I guess it was because I grew up with Michael Caine as the star of such fantastic flicks as Jaws: The Revenge and Blame it on Rio that it took me awhile until I really understood why everyone thought he was such a genius. For me, the revelation came about 10 minutes into Sleuth, by far one his best performances. Guardian reports that two of Caine's early works are getting the HD treatment. In honor of Caine's upcoming 75th birthday, Zulu and The Italian Job will be re-mastered and aired on Britain's Sky Movies for television.

Released in 1964, Zulu was the story of outnumbered British soldiers battling Zulu warriors at Rorke's Drift. This was Caine's first starring role in the true-life story (albeit with some creative license) as Lt. Gonville Bromhead. The Italian Job is the more famous of the two films. Peter Collinson's caper about a plan to steal Turin gold starred Caine as master thief Charlie Croker. It was another iconic role for Caine, who was already the epitome of Swingin' London. It also led him to some his most famous roles in the 1970's including Get Carter and Sleuth.

Expect to see a lot of retrospectives in the coming year as Hollywood continues to reformat their back catalogs for HD. For movie lovers it comes as a relief that these classics are being preserved for future generations. According to Sky Movies' Ian Lewis: "Watching a classic title re-mastered in HD is like viewing a restored painting." Luckily, Caine was a little more pragmatic about some of the downsides of HD resolution: "I love HD ... of course, it's very unforgiving, especially on young beautiful ladies, but thank God I'm old, I don't care."

Sometimes when I can't sleep I run through lists of my "desert island movies," or the ten movies I would most prefer to have with me on a desert island (provided there was also a DVD player, flatscreen TV and electricity). It's an interesting game, because you get deeply into questions of what is good versus what is enjoyable. For example, Joel and Ethan Coen's new No Country for Old Men may be their best film, but it's not as much fun as Fargo or The Big Lebowski. The other night, I started playing another game: desert island movie star. If you could take the entire filmography of a single movie star to a desert island, whose would it be? (For the purposes of this column, I'm sticking to my usual realm: actors appearing in movies currently playing on 400 screens or less. Otherwise we could continue to play on into the length of a book.)

British actors are always a good choice, because they generally have a kind of old-fashioned work ethic; they're more interested in being a good worker than in crafting a certain type of career, so you've got more to choose from. Take Michael Caine, currently in Sleuth (7 screens). He's a double Oscar winner, but he's made a ton of movies worth looking at a second time, notably The Prestige, Batman Begins, Children of Men, The Man Who Would Be King, Hannah and Her Sisters, Get Carter and Dressed to Kill. On the downside, you'd also be stuck with stagnant award-winners like The Cider House Rules, as well as turkeys like Jaws: The Revenge and On Deadly Ground and Bewitched. But at least you'd have more than 100 to choose from.

Specialty distributors scrambled to find enough screens to accommodate their titles as a flock of adult dramas expanded into the hinterlands. When the dust settled, Wristcutters: A Love Story emerged victorious among new releases, averaging $12,800 per screen at three locations, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. When it played at Sundance in 2006, Karina Longworth called it "a bold first effort, with a distinct, swaggering sense of style and humor that's hard – even for a cynical blogger sick to death of indie 'quirk' – to resist."

The much-more heralded Reservation Road, directed by Terry George, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino, came a cropper, averaging just $2,830 per screen at 13 locations. Considering the high-profile talent, that's got to be considered a major disappointment for distributor Focus Features. Nick Schager felt the film "seems determined, whenever possible, to resort to preposterous plot twists at the expense of actually plumbing its grief-stricken characters' anguished psyches."

Earning just a little bit more per screen, but without star wattage and very many advertising dollars behind it, the performance of O Jerusalem, about the birth of the modern state of Israel, can be considered satisfying to distributor IDP. Unfortunately, the reviews so far -- at least as indexed by Metacritic -- are far from enthusiastic, which doesn't bode well for future word of mouth.

Ian Curtis biopic Control added one theater and increased its take to $18,250 per screen, the highest average for the week, while the reissue of Blade Runner: The Final Cut fell 60% yet still made $13,00 at each of its two screens. Lars and the Real Girl added 14 theaters and continued its good performance, taking in $8,809 per screen. The remake of Sleuth added 12 theaters but declined to an average of $1,880.

