Odds: "Red Tails," over-restoration, the greatest Western of all time.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 | 6:35 PM

George Lucas "plans for [new movie 'Red Tails'] to be based on the historic record that brought the Tuskegee Airmen fame, drawn from their own accounts." Let's see that Spike Lee try to pick a fight with me, he thinks. [AP]

David Bordwell on film restoration: "[I]t's possible to 'over-restore' a film. That is, by adding footage culled from many versions, the restorer may be creating an expanded version that nobody actually saw." [DavidBordwell.com]

Joe Leydon points out that the Western Writers of America have named "Shane" the greatest Western ever made. [Moving Picture Blog]

Thomas Doherty tackles serial killers in cinema, particularly "Dirty Harry" and "Zodiac," which trace "the emergence of a predator whose criminal profile, once a blurry police sketch, has sharpened into a wanted poster more photogenic than the western outlaw, urban gangster, or corporate mobster." [Moving Image Source]

And Erik Sofge defends Ang Lee's "Hulk":

In your standard comic-book adaptation, there's a moment when the superhero realizes his gift, a moment typically accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of power and often elation: Peter Parker, having discovered his ability to spin his webs, swings euphorically through the streets of New York. Later, of course, the hero learns that "with great power comes great responsibility"--in Parker's case, this means stopping a power-mad, creatively dressed inventor called the Green Goblin from terrorizing the city with a hoverboard. Lee's Hulk, by contrast, isn't really all that important to the future of the world, and isn't even much of a hero. He's a physical and psychological casualty who spends the entire movie trying to save himself, not the world. Considered at once a threat to national security and a potentially valuable research commodity, Banner is hunted by his own government and eventually imprisoned without a trial. While the authorities decide on whether to simply execute him, he escapes, forced to hide out in the Amazon. [Slate]

Elsewhere, Kim Newman attempts to defend "The Happening." [Guardian Film Blog]

[Photo: "Shane," Paramount Pictures, 1953]

+ Tuskegee Airmen to be subject of George Lucas film (AP)
+ American (Movie) Madness (DavidBordwell.com)
+ Shane: No. 1 with a bullet (Moving Picture Blog)
+ Portraits of a Serial Killer (Moving Image Source)
+ In Defense of Hulk (Slate)
+ Second opinion: The Happening (Guardian Film Blog)