The reviews of the new Hard Times blu are coming in, and they're very positive:http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Hard-Times-Blu-ray/65402/#Reviewhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s4216hard.html
....and made probably the ultimate cult film, The Warriors.
After careful research (ha!), I determined that the better Blu-ray choice for The Long Riders was the UK edition...
(sucks to be you, region-bound losers).
He claims he wasn't trying to copy Peckinpah on the Northfield sequence, he was using the slo-mo to give the event a nightmare quality. In contradistinction to Peckinpah's practice (according to Hill), who used slo-mo to extend and heighten reality, Hill's purpose was to make everything seem irreal.
The car chases are still there and still good. The overall PQ is pretty murky, though. Maybe that's the way the film has always been. I was hoping the Blu was gonna be a startling improvement over the DVD, and it's only an incremental one.