If you had told me that the hot chick from Dark Angel would one day make a viable replacement for Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger, I probably would’ve said “Yeah, great ass!”

Alba is shaking her considerable booty into a role vacated by the queen of squint, taking the lead in the remake of the Hong Kong/Thai spooker The Eye. The story involves a woman, blind since childhood, who undergoes a cornea transplant to restore her sight (sadly, none of this involves her astonishing backside… but that would make for a neat twist if they accidentally installed the new ocular apparatus on her behind). She gets an unwelcome bonus along with her recovered vision: she sees some rather hideous spirits flitting through her daily life, which can often cause chills and spit-takes.

The project is now over at genre-friendly Lionsgate after getting shoved out Paramount’s door. Tom Cruise and biz partner Paula Wagner are still producing, calling their long-standing relationship with Paramount into question. Ringu director Hideo Nakata was originally scheduled to perform the eyeball operation, but now some French guys named David Moreau and Xavier Palud have the gig.

Alba, who despite her miraculous cheeks has yet to surpass Biel on my List of Jessica, has been increasingly busy lately, which gives me lots of excuses to put her picture on the site – she replaced Lindsay Lohan in the indie Bill, is attached to the Dane Cook comedy Good Luck Chuck and is about to slip into the unstable molecules for another Fantastic Four movie, and her thriller Awake drops later this year.