If you are using CS3 Extended you can take 4 or 5 scans and use the stacks feature and it will eliminate the scanner noise (since noise is random it takes the color values from several frames and doesn't add the pixels that are different) the result is a noiseless scan. The limitation is the film grain, as that isn't random and is developed in the film. Works great on digital photo's too!
Tutorial (towards the bottom)
If you do use auto correct make sure you select inside the photo edges, if you get a bit of white edge it will throw the auto correction on the histogram.
Was the alex02 photo scanned from an inkjet print? there seems to be a lot of banding on the print...unless that was from the scan.