I've lost count of how many times these movies have been released on DVD, but (wow) I don't own any of 'em yet, so here's a perfect excuse. DVDActive has the (very thorough) information on Universal's upcoming "Legacy Series" editions of (ready?) Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho! Each package is a two-disc affair, complete with all sorts of goodies both old and new. (Yes, I love film historian audio commentaries. Sue me.)

Street date for all three releases is October 7, and if you'd like a complete listing of what each disc offers you can click one of these: Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho. Also from Universal Home Video on October 7 ... it isn't Hitchcock, but it sure is awesome: Orson Welles' 1958 mega-classic Touch of Evil, which is a whole lot more than one impressive tracking shot, believe me. Like the Hitch titles, Touch will come complete with all sorts of new bells and whistles. Plus all four of the DVD covers are all sorts of retro-cool. Can't wait to dig through these discs.

What happens when men in blue, sworn to protect and to serve, fly out of control? If we're lucky, we get a good movie out of it. If we're really lucky, we get a larger than life character to cheer and to fear. Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Keanu Reaves, of all people, will follow in the steel-toed shoes of some of cinema's finest as a cop who goes on an avenging rampage in David Ayer's Street Kings, which opens tomorrow. That made me reflect on my favorite out of control cinematic cops, men in blue who break free from the laws of god and man. Let us know who we missed in the comments section. But be nice, or we'll track you down and crack you over the head with a night stick.

1. Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry

Clint is so cool as Harry Callahan that he can just glare at bad guys and they give themselves up. Dirty Harry never met a criminal he couldn't beat up, a sergeant he couldn't hate, or a partner he couldn't get killed. He can't help it: he married justice a long time ago and the blind old bat won't leave him alone until he takes out the garbage. Don't even think about getting in his way: he solved the Zodiac killings in 102 minutes! Dirty Harry paved the way for several sequels and countless gruff, lone wolf outlaw police detectives.

Just recently, I was able to wrap up work early and head down to my local rep theater to check out A Touch of Evil on the big screen, crackling from grainy, old film. It was my first taste of Orson Welles in a theater, one that was filled with the wonder of that jaw-dropping opening shot (which you can check out after the jump), as well as the continual amusement that Charlton Heston was supposed to be Mexican.

Throughout the entire movie, my brain was trying to rationalize a different story that would fit in the framework of the story and not seem so ludicrous. Maybe he was born to white parents in Mexico? Maybe he moved there at a young age? Nah. To think it is all because Welles changed the script. Still, while the attempts to change his race might have failed, this Heston film is so very worth the time and effort.

Rest in peace, Charlton -- I hope you're having a dandy, gun-laden afterlife.

*Last Rewind Answer: Believe it or not, it was Mick Jagger who was once considered for the role of Fletch.

Here stands a rebuke to the idea that in the digitized world everything is available. Well, if you strain a bit you can get this notoriously out of print movie. The Brazilian version of the semi-legal Chimes at Midnight aka Falstaff aka Campanadas a Medianoche can be bought for a cool $40, and all you do is turn off the Portuguese subtitles. However, thanks to the poor sound of this masterpiece, English subtitles might be necessary. The entire film was post-synced: "not a word in direct sound," said the co-star Keith Baxter, who played Prince Hal. Led by the obtuse Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, critics of 1967 put their finger on this very obvious button. Few of them considered how few viewers come out of a movie saying, "Boy, the picture, the script and the acting sucked, but wasn't the sound great?"

Last Sunday, the local film archive showed Chimes at Midnight; me and 100 other people turned our back on a sunny afternoon, and treated ourselves to a rare 16mm screening of one of the most imaginative, stirring and beautifully composed Shakespeare films ever made. I mentioned it to Cinematical's Jeffrey Anderson and he pronounced Chimes at Midnight a better film than Citizen Kane. I don't have that kind of enthusiasm (Citizen Kane changes lives, and Chimes is a rougher sell). And still, everyone will tell you about Citizen Kane, whereas Chimes is not just a gem but a half-buried one.

When shivering to the sounds of Iron Maiden, one never dreamed that some day Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer would one day be swanking it with the stars at the Cannes Film Festival. The BBC announced Dickinson's coup, noting that he's flying to Cannes himself (he's a pilot) as well as playing on an American tour this year. Dickinson co-wrote the upcoming film Chemical Madness with director Julian Doyle, who directed the Maiden's 1988 video "Can I Play With Madness?" Principal photography wrapped in September 2007.

