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Posted on 12/06/2004 11:15:57 AM PST by ambrose
Well, that does explain the Venus de Milo.
It's sad to say but some people will never watch letterbox editions because either they think they are getting cheated by having black bars on the tops and bottoms of their screens or they are distracted by them. How you can be distracted by black empty voids is beyond me?
Amen! The time and money that studios expend to create butchered full screen versions of films could be spent on something that's of actual value. No one would want a novel with a bunch of sentences cut out or a painting with the sides chopped off. Pan and Scan editions of movies are lowest common denominator pandering.
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I think thke problem is that when you have a 4:3 TV that's under ~50" and you are watching a 16:9 movie, then you are getting a smallish image.
Pan and scan is unwatchable.
Never try watching a Stanley Kubrick or David Lean film in pan and scan, an aneurysm can result.
Good example. Also if you watch 'The Good The Bad and The Ugly' in full screen on a TV you will probnably see the good...very little of the bad and virtually none of the ugly.
I call it 'fool-screen'. Cause it's such a crappy thing.
Great Flick!
Just flip to CNN and see a whole bunch of Ugly!
The Kubrick estate has actually said his last 3 films (The Shining, Full Metla Jacket and Eyes wide Shut) were made with the TV frame in mind and cropped for theaters. The current DVDs reflect that. 2001 ASO however is in widescreen of course.
Most Spielberg films are ruined by pan and scan too: Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders, Schindler, Private Ryan...all would be deeply scarred by pan and scan.
Our household dislikes letterbox.
This is an old, old argument...
The consensus, reached about 1982, is that since not everybody has a big, expensive widescreen TV, different versions should be made available to film-buyers/renters
Beat me by 27 seconds!
I used to have two laserdisc versions of the sound of music. One was letterboxed and one wasn't. I would show people the artistic differences between the two by comparing one scene in the movie, and the case was made:
When she is singing the title song, there is a point where she runs through a stand of Aspens spanning the screen from left to right, with a brook running through the grass below. With letterbox, the aspens dominate the screen from one side to the other as she runs from one side to the other, and then back again, zig-zagging and frolicking through the aspens.
In "panned and scanned" full screen, the camera follows her through the aspens. It is all about keeping her center frame and the aspens - and their visual impact - are greatly diminished.
We don't have tv - we only buy and rent movies. After Chrismas we will be getting a small projection tv with hdtv capability and component inputs, and roll down screen. It is literally BETTER than the theater. That will eliminate the one problem with letterboxing - small size on a normal tv.
Well his 1950s films (Killer's Kiss, The Killing, Paths of Glory) were made in 1:37 (just about TV frame). Lolita and Dr. Strangelove were 1:66 which is just teensy bit of letterboxing.
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