What's new

Warner's Kiss Me Kate Mis-Framed (1 Viewer)

Bill Burns

Supporting Actor
Joined
May 13, 2003
Messages
747
Ah yes -- I see from Bob's earlier post that Natural Vision shoots Academy, while MGM shoots full aperture. That in part answers #4.

Thanks to Pete and all for continued thoughts on the matter.
 

PatrickL

Deceased Member
Joined
May 13, 2000
Messages
426
If Warners continues to sell this disc with the botched transfer, aware that it is labeled as OAR when they now know it is not, isn't that consumer fraud?
 

Doug Bull

Advanced Member
Joined
May 7, 2001
Messages
1,544
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Real Name
Doug Bull
Dare I risk another 9 page answer.
But I must ask about Warner's recent DVD of "High Society".
It looks blown up and badly framed.

As a Vista Vision film, it's posible that it can be shown at several various ratios, but this DVD looks all wrong to my eyes.

I'm suprised no one has brought this up, as it looks a lot worse than Kate.
 

Peter Kline

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 9, 1999
Messages
2,393
OAR can be correct, but the image within that OAR can be incorrect. It's happened on many wide screen releases. It's not fraud, just bad mastering.
 

Patrick McCart

Premium
Senior HTF Member
Joined
May 16, 2001
Messages
8,196
Location
Georgia (the state)
Real Name
Patrick McCart
If Warners continues to sell this disc with the botched transfer, aware that it is labeled as OAR when they now know it is not, isn't that consumer fraud?
How are they lying? Theaters showing the film showed it at 1.33:1 in 1953. Only when Turner realized the film had full-apature negatives did we see a widescreen version.

They didn't know the framing was wrong when it was released, so they're not being fraudulent. If you want consumer fraud, look at the "Uncut, Uncensored" version Fantasia on DVD.
 

Dan Rudolph

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2002
Messages
4,042
Patrick, Disney only said uncut. Technically, this is correct. The censored portions are zoomed, not cut.
 

Bob Furmanek

Insider
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 10, 2001
Messages
6,708
Real Name
Bob
Patrick, by the time Kiss Me Kate was released (November, 1953) most theatres were running it wide-screen, certainly the major ones.

As botched up as the compositions are on the new transfer, I'm actually more concerned with the missing 30 seconds of 3-D gimmick shots just before "We Open in Venice." I know of no other 3-D film from the 1950's that had specific shots inserted (or deleted) because of their content. I recently inspected an original dye-transfer Technicolor 16mm print (50's vintage) and those shots were not in that print either. They were not physically removed. They were taken out of the printing negative.

The question remains - when were these shots removed? Or, were they printed separately in 1953 and inserted only onto prints that were designated for 3-D play dates? This is a REAL mystery!

Bob
 

DaViD Boulet

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 24, 1999
Messages
8,826
As others have stated, there are 2 distinct issues:

1. Proper Aspect Ratio

2. excessive cropping of image content regardless of the "aspect ratio" being utilized.

If it were determined that the "proper" aspect ratio was WS, that's one thing.

But even if we went with 1.33:1, the cropping on the current disc is excessive.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,815
Messages
5,123,832
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top