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COMMENTARY TRACKS
Widescreen Wars II
by Shuan Collins
2-17-03
A funny thing happened to me today
that got me to thinking. I was flipping channels, doing some
laundry, and landed on the Sci-fi channel, which was showing BATMAN.
I watched about 20 minutes of it (with 2 commercial breaks) before I
realized it was being shown in widescreen. Now this concerns me.
How could I go 20 whole minutes before recognizing those black bars?
Many of you who know me, know that I
am a huge supporter of the widescreen (or letterbox) format. I think
all films should come this way, and this way only. I do not
understand why the studios feel the need to pay someone to reedit a movie
to format it for television. I love that Turner Classic Movies,
Sci-fi, AMC and a host of other cable networks are showing films in
widescreen. It gives me hope.
But I wonder have I began to
acclimate to it? Am I so used to watching movies in Widescreen that
I no longer notice how cool it is? It used to be a movie would come
on in the dreaded (and miss-titled) "full frame" format, and I
could point out every artificial pan, every non-director approved scan to
reedit the film. Now stuff comes on in widescreen and it's common
place. I don't even notice for 20 minutes! What's wrong with
me?
I see a dangerous crossroads ahead.
20th Century Fox, one of the best of the best when it comes to DVD, is
reissuing movies as non-special editions without the secondary extras disc
in Full Frame (which I will hear after refer to as "half frame,"
since you loose half the picture this way). Other studios are
releasing 2 disc sets with the widescreen version on one and the half
screen version on the other, and some studios are doing dual sided discs.
As a consumer, this pisses me off. That is valuable real estate that
could be used for more special features! Why should I pay $24
dollars for 2 versions of the same movie, one of which I will never watch?
I popped in my copy of MGM's
SPACEBALLS the other day, (which is a dual sided disc) and of course,
played the widescreen version. Imagine my horror when I discover the
version I thought I was watching was not there. The movie was in
half frame. It seems a manufacturing error had occurred, and MGM had
simply mislabeled the disc. The "Full Frame" side actually
contains the widescreen version, and vice versa. But this
illustrates my point. There should be no mix up, because there
should be no half screen version!!! Widescreen only!!!
And I am so sick and tired of
listening to people bitch about this. "I've got a 90 inch TV, I
don't want them damn black bars on the top and bottom of it!"
Hey, grandpa, if you went out and blew the money on a TV that big, you
should fucking know enough about an aspect ratio to know you get MORE
picture with widescreen. If you don't know that, you got no business
owning a set that big. Feel free to drop all your expensive
equipment off at my place, because you really shouldn't be in control of
anything more complicated than a 12 inch UHF TV with rabbit ears on top.
Schmuck.
Sorry, kinda got off on a rant there
for a minute. But you see my point. The director filmed his
movie in widescreen. That's the vision he had. That's the way
the film was shown in theaters. Why mess with it now?
'Nuff said. <>
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