It's all not to be confused with Dickinson's 1998 album The Chemical Wedding which concerns such arcana as alchemy, Rosicrucian thought and William Blake's prophecies. Monstersagogo.com has the poster with a scary flaming pentagram on it, as well as a link to a Reuters interview that I couldn't open. We do know that Simon Callow -- a first-rate actor and author of an authoratative study on Orson Welles -- is going to be playing the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley (seen above in a pointy hat), the world's most intimidating asthmatic bisexual. Crowley has always put the scare into British populace in general and British musicians in particular. Jimmy Page, for one, took pride in owning Bolskine House, the address of the Beast.

And now for a classic movie tie-in: "The most evil man who ever lived" was personally known to Preston Sturges, whose mother was temporarily a disciple. Crowley referred to Sturges "the brat" in the book The Great Beast. In his autobiography Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges, the great comedy film director returned the insult, commented that Crowley's modified mohawk haircut was "nauseating," his fingers were fat, and he had the habit of cutting himself rather like a depressed female high school student. But Sturges didn't underestimate Crowley. "Reading about some of his subsequent exploits," Sturges concluded, "I realize my mother and I were lucky to escape with our lives. If I had been a little older, he might not have escaped with his."

You might remember the post I threw up in October, letting you know that the one Oscar won by the epic film Citizen Kane was about to go on the auction block. The event had been a long time coming. As the story goes, Orson Welles had given the statue to a cinematographer as payment. He held it in secrecy, and all thought it was lost until it popped up at a Sotheby's auction in 1994. Welles' daughter threw a fit, sued the man and the auction house, and got the Oscar back. She then tried to sell it herself, and was sued by the Academy through their attempts to keep the statues off the market. She finally won the case, sold the auction to a foundation, and they then made a new deal with Sotheby's.

Rumor had it that the statue would sell for something like $800,000 to $1.2 million. Yeah, not quite. The BBC has reported that the famed statue didn't even sell. I wonder if the Dax Foundation is getting a little nervous over their investment. I imagine they purchased the statue thinking they could then get even more for it at auction, but visions of dollar signs and raining cash have most likely been replaced by visions of empty money bags. Unfortunately, all the Citizen Kane money for the day went to Welles' own personal working script for the film, which sold for $97,000.

So the auction didn't turn out as expected. Any thoughts as to why? Has movie memorabilia finally hit its monetary ceiling?

What is there left to say about Citizen Kane? It was not only Orson Welles' masterpiece, but it is also considered to be one of the best movies of all time. Charles Foster Kane, wonderfully played by Welles himself, was inspired by William Randolph Hearst -- the head of my favorite celebrity family. While many would put no film above it, Citizen Kane only scored itself one Oscar, for screenwriting, which Welles shared with Herman J. Mankiewicz. It lost all of its other Oscar nods, which just goes to show you that the gulf between moviegoers and the Academy is nothing new. Now Reuters is reporting that the one-of-a-kind statuette is about to be auctioned by Sotheby's.

It has been a long battle to get the Oscar on the auction block. The award was thought to be lost until it popped up at an earlier Sotheby's auction in 1994. A cinematographer who had once worked with Welles received it as payment, and had held it in secrecy until the auction. Welles' daughter Beatrice, however, sued the man and the auction house, and eventually got the Oscar back. But then she tried to sell it herself, and the Academy sued her in their efforts to keep the statuettes off the market. However, it wasn't until 1950 that the first right of refusal deal was made, so Citizen Kane's big award was in the clear.

She sold it to the Dax Foundation in 2003, and now they're finally bringing it back to Sotheby's without the legal issues. Estimates say that the award will probably be sold somewhere in the ballpark of $800,000 to $1.2 million. Considering the fact that Gone with the Wind sold for over $1.5 million in 1999, it might just go for even more. If you're rich, or you have lots of money-laden friends and family, you've got until December 11 to pull together the funds.

Roman Polanski's recent supporting role in Brett Ratner's Rush Hour 3 raised more questions than the film itself ever could. What could that dynamic have been like? How could one of the world's greatest directors have taken orders from one of the world's worst? We know from previous films (The Fearless Vampire Killers, Zemsta, etc.) that Polanski has a yen for acting, even if his skills in this arena run toward broad, rather than subtle. Likewise Kevin Smith working for Len Wiseman in Live Free or Die Hard. Would Smith have made suggestions on how to make the movie nerdier? It got me thinking about the many directors who have performed for their colleagues, and the very interesting dynamics they created. The following are the seven best and/or most interesting combos. I've only included people who are primarily known as directors, as opposed to actor-directors, like Jackie Chan, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, etc.. I've also left out glorified cameos (Steven Spielberg in The Blues Brothers) and jokey appearances (Samuel Fuller in Pierrot le Fou). Finally, I've excluded Quentin Tarantino, whose lack of thespian skills is unquestioned. (Though I would have loved to have been on the set of Spike Lee's Girl 6 the day those two crossed paths...)

