Dirty Harry.

"When critics inevitably say Dirty Harry looks better than ever on Blu-ray, they won't be kidding (I wasn't)," blogs Peter Debruge for Variety. "Warner's new hi-def edition is stunning in its clarity, to the degree that the word 'gritty' (so much a staple of the Dirty Harry conversation in the past) no longer applies. These new hi-def transfers are so sharp, virtually no sign of film grain remains, a decision that surely reflects what the market currently demands, but also suggests a certain amount of very sophisticated tampering on the part of Warner Home Video."

Updated through 6/6.

"The movies, of course, are paramount," writes Glenn Kenny. "Were I to be ungenerous, I'd say that only the first picture, Don Siegel's 1971 Dirty Harry, and the fourth, the 1983 Eastwood-directed Sudden Impact, were deserving of Blu-Ray treatment, but in this game, as the saying goes, deserve's got nothing to do with it."

"All the movies you make, all these roles you take, and there are certain ones that people really hold on to. Harry is the one I hear about the most from the people on the street." Geoff Boucher talks with Eastwood for the Los Angeles Times.

And at DVD Talk: Kurt Dahlke on Dirty Harry, "the Bible of cop movies," and Paul Mavis on The Enforcer: "Desultory Harry."

Online listening tip. David Edelstein talks Dirty with Movie Geeks United.

A related note from Jeffrey Wells: "Tomorrow night Clint Eastwood will attend a Q&A session at Santa Monica's Aero Theatre following a showing of Michael Henry Wilson's Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film, a year-old 81-minute doc about Eastwood's career."

Update, 6/6: In the Guardian, Jeff Dawson talks with Eastwood, who responds to Spike Lee's criticisms of Flags of Our Fathers, "yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, 'but they didn't raise the flag.'" As for Lee, "A guy like him should shut his face." On to Dirty Harry: "'Of course people built a lot of connotations into the film that weren't necessarily there.' Eastwood grins. 'Being a contrary sort of person, I figured there had been enough politically correct crap going around. The police were not held in great favour particularly, the Miranda decisions had come down [forcing police to read arrested suspects their rights], people were thinking about the plight of the accused. I thought, "Let's do a picture about the plight of the victim."'"

Posted by dwhudson at June 4, 2008 2:04 PM