Post by Eric T. Jones on Nov 11, 2007 19:36:56 GMT -5
...just when I was comfortably watching the legendary widescreen epic "Ben-Hur" in pan-and-scan (which I did deliberately just to see if the film could survive it. It did), I notice that either consumers are warming more to the letterbox format, or studios are giving a hint to those who buy full-screen DVDs.
So, here are three summer blockbusters you don't have to worry about accidentally buying the fullscreen for [okay, so you might not want to buy some of them, but...]:
-Spider-Man 3
-Transformers
-Ratatouille
I expect the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" to be widescreen-exclusive, as the first two films were also released without a fullscreen counterpart. It is notable that all these mentioned films are done in the really wide "scope" format (2.40:1), where black bars are still visible when viewed on widescreen TVs. That "Ratatouille" was released exclusively like that is impressive, considering how Disney writes less-wide formats as being "family-friendly" (and in addition, Pixar usually re-positions characters and adjusts camera angles to make fullscreen versions. Remember back when Pixar had widescreen and fullscreen on the same disc, before they joined along for this dual-release crap?).
Or maybe this is a temporary thing, until almost every home has widescreen TVs; until then, filmmakers can rest easy knowing that widescreen TV owners aren't buying fullscreen editions and stretching them to fit their display. Then we might be seeing scope films re-formatted for 16x9 on sale (and sure, consumers have gotten a little more educated on the virtues of widescreen; how many know that there's actually more than one kind of widescreen, though?).
So, here are three summer blockbusters you don't have to worry about accidentally buying the fullscreen for [okay, so you might not want to buy some of them, but...]:
-Spider-Man 3
-Transformers
-Ratatouille
I expect the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" to be widescreen-exclusive, as the first two films were also released without a fullscreen counterpart. It is notable that all these mentioned films are done in the really wide "scope" format (2.40:1), where black bars are still visible when viewed on widescreen TVs. That "Ratatouille" was released exclusively like that is impressive, considering how Disney writes less-wide formats as being "family-friendly" (and in addition, Pixar usually re-positions characters and adjusts camera angles to make fullscreen versions. Remember back when Pixar had widescreen and fullscreen on the same disc, before they joined along for this dual-release crap?).
Or maybe this is a temporary thing, until almost every home has widescreen TVs; until then, filmmakers can rest easy knowing that widescreen TV owners aren't buying fullscreen editions and stretching them to fit their display. Then we might be seeing scope films re-formatted for 16x9 on sale (and sure, consumers have gotten a little more educated on the virtues of widescreen; how many know that there's actually more than one kind of widescreen, though?).