1. Orson Welles in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949)
This is the most obvious one; the Big Guy's presence as Harry Lime has led generations of moviegoers to believe that Welles actually directed this movie. Certainly his fingerprints are on it. He spoke often about building up to the first appearance of a character by having other characters talk about him long before we actually see him. Welles managed to do this with his Rochester in Jane Eyre (1944), and even more memorably here. We know all about Harry Lime before those lights unexpectedly splash on his face and he lets slip an amused smile. Reportedly, the famous "cuckoo clock" speech was his own. However, Reed undoubtedly directed; the overall suspense and structure of the film has more in common with Reed's The Fallen Idol than with anything Welles made.

2. John Huston in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974)
The maverick director had a terrific screen presence with his large, ambling frame, cavernous face and sonorous voice, and acted in many films, mostly his own, and notably in cult films like Winter Kills (1979) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Happily, the news recently broke that rights issues surrounding Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind have been resolved, and so the world may get to see Huston's lead performance in that film as well. In Chinatown, Huston gives a flat-out great performance as the insidious industrialist who gets away with more than murder and justifies it with a hearty laugh. Jack Nicholson may have got his nose cut, but Huston emerges untouched.

Over at The Guardian, blogger Ronald Bergan has written an incredibly snobby article called "Dumb Hollywood is Forever In Debt to Europe." The purpose of the piece seems to be to anger readers -- I assure you it's no accident that he published an article trashing American film on Independence Day. Bergan starts by taking aim at The Guardian's recent list of 1,000 Films to See Before You Die. He says, presumably while wearing a beret and enjoying a snifter of brandy: "A list that includes Dumb and Dumber and not Boudu Saved from Drowning renders itself worthless." He adds, presumably while cleaning his monocle with his ascot: "looking at the American Film Institute's recent list of Top 100 American Films made me think how much richer in masterpieces would be a similar list of non-American films." Please go and read the tremendously one-sided, reductive, dismissive article, which closes: "I suggest that American cinema -- with exceptions that prove the rule -- still lags behind the times. For anyone with an interest in films that explore the cinematic language and who sees film as a radical, contemporary art form on a par with the other arts, American cinema holds little interest."

Does Bergan think any American filmmakers are worthwhile? Yes -- three of them. "The only American-born film directors that truly belong in the Film Pantheon are John Ford, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles." Oh, and according to Bergan, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Douglas Sirk, Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock don't count, because they're "emigres" who "brought what they had learnt in Europe with them to America." Does he respect any living American directors? Not a one: "By the highest standards of cinema, American films fall short. There are no living American directors who can compete in innovation and depth with the likes of Theo Angelopoulos, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Marie Straub, Bela Tarr, Pedro Costa, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, Manoel de Oliveira, Alexander Sokurov, Jia Zhang Ke or Tsai Ming-liang."

Now, I majored in film in college, and I love foreign cinema, but I'm fairly certain he made a couple of those names up. David Lynch? The Coen Brothers? Stanley Kubrick? Spike Lee? Steven Spielberg? None of these guys impress him? Bergan's failure to even mention Martin Scorsese is particularly inexcusable. By the way, there's the author's photograph in the upper right corner. Do you really think that dude's even seen Dumb and Dumber? Going off of that mug shot, I'd imagine Bergan also doesn't enjoy ice cream, sunsets, and the laughter of children.

I never really understood the premise behind Transformers, but I didn't care. They were above and beyond the greatest toys a kid could dream of playing with. Who needed either action figures or Matchbox cars anymore? The Transformers were both. And as a loyal consumer child of the '80s, I followed my favorite toy line as it spun-off an animated television series, a comic book series and a full-length feature film. As I said, I didn't really get the story. All that mattered was that there were good guys (Autobots) and there were bad guys (Decepticons), same as any action cartoon. Anyway, the more I try to comprehend the premise of Transformers, the more questions I have about its logic, so I kinda prefer to be in the dark.

It's been nearly twenty years since I sold all my toys at a tag sale, and I haven't watched the television show or read a Transformers comic in all that time. So, when I decided to take a nostalgic look at Transformers: The Movie I was more in the dark than ever. Because it functions as a continuation of the television series, existing chronologically between the show's second and third seasons, there isn't much in the way of introductions. This is a movie for people familiar with the premise, the story and the characters of the Transformers universe.