Among the September holdovers that expanded, The Darjeeling Limited ($6,534 each on 202 screens), Lust, Caution ($4,688 each on 125 screens), Into the Wild ($3,267 each on 658 screens) and Across the Universe ($2,812 each on 960 screens) performed well.

Just to show you how old I really am, I bought a ticket to see Joy Division on what was to be their first American tour in 1980 (The Starwood, Los Angeles, $6.00). In those pre-Internet days, it was a couple of weeks before I learned that lead singer Ian Curtis had taken his own life (and the show was canceled). Nowadays, the buzz has been building for months about Anton Corbijn's Control. In his Cannes review, James Rocchi wrote that the film finds "beauty and sadness in a story where we know the sad finale." Playing in just one theater (two screens at Film Forum) in Manhattan, Control earned an estimated $27,000 this past weekend, according to Box Office Mojo, tops among new limited releases.

I have no story to share about my own personal doll -- really! -- but Lars and the Real Girl is much more than a cheap joke about the subject, according to our own Monika Bartyzel: "It's actually a smart, well-crafted, and heart-wrenching film that smoothly discusses the intricacies of loss and depression." But does it bring the funny, Monika? "It has many humorous moments, but they serve to relieve tension, not drive the story." All that and Ryan Gosling too! Playing at seven locations, Lars made $85,000 for a very good per-screen average of $12,142.

Sleuth, the remake of the 1972 film of the same name, had difficulty drawing audiences at its nine locations despite the star combo of Michael Caine and Jude Law, earning $5,566 for an estimated total of $50,100.

The Darjeeling Limited ($11,842 average, 95 screens) and Lust, Caution ($7,870 average, 77 screens) did well as they expanded in their third week of release, while Into the Wild held up well in its fourth week ($6,248, 153 screens). Amid reports that critics were having difficulty seeing it in advance, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford expanded to 163 screens in its fourth week and earned an average of just $2,361. I'm not as much in love with the film as others, but I think more people would be giving it a chance if Warner Brothers didn't appear to be dumping it. This is a film that needs critical support -- a few TV ads wouldn't hurt, either.

Is there a statute of limitations for 'spoiling' a movie? Is there anyone of passing cultural literacy who does not already know that the great man's dying words spoke of his fondest childhood memory, that the astronaut was on Earth all along, that the low-grade crook was making the whole story up off the bulletin board? And is there a certain point where you can't help but spoil a movie if you're going to talk about it honestly? And what if the movie under consideration is a remake?

Kenneth Branagh's new film of Sleuth brings all of those questions to mind. Based on Anthony Shaffer's play, previously filmed in 1972, Sleuth starts simple and stays small: The older Andrew Wyke is visited by the younger Milo Tindle. The older man has position, power, privilege; the younger man has none of those things -- but he is sleeping with the older man's wife. The younger man has come to ask the older man to grant his wife a divorce -- and, maybe, see what the old fool's made of. The older man is not willing to grant the divorce -- but, he might as well see what this young bastard's like. In the original 1972 version of Sleuth, Laurence Olivier was the older man, and Michael Caine the younger; now, Caine plays the cuckolded husband and Jude Law the bright young adulterer.

There was once this remake called Alfie. It was like any other remake -- some liked it, some didn't and some stayed very far away. One would think that Jude Law doing another remake of a Michael Caine movie would be a bit much. Nevertheless, we're getting a remake of the 70's movie Sleuth, which pitted Caine against Laurence Olivier. Who could they ever get to fill the latter's shoes? Caine, of course. It's pure remake brilliance -- Law takes on Milo Tindle, Caine's original character, and he takes on Andrew Wyke, Olivier's character. Last September, Erik Davis first posted about the film, when we had news about the UK shoot. After that came the first image and now we've got a trailer to see what Harold Pinter and Kenneth Branagh have done with the new remake.

