Sedai
02-14-04, 12:56 PM
For Christmas I received The Indiana Jones box set. Here it was the day before Valentine's Day and it still had the plastic wrap on it. We had a few flks over for some Sangria and were sitting around chatting when I figured "Hey, what the hell, this is a good time to pop in a Jones flick". I fire the Raiders DVD in and start it up.
Five minutes, no two minutes into the movie I realize two things.
1: I haven't seen the movie in Widescreen since the theatre.
2: Pan and Scan had ruined this film for me over the years.
What a movie this is. Spielberg's best, hands down. A CLASSIC feel to every scene, costume, and shot that had me thinking Lawrence of Arabia many times throughout. Pan and Scan completely and utterly destroys films. Of course I knew this, and have been adamant about buying only WS DVD from the outset of the technology, but films like this slip through the cracks sometimes. Raiders of the Lost Ark is on so much, I had minimized it. Countless Saturday afternoons this thing has been on. I have passed by it at least a hundred times and always kept on going after a couple minutes because the true spirit and art of the film had vanished. The directors artistic vision had been dashed across some hell spawned movie destroying editing machine.
I post this to make sure folks understand what this process does to cinema. I am still surprised how many people think Widescreen gives you less picture. I just can't seem to get this through some folks heads. They will argue tooth and nail about how they are hacking the tops off the movie. Horseapples! I remember seeing a short piece on TV once that compared a couple scenes in WS and P&S and showed the difference side by side. I believe Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home was used, and the scene where Kirk, Spock, and Gillian are sitting in a truck together was singled out. The WS version had all three actors visable and the verbal and facial play was COMPLETELY lost in the P&S version, as the camera would only show who was talking in this version, while the other actors expressions etc. were lost off-screen. If I could find a digital file of this presentation, I would be quite happy to show some of these folks these concepts (these people are collegues of mine, and we talk about this frequently). There just HAS to be a presentation of these concepts somewhere on the web. Any help finding these materials is appreciated.
_S
Five minutes, no two minutes into the movie I realize two things.
1: I haven't seen the movie in Widescreen since the theatre.
2: Pan and Scan had ruined this film for me over the years.
What a movie this is. Spielberg's best, hands down. A CLASSIC feel to every scene, costume, and shot that had me thinking Lawrence of Arabia many times throughout. Pan and Scan completely and utterly destroys films. Of course I knew this, and have been adamant about buying only WS DVD from the outset of the technology, but films like this slip through the cracks sometimes. Raiders of the Lost Ark is on so much, I had minimized it. Countless Saturday afternoons this thing has been on. I have passed by it at least a hundred times and always kept on going after a couple minutes because the true spirit and art of the film had vanished. The directors artistic vision had been dashed across some hell spawned movie destroying editing machine.
I post this to make sure folks understand what this process does to cinema. I am still surprised how many people think Widescreen gives you less picture. I just can't seem to get this through some folks heads. They will argue tooth and nail about how they are hacking the tops off the movie. Horseapples! I remember seeing a short piece on TV once that compared a couple scenes in WS and P&S and showed the difference side by side. I believe Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home was used, and the scene where Kirk, Spock, and Gillian are sitting in a truck together was singled out. The WS version had all three actors visable and the verbal and facial play was COMPLETELY lost in the P&S version, as the camera would only show who was talking in this version, while the other actors expressions etc. were lost off-screen. If I could find a digital file of this presentation, I would be quite happy to show some of these folks these concepts (these people are collegues of mine, and we talk about this frequently). There just HAS to be a presentation of these concepts somewhere on the web. Any help finding these materials is appreciated.
_S