Well that's about as bright as they are when they appear on my dvd. Plus, it going to be pretty hard to get pictures from the dvd because it has the Region 1 thing which doesn't allow it to play on a computer.

Recompressing pictures loose much quality, and yours are not compressed enough so we would have to recompress them again, so again some losses.
I think that it is not worth modifying such pictures, better wait that someone updates these from the DVD.
And the current pictures do not come from movie theater cam or something like that, those made by no_car come from a DVD-rip divx (though they are a little too yellow), and same for mine (maybe a little dark, but I do not know why I have that for some movies).
Those that you modified are too bright anyway, even on my dark monitor...

I auto-adjusted the pictures for Talladega Nights with my picture editor. These shouldn't have as much of the dark movie theater quality look anymore.