The trailer is up over at Moviefone, and it's looking pretty modern and entertaining. Instead of a hairdresser, Tindle is an actor who is having an affair with Wyke's wife. The pair strike an agreement that the young man can have the gal, if he follows Wyke's instructions and steals some jewels. Of course, that isn't the whole story and the old man isn't a total pushover. Law and Caine look like they're having good, chemistry-filled cinema fun together, and while I can do without all the fancy computer effects in the trailer, it looks like it has a good balance of dark humor and mysterious happenings. If you're still not sure about the whole thing, since the Internet is such a lovely and diverse place -- you can check out the original trailer over at YouTube and compare the two! It's definitely no longer a 70's murder mystery, but I think it has promise.

It's been 35 years since the original film hit theaters, but don't tell Michael Caine that -- it might make him feel old. Empire Online has our first look at the much talked-about Sleuth remake, starring Jude Law (in the role Michael Caine took on all those years ago) and Michael Caine (in the role Laurence Olivier played opposite a much younger version of himself). Say all you want about how overrated Jude Law is, the guy worked hard to put this project together; single-handedly nabbing Caine and director Kenneth Branagh for what, I hope, turns out to be one of the better remakes to hit theaters in some time.

In the film (which was based on the Tony Award winning play by Anthony Shaffer), Law will play an aspiring actor who's summoned to the sprawling country estate of an author (Caine) whose wife has been fooling around with the younger, more attractive thesp. Once together, the two men engage in an assortment of mindgames which may or may not turn deadly. With a script from the great Nobel Prize-winning Harold Pinter (who, funnily enough, was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1996, and also took park in an extra-marital affair in the early 1960s), this one is sure to entertain. Heck, if it were up to me, I'd give Caine an award for playing both roles in different versions of the same film 35 years apart. That's gotta be worth something. No word yet on a release date, though I'd expect it to arrive sometime next year.

It seems like Kenneth Branagh could have a thing for playing Nazis. Latino Review has reported that Branagh is in talks to star in Bryan Singer's WWII drama Valkyrie. Nothing is official so far, but according to sources, Branagh along with Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Fry and Patrick Wilson will be joining Tom Cruise in the story of German Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg led a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944. The film was written by Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, and this marks their first collaboration with one another since The Usual Suspects.

If Branagh joins the film, it would mark the third time that Branagh has done a Nazi period piece. There was the debacle that was Swing Kids -- although he did have the foresight to have his name taken off that picture. Then in 2001, he played Reinhard Heydrich, an architect of The Holocaust in the TV film Conspiracy. You cannot help but think that Singer might have had that performance in mind when casting talks began. At least I hope it was that performance rather than the big-band hating member of the Gestapo. Branagh is still busy with his own remake of Sleuth with Jude Law and Michael Caine -- you can't deny that Branagh has always had a thing for the cutesy casting since Caine will be returning to the film in the role originally played by Laurence Olivier, and Law is filling in for Caine. Valkyrie is set to start production this summer, so if Branagh is planning on providing a little "Nazi menace" there is still plenty of time.

Back in September we learned that Jude Law and Michael Caine would be starring in a remake of Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, which was a popular stage play before Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed a 1972 movie version starring Sir Laurence Olivier and ... Michael Caine.

What's (potentially) interesting about this re-do (aside from the fact that Kenneth Branagh is directing and Harold Pinter is writing) is that Mr. Caine will, of course, be stepping into the role originally played by Olivier, while Mr. Law (who has wanted to make this flick for a long time, apparently) will be playing Caine's old role.

For those who don't remember the movie, it's about a veteran writer and a hotshot young actor who spend one twist-filled weekend at a fancy English manor -- but the actor's been canoodling the writer's wife ... and the writer knows it.

Sony Pictures Classics just climbed on board with Branagh and Company, and they seem to be in quite the hurry to get the thing made: Production begins this month.

In a move that I find rather interesting and fun, Michael Caine will be playing a different role in the remake of Sleuth, a film in which he originally starred back in 1972. Kenneth Branagh is set to direct, while Jude Law will take over as the character Caine once played.

Based on the Anthony Shaffer play (with a script by Harold Pinter), story revolves around a thriller writer (Caine) who, upon losing his wife to a young hairdresser (Law), decides to hatch a complex revenge plan. In the original, Caine played the hairdresser and Laurence Olivier played the writer. Pic marks the second time Law will be taking on a role once owned by Caine, having also starred in the 2004 remake of Alfie. Hmm, I guess we can now officially call Jude Law a young Michael Caine.