There's a very interesting discussion going on over on Hollywood Elsewhere today about whether studios re-releasing older movies on Blu-ray are going too far in tweaking the originals to make them look "better." At the center of the discussion is the Dirty Harry Blu-ray DVD. Glenn Erickson, writing for film.com, points out that the Patton Blu-ray DVD was "enhanced to minimize the natural grain," but that in that case, the altering makes it look more like the theatrical 70mm presentation, so he doesn't take issue with that one. The Dirty Harry Blu-ray, however, Erickson considers "more complicated." He notes:

"The Blu-ray disc shows heavy tweaking to minimize grain, sharpen contrast and brighten colors. Sunny exteriors haven't changed much but heavy processing has given most night shots an almost unnatural look -- detail and bright color in what were once dimly lit areas, with everything else falling into inky blackness. "

Jeff Wells doesn't have a problem with this -- if it makes Dirty Harry look better, who cares? But in the discussion thread on the post, folks are getting down into the nitty-gritty of the issue: studios doing digital remastering for Blu-ray transfers, sometimes without consulting the cinematographer as to why scenes where shot as they were. HE commenter TheVicuna links to an excellent interview at cameraguild.com, the website for the International Cinematographer's Guild, with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond; in part of the interview, he talks about the DVD transfer of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, for which he was not called in to supervise the transfer; the resulting transfer, Zsigmond says in the interview, was "terrible."

Empire has been given an exclusive new photo from the highly anticipated remake of The Wolf Man. Click the photo to the right to see the whole thing, and then feel free to begin eagerly anticipating April even more than you already are. (Woohoo, April!) The pic respresents the first official non-lupine look at Benicio del Toro as Lawrence Talbot. And, costume nerd that I am, I'm in love with his Gothic cloak. This movie promises to make me drunk on Victorian drapery.

It also provides the first look at Emily Blunt and Anthony Hopkins, both of whom are nearly unrecognizable. Blunt is so stripped of make-up that she looks straight out of a tintype. She plays Gwen Conliffe, the fiancee of Talbot's recently deceased brother, whom the werewolf-to-be begins developing an affection for her. Hopefully, it's for her personality, and not as a late night snack. Wait, that didn't sound right.

Hopkins, of course, plays the senior Talbot, who is estranged from Lawrence long before he turns lycanthropic. If Empire and IMDB didn't tell me otherwise, I would argue that it was Richard Briers in the photo and not Sir Anthony. Really, everyone but del Toro is unrecognizable in this photo, so kudos to the make-up and hair department.

The Wolf Man is set to be released April 3rd, 2009. I still wish they would release this in the fall, but perhaps a copious amount of bloodshed is just what springtime needs.

Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant cast just became a whole lot crazier. Variety is reporting that Val Kilmer and Xzibit are joining Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes in the much-maligned remake / re-imagining / re-something of Abel Ferrara's cult classic.

Kilmer will be playing Cage's police partner, presumably the straight arrow to complement Cage's cop-on-the-edge. This comes right on the heels of Kilmer being cast in Silver Cord, so I think it's safe to say someone's trying to make a comeback. (Am I the only one who laments the passing of years, and what it has done to one of my biggest crushes? Has it really been so long since The Saint?)

Xzibit, fresh off The X-Files: I Want to Believe, will be playing their nemesis, Big Fade.
Remember, folks, it's a re-imagining, which is why you don't remember any of these characters from the original.

If there aren't shockingly hilarious tales of egos and fistfights from the Lieutenant set, I'll be among the bitterly disappointed. While I suspect Kilmer has chilled with the passing of years, I'm thinking that combining him with Herzog is bound to be tempestuous. Is it too much to ask that Herzog just goes even further, and hires Sean Young and Gary Busey? Perhaps even Mike Myers? Throw the script out the window, and just film the production. I think it would be far more fun than any re-imagining.

According to TheGoon.com, Eric Powell's endlessly inventive series has just been optioned by David Fincher, who plans to turn it into a CGI movie. (Is this the first movie to be announced via its character's official domain instead of the trades? I'm sure it isn't, but I find it awesome and worth mentioning nonetheless.)

The Goon is a everything-but-the-kitchen-sink (and probably that too) comic that draws comparisons to (and appearances by) Hellboy. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read it, though I don't seem to be alone in that. The series follows the deformed brawler of the title, who claims to be the enforcer for a mobster named Labrazio. The Goon and his sidekick, Franky, are frequently trading punches with all manner of otherworldly creatures, from zombie armies to aliens -- and from what I'm looking at on Dark Horse, it never gets boring. And it's hilarious. Check out the preview of issue #8, and tell me I'm wrong. (There's lots of Goon previews up on Dark Horse's page, spend the holiday weekend checking them out! I'm going to. Fireworks are overrated.)

While CGI would be the best way to capture the top-notch art, I can't help but wish this was in live action. I would love nothing more than to see a real live Goon beat down some lame vampires, or get omens interpreted by a psychic seal. But already, this is gearing up to be one of the best comic adaptations this side of The Dark Knight -- a top notch director in Fincher, and hilarious source material.

