New Matilda SE DVD in Full Screen Only! (Sign the Petition) (1 Viewer)

According to DVD Answers, the new Matilda SE DVD is set for a FULL SCREEN ONLY release. Come on Columbia Tristar! You have REALLY dropped the ball on this one. There is already a DVD of this movie for people who want their freakin screens filled. I have been refusing to buy this movie for 3 years, and I won't buy this new one if you don't release it in Widescreen! In fact, I won't be purchasing ANY of your titles, as this is my MOST wanted Columbia DVD. Please, sign the petition below, so that the home theater community can buy this movie!

I would like to thank Adam Lenhardt for starting the petition.

http://www.petitiononline.com/matilda/petition.html

You can also call the studio, and write them, here:

Columbia TriStar Home Video
10202 W. Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232-3195
800-860-2878
E-mail: E-mail is not accepting mail.

As the creator of the petition from which you have linked, I'm utterly appauled that Columbia would go through the trouble of preparing another release and screw it up again. I'm going to add your link to my signature as well, and thank you for bringing this issue to everyone's attention!

This is particularly bizarre, given that this film has been available on DVD in widescreen in R2/4 for years. If you look at the special features, they are obviously catering for a children's audience, which clearly implies that they assume children don't care what aspect ratio the film is in. Annie also appears to suffer the same fate in its new SE specs as well.

Sorry Joshua, seems like you've been having a tough week. So ridiculous! And it's always the studios that make these screw ups that don't have the stones to talk to this forum, so we'll never get an explanation

On the DVDAnswers link the menu screenshot is in widescreen. Pretty strange for a fullscreen-only release.

Columbia/TriStar has gotten to be sooo bad. How "special" is a Special Edition that lops off 45% of the picture?! Who is going to buy this - people who don't mind that the picture is lopped off as long as they can learn about the making of the film?

Double post

Get with the program Columbia, you're starting to make Universal look like a top notch company.


Chris

Um, because ONE website has it listed this way, that makes it a FACT? And everyone treats it as so? It's not Columbia that needs to get with the program, I fear. Why don't you just wait and see or, and here's a novel idea, get an "official" statement from someone who actually knows something.

Whoa, Bruce, anyone would you think you'd hand-crafted the DVD yourself. And Columbia most certainly DO need to get with the programme - they've released some shockingly bad product recently when studios like Warner, Fox and Paramount are hitting all-time highs at all-time low prices.

While it's not a film I'm exactly dying to add to my collection, I agree that Matilda deserves a good quality widescreen presentation.

However, just as outrageous as the yet-again fullscreen presentation is the fact this is about the most piss-poor special edition re-release I think I've ever seen. Let's go through the features one at a time:

A "Making Matilda" featurette - I'm guessing an EPK, but it could be OK.
A read-along - When subtitles for the movie just aren't enough?
Six interactive games - I have yet to see anything approaching a decent game on a DVD; six of them just rubs salt in the wound.
"Go to the Library!" activity - What, on a DVD!? Unless it's simply a text-screen with that instruction, of course.
A character gallery - What the hell's wrong with the film?
Trailers - An encyclopaedic smorgasbord of cross-promotional junk, no doubt.

This is an unimaginably pathetic offering from Columbia Tristar. Where's a commentary, or deleted scenes, or something of even vague value to anyone over 7? I'd complain about this in equal measure to aspect ratio gripes.

Whoa yourself there, Jon. No, I have not "hand-crafted" the DVD myself, but I am smart enough not to take the word of ONE internet website as gospel. I AM smart enough to wait for official word or, heaven forbid, to look at the DVD itself.

Please name me some "piss-poor" Columbia releases of late. I have enjoyed The Swimmer, The Marrying Kind, Jolson Story, The Solid Gold Cadillac and quite a few others in the last few weeks. I'm about to watch Capra's Platinum Blonde. All nice transfers, with the ones that need to be anamorphic, done correctly. Not a "piss-poor" batch in the bunch.

And I've read misinformation about Warner releases and Universal releases as well - people bitching in advance because someone on some ridiculous website got the specs wrong. The disc comes out, is what it should be, and funny, the offending website doesn't say "Oops, we were wrong" nor do the bitchers and moaners. That was and is and always will be my point.

I really don't understand why Sony, the parent company of Columbia Tri-Star, doesn't insist on top-notch OAR transfers for every DVD, the better to show off all those 16:9 TVs they're trying to sell.

Full-screen-only releases in the year 2004 makes absolutely no sense.

I haven't taken anything as Gospel. I never said I was absolutely sure that it is going to released only in Pan & Scan, but given the fact that Columbia Tristar has botched some titles before, I wouldn