Re: Widescreen DVD Class Action Lawsuit - for ever
beam-me-up, most of those soft-matte movies are not standard 1.33:1 movies. Example: "A Fish Called Wanda". You recall the scene where John Cleese in standing naked in front of a family? In the 1.33:1 open matte version you can see the top of the pants he's wearing. The pants were always supposed to be cut off, the 1.33:1 version is not the Director's intent.
The same goes for "Back to the Future". The visual FX for those movies were made with a film format called VistaVision. ILM used this at the time exclusively because it allowed the use of more film area and better quality. VistaVision has a maximum aspect ratio of 1.66:1. That means that all the visual FX scenes are (moderate) widescreen (and are pan'n'scanned on the fullscreen DVD), while all scenes without visuals are shot 1.33:1. Obviously, the movies were supposed to be only seen in the (moderate) widescreen AR of 1.66:1 or 1.85:1 (both are very close, 1.66:1 is the European standard, while all modern theaters in the US can only show 1.85:1, for DVDs very often the compromise 1.78:1=16:9 of WS TVs is chosen).
OTOH, there are (older) movies like the Ray-Harryhause-classic "Earth Vs. The Flying". It's from 1958, made after the introduction of widescreen film formats in 1953. The recent DVD release is 1.85:1 widescreen. However, at the time the movie were made only a minority of film theaters could show widescreen; most were still equipped for the older pre-1953 Academy standard (1.33:1), and the movie was shot accordingly. The WS version looks seriously cropped, and a open-matte fullscreen version should have been included in the DVD release.
But as I said, the aim of the lawsuit is not the transfer itself, but the flase advertising made by MGM. I have checked my edition of "Dr. No" (it's part of the list in the lawsuit). In the booklet is a 2.35:1 picture of a film scene with a 1.33:1 frame laid over the center. This picture is of course crap. The movie is 1.85:1, not 2.35:1, and you don't loose picture on the sides in the fullscreen version. This is blatantly false advertising, and the lawsuit is completely correct to sue MGM for this false advertising. However, all film experts agree that the widescreen transfer of 1.85:1 is the correct transfer of choice, and the lawsuit does not attack this. The DVD is perfectly fine. I always knew the picture was bull, and I don't want to rip off MGM for the cut'n'paste error of the marketing people (we know how much those guys know).
I still believe that this lawsuit is frivolous and was only made to fill the pockets of the lawyers.