[via CHUD]

Every day, another graphic novel is optioned by a studio great or small, and very rarely do they stir much interest in me. They always seem to be a variation on the assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold or superhero deconstruction, which can't even motivate me to pick up the graphic novel, let alone buy a movie ticket. So, it's a rare treat when the trades run the latest comic to be snatched up and I go "Okay -- this one I get." Hiding in Time is one of these.

According to Variety, Warner Bros has bought the rights to Christopher Long and Ryan Winn's series. Time is set in a future where the Witness Protection Program is no longer interested in changing your name and moving you to Tampa -- instead, they send you back in time to hide from those you snitched on. If hiding out in the Black Death to escape your mob buddies sounds too good to be true, it is, as a group of armed thugs begin hunting them down across the ages. It's up to one humble scientist in the Time Portal Division to stop them. (The trades mention that the scientist teams up with a master thief to track down his old crew -- I don't know if that's part of the movie pitch, or if that actually happens in the series.) No director has been named, but Beau Thorne is tackling the screenplay.

Hey, remember the weeks and months approaching the recent writers' strike, when all of Hollywood panicked and began rushing projects into production and feverishly coming up with contingency plans? Have you wondered why the looming Screen Actors Guild strike and the ongoing SAG/AFTRA catfight have not really provoked a similar hysteria? The New York Times' answer: because producers are calling SAG's bluff.

Or, in the Times' more tactful language: "the film industry's needs have overwhelmed any conviction that actors will actually walk out." That's its explanation for why big, expensive productions like Terminator Salvation, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Angels & Demons are steadfastly forging ahead despite the risk that a strike will send most of their casts off the set, leaving them with half a movie.

Could just be hubris, or willful stupidity. I haven't followed the recent guild developments closely enough to be able to speak with any authority on whether there will be a walkout any time soon. But look: the idea behind election markets (for example) is roughly that the best way to forecast the future is to see where large numbers of people are willing to put their money. That this time Hollywood bigwigs -- in particular, many of the people who will have a say in the outcome of any contract negotiations -- don't seem to be blinking in the face of a possible strike suggests to me that we aren't heading toward one, or at least not a protracted one. If we are, then it looks like a lot of people are going to be out a lot of money.

Mark Millar is becoming a real Hollywood insider these days, a Frank Miller in training. He dropped quite an intriguing bombshell to Scotland's Daily Record -- claiming that there's a Superman movie revamp on the way. While some of his claims could be dismissed as wishful thinking by a man who merely wants to fulfill his Kryptonian dreams, he's certainly talking it out with someone. Says Millar, "I've been planning this my entire life. I've got my director and producer set up, and it'll be 2011. This is how far ahead you have to think. The Superman brand is toxic after that last movie lost 200 million, but in 2011 we're hoping to restart it. Sadly I can't say who the director is, but we may make it official by Christmas. But fingers crossed it could work out, that would be my lifetime's dream."

Now, this flies directly in the face of Bryan Singer confirming he was attached to the sequel. But there's been a peculiar lack of progress with it. He's obviously busy with Valkyrie, but when you look at how quickly the Iron Man and Spider-Man franchises are moving, well, someone's not moving faster than a speeding bullet anymore. Could Warner Bros really be open to rebooting the franchise? The parallels between Ang Lee's Hulk and Bryan Singer's Superman Returns are striking, and I can honestly see the studio choosing a similarly clean slate. But they would be ditching a pretty expensive investment in Returns, and creating quite a controversy in the process.
Far more people loved Superman Returns than Hulk, and Singer commands a lot of geek cred.

Even when I started following the industry obsessively, I always wondered how it came to be that by October or November of each year, there would always be a fairly clear picture of who the Oscar "frontrunners" were, which films were falling out of the race, and sometimes even which movies are "locks" in certain categories I figured the buzz had to start somewhere -- and that to some extent, the tail had to be wagging the dog.

Maybe it starts with glowing advance Hollywood Reporter reviews. Consider Ray Bennett on Meryl Streep in the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, due July 18th: "Streep is sensationally good in rendering the whole yarn credible and in making dramatically moving songs such as 'Slipping Through My Fingers,' sung to her departing daughter, and 'The Winner Takes It All' to a lost love. It's no stretch to think of her performance in Oscar terms, ranking with previous musical winners such as Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand and Catherine Zeta-Jones."

So: is this that fabled "Oscar buzz" we keep hearing about, or just one dude sounding off about a movie he liked? Is this the first step toward Streep being a "Best Actress lock" come December? I wouldn't have put Mamma Mia! (or, for that matter, The Dark Knight) on my Oscar shortlist a few months ago -- looks too silly! The release date's all wrong! But I guess now that I've read The Hollywood Reporter, I'm supposed to think it's a contender. Right?

Or did you know that all along?