearms, and Harry Nilsson's songs are turgid and lifeless. Altman's customary overlapping dialogue here seems pasted on, divorced from the image, which is only exacerbated by the decision to shoot much of the film in alienating long-shot, the better to show off the film's expensive sets. (Williams had to redub most of his indecipherable dialogue after the fact.) The sole exception is Shelley Duvall's performance as Olive Oyl, which, though as slavishly tied to Max Fleischer's cartoons as the rest of the movie, manages to take on a life of its own. (Paul Thomas Anderson rescued Duvall's winsome, off-key warbling of "He Needs Me" for the Punch-Drunk Love soundtrack, which doubtless accounts for Popeye's simultaneous DVD release.) Then again, given a choice between Popeye's forced whimsy and Hulk's tendentiousness, I'll take, uh, Superman III.

Lost in La Mancha ($29.95 DVD) Already a kind of Terry Gilliam master class, the DVD of Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's unmaking-of documentary comes with a combined four hours of bonus materials, half of it in the form of two hour-long interviews with Gilliam, conducted by Salman Rushdie and The New York Times' Elvis Mitchell. Though there's some recycling of anecdotes, hearing Gilliam discuss his thoughts on Harry Potter is a hoot: He says he was J.K. Rowling's first choice for the film version, and notes the obvious influence of Monty Python and Time Bandits on the Potter books. The handful of deleted vérité scenes aren't too enlightening, but the supplemental talking-head footage goes even further into the background of Gilliam's failed Don Quixote adaptation. Fulton and Pepe, the onetime Temple students who got their start documenting the filming of 12 Monkeys, get their say in brief interviews as well.

Edge City ($19.99 DVD) While we're discussing local boys making good, new to DVD is Eugene Martin's gritty feature, inspired by the 1994 death of local teen Eddie Polec, who was beaten to death by a gang of marauding Abington youths. Martin's movie, whose power comes from its directness and the fine performances Martin gets from his young cast (via techniques detailed in the attached making-of featurette), builds to a Polec-like slaying, painting a picture of American suburbs that can be every bit as brutal as the cities from which they were supposed to provide shelter. Martin's Diary of a City Priest also hits DVD this week.