I liken it to getting a bootleg in the parking lot of a show you're not attending, taking it home, and listening to it enough that the tape wears out---pretty much because it's your only option.
I liken it to getting a bootleg in the parking lot of a show you're not attending, taking it home, and listening to it enough that the tape wears out---pretty much because it's your only option.
We all grew up with pan and scan. Doesn't mean it's not a crime against humanity. I remember when I became aware of the difference, I used to go to the theater and constantly picture how every shot would look with missing information. For some reason I remember this very vividly watching The Sixth Sense for the first time.
What was that place at the mall that was the only place on the planet where you could buy letterboxed VHS movies? (before Best Buy, before Circuit City)
And anime.Quoting D_Davis (view post)
Yep.
YES!
Media Play had them here. Man I miss going to that store as a kid.
last four:
black widow - 8
zero dark thirty - 9
the muse - 7
freaky - 7
now reading:
lonesome dove - larry mcmurtry
Letterboxd
The Harrison Marathon - A Podcast About Harrison Ford
I mostly rented as a kid. I did not buy my first movie until I was in high school, and it was from Best Buy. I still have my DVD copy of Once Upon A Time In The West.
BLOG
And everybody wants to be special here
They call your name out loud and clear
Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one here today?
Remember when DVD players would give you like 12 DVDs for free when you bought a player?
Or remember columbia house? I must have conned them out of so many free movies.
My first dvd player came with a movie, randomly selected from 5 or 6.
I got Batman & Robin. :/
Yeah, I never conned them, but it seemed so unreal that I could get free movies from them. VHS tapes they were. So long ago.
[+] closer to next rating / [-] closer to previous rating
- Dark (S3) ✦✦✦½ [-]
- Fall (Mann, 2022) ✦✦✦½ [-]
- Ms. Marvel (S1) ✦½ [+]
- Dark (S2) ✦✦✦✦
- Moon Knight (S1) ✦✦½ [-]
- Get Carter (Hodges, 1971) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- Prey (Trachtenberg, 2022) ✦✦✦ [-]
- Black Bird (S1) ✦✦✦✦
- Better Call Saul (S6) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- Halo (S1) ✦✦✦ [-]
- Slow Horses (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- H4Z4RD (Govaerts, 2022/BE) ✦✦½ [-]
- Gangs of London (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- We Own This City (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- Thor: Love and Thunder (Waititi, 2022) ✦✦ [+]
I think it was agreeing to a plan to buy one cd a month, and you got started with 10. Something like that. But you could just claim fraud or quit, and all was fine.
Christ, it really isn't. Get some (ahem) perspective.
Pan and scan would never be my first choice but I still take it when there's no other option. For years, certain obscure movies never made the jump from VHS to widescreen DVD. Since they were not well known enough to play the arthouse circuit, pan and scan was the only way to see them. I can't claim watching them that way really hurt the experience. (But this also depends on the movie.)
I'd call that obsessive, like you're a hair's breadth from complaining about the presentation of "Star Wars" on HBO.
On the bright side, I just found out one of those obscure movies---a favorite of mine from 1993---is streaming on Amazon, and in widescreen, no less! I couldn't find this movie for fucking ages and now it's a one-click rental for $3.99.
So, uh, thanks, Davis!
Well, yeah, not all directors use all the frame and when pan and scan was given for granted, most commercial movies framed with that in mind. Kubrick shot Eyes Wide Shut so that it could be shown in 16:9 on theaters and in 4:3 pan and scan with added stuff above and below. But come on, you can't tell me cutting chunks of the framing is acceptable. If that's the only way you can get to watch the movie, well, sure, have at it. But try watching Touch of Evil or Brazil that way.
You don't know the half of it.
Airborne isn't that rare bro.
How do you think I saw "Brazil" and "Touch of Evil" for the first time? Or "Blade Runner"? Or "2001"? It was pan and scan. I owned them all on VHS. Loved them. Watched them many times. When Criterion released a four-disc special edition of "Brazil" on widescreen DVD, I bought it immediately. But I still can't say that watching any film in a cropped format irreparably harmed my experience, or kept me from enjoying the film. Because it didn't. I've seen so many films in bad formats, with the wrong aspect ratio, that I simply do not care because, for me, the image isn't core to the experience all of the time.
PS: "Touch of Evil" was originally released at 1.37:1, which is dangerously close to TV's 1.33:1. A widescreen version exists because of the DVD restoration, which didn't take place until a half century after the film left theaters. So one could say that the restored version is actually a bastardized form of the movie Welles' originally made.
I've seen enough movies.
My need to watch a new one is not sufficiently urgent to justify frame-cropping.
Frankly, I'm amazed that anyone prefers the widescreen version of Touch of Evil, and that it is the only version available.
Look, all I know is, I don't want anyone giving me some sorta 4:3 nonsense for On the Waterfront.
::shifty-eyes::
Posting Permissions
forum
Reply With Quote