Fat boys, take heart. Here's the date movie of your dreams. Director Jenniphr Goodman's sparkling feature debut has the tang of fresh comic thinking. Dex, played to perfection by Donal Logue, is an overweight kindergarten teacher in New Mexico who attracts women by running the other way. Of course, it helps that Dex is ardent, articulate and charmingly funny. Dex's study of Eastern philosophy has taught him that we pursue that which retreats from us. Dex stays cool, like his three favorite Steves — actor Steve McQueen and the TV characters Steve McGarrett ("Hawaii Five-O") and Steve Austin ("The Six Million Dollar Man") — and the babes flock to him.

All except Syd (Greer Goodman, the director's sister and a beguiling screen presence), an opera-set designer whom Dex sees at their tenth college reunion. Syd is miffed that Dex doesn't remember the one night they slept together. Intrigued, Dex puts his philosophy to work. He tells his friend Dave (Kimo Wills) that a man is either a Steve, a master of love, or a Stu, a slave to passion. Dex's Tao of Steve has three rules: Be cool, be excellent in her presence, and be gone.

Naturally, love hoists Dex on his own Tao. Goodman wrote the scrappy, witty script with her sister and their friend Duncan North, a Santa Fe teacher who's the prototype for Dex. It's pure pleasure to encounter a sex comedy with enough verbal smarts to coax laughs out of Lao-tzu, Heidegger, Kierkegaard and Mozart's Don Giovanni. And Logue, who won a deserved acting prize at Sundance 2000, is a rowdy, romantic wonder. Previously lost in character parts (Reindeer Games, The Patriot), Logue hits every note of humor and heart in his breakthrough role. Don't miss him. He's that good.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."