Out on DVD is the crackpot movie of the year: Synecdoche, New York (Sony). writer Charlie Kaufman’s (Being John Malkovich) deliriously deranged directorial debut is an astonishingly ambitious tale of an unhappy, unhealthy theater director, Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who is awarded a MacArthur grant. He rents out a huge hangar and builds a whole city inside -- peopling it with actors representing different aspects of his own life. He recreates his illnesses, misery, unhappiness and loves -- such as his artist wife (Catherine Keener); a ticket taker he becomes enamored with (Samantha Morton, who literally lives in a burning building); and a self-absorbed actress (Michelle Williams). Other sensational actors (Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, Dianne Weist, Tom Noonan) show up as participants in his life or actors who represent them. It’s like Fellini’s 8 1/2 on shrooms, or a whacked-out Wild Strawberries. There will be many who will not have patience for this weirdness, but there’s a thematic brilliance to Kaufman's premise about molding art out of your life, and a sense of rueful tenderness at the end.