Excellent news regarding the animated "Lord of the Rings"...apparently in widescreen! (1 Viewer)

[Ben Motley]

I am going to pretend that I didn't read Sean's post.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Could it just be a mistake on the packaging? Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[TheoGB]

I'd also like to point out that it claims to be in a "matted" widescreen format. This suggests that the original negatives would be 4:3, does it not? (This is what it says on the back of The Fugitive SE and this certainly was matted from a 4:3 image).
According to IMDB the film was shot in 1.85:1 and I thought on one of the other threads it was agreed that the film was originally in 1.85:1 (however, that is several pages and I am at work).
There is a way to find out: When a spoof Star Wars cover came out someone ran the barcode through www.dvdprofiler.com - I am not about to register so I can't seem to do it. If it's fake the barcode should be from something else.
Also, it's definitely dwarves. I have my gold anorack for the school of "Being A Bit Sad" and I know. ;-)
Theo
[Edited last by TheoGB on August 29, 2001 at 03:02 AM]

 

[Ben Motley]

Theo, I think that WB is playing loose and fast with terminology, especially since they use the quotation marks. I doubt they are as anal as HTFers are about terminology, and are just using it as a recognizable buzzword to point out that it "has them funny black bars" as opposed to a technical point of fact.
[shrug]But who can tell?[/shrug]

 

[David Lambert]

I think that WB is playing loose and fast with terminology, especially since they use the quotation marks.

I think it's simpler than that. WB has two standard boilerplate wordings for their non-"Standard" releases (forgive the bad pun):

• "Presented in a "Matted" Widescreen Format..."
• "Presented in a "Letterbox" Widescreen Format..."

You can see examples of the former on Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Green Mile, and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
You can see examples of the latter on Papillon, Mister Roberts, and Outland.
I think it's as simple as somebody at WB who made up the box was thinking "Which standard wording to use? Well, Animations are always matted, so I won't even check...it's gotta be that one!".
Thoughts?
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DAVE/Memphis
Widescreen is Family Fun!

 

[David Prior]

The terminology is simply Warner's standard way of differentiating films released theatrically in anamorphic (Panavision, etc -- anything with an aspect ratio of 2:35 or above), which are designated as "Letterboxed," from films shot with spherical lenses, which are called "Matted." If a film's OAR was 1:85 then it is not anamorphic and would thus be called "matted," whether there was a hard matte in the camera or the full neg was exposed with the mattes added later. The only possible exception would be a film shot in Super 35, but I've never heard of a 1:85 anamorphic release print.
Cheers,
David
[Edited last by David Prior on August 29, 2001 at 05:42 AM]

 

[TheoGB]

Well I guess that's fair enough. When we still get Columbia Tri-Star DVDs listing a film's ratio was 1:1.85 or 1:2.35 (keyhole editions presumably) I suppose I can let Warner get away with a bit of mislabelling.
Did anyone check the bar code? That should be the surest way to check if the images are real.
Theo

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I sure am not willing to accept this as evidence that Warner's really going to release this in widescreen. It's just FAR too easy to fake these things. For instance, there's a VERY genuine looking DVD cover for London After Midnight floating around, and that movie doesn't even exist.
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"This movie has warped my fragile little mind."

 

[Paul W]

I need only point to one example of a WB title that says it is anamorphic, but is not:
2010: The year we make Contact
I wouldn't put too much faith in this until we here someone from WB say yes it is widescreen anamorphic.
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Hey fella . . . I bet you're still livin' in your parent's cellar . . . downloading pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar . . . and posting "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er . . . I should do the world a favor and cap ya' like Old Yeller . . . you're just about as useless as MPEGs [sic] to Hellen Keller.

 

[Douglas Bailey]

For the record, DVD Profiler says that the UPC (85393 74082) seen on the scan is the UPC for the Warner disc of The Lord of the Rings.
So if the scans are fakes, they're well-done fakes.
doug
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tightly-wound convenience-store clerk to a jittery Eskimo
firefighter?... uh huh... uh huh... uh huh. Well, that's actually a
pretty good explanation..."
--James Woods, on THE SIMPSONS

 

[David Lambert]

Just out of curiousity, where would DVD Profiler get that information? The reason I ask is this: if it IS a fake (and I don't think it is...gut feeling), then the creator could have used readily available information to get the right UPC code onto the faked cover.
I just went and checked something. I went to Image Entertainment's site, and looked up LoTR. They list the same UPC code on the scans, which you say is in DVD Profiler. So it IS publicly available info. Possible to fake.
Just to put things in perspective. I still think it's bone fide. IMHO.
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DAVE/Memphis
Widescreen is Family Fun!

 

[Andy_B]

I need only point to one example of a WB title that says it is anamorphic, but is not:

I seem to remember Goodfellas having this issue as well.
Andy

 

[Matthew Chmiel]

I think it's real (that or the guy who did that art is a genius, but that looks too damn good to be fake). But also remember, the Superman DVDs (back in May) from Warner had a Portugese subtitle track. But do any of you remember early on when Columbia/Tri-Star was making DVDs, they included quite a few subtitle tracks (including Thai and a few others) along with the normal English, French, and Spanish subtitle tracks? Maybe Warner is doing the same now.
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"I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule."

 

[Andrea W]

Just out of curiousity, where would DVD Profiler get that information?

I would guess that whoever entered it into DVD Profiler got the UPC from the image-entertainment web site. That's where I looked for the UPC.
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http://darius.mobius-soft.com/~andrea/ht/

 

[Jaxon's Dad]

Why doesn't the DVDTalk user just post some screenshots from the DVD itself? That would definitely prove it one way or another.
Regards,
D
Edited for clarification.
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~Marriage is great but she keeps leaving the toilet seat down...~
[Edited last by Doug Irving on August 29, 2001 at 11:37 AM]

 

[Dick]

Screen shots can be cropped.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Fake or not, 'dwarfs' should be spelt 'dwarves'.

Indeed. But some of Tolkien's publishers "corrected" this in their publications of the book/books, so do you really expect Warner Marketing to do much better?
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My DVD Collection

 

[Jaxon's Dad]

Good point, Dick. So I guess this means that we're once again at the mercy of WB. Bless 'em...
Regards,
D
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~Marriage is great but she keeps leaving the toilet seat down...~

 

[Mark_TS]

...someone with professional equipment could pull this off...
as for the BARCODE-very easy to fake-go to this site:
http://www.deBarcode.com/barcode/cgi-bin/create.cgi
all you do is type in the desired cat # and presto! a bar code...
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[Joshua Clinard]

I looks very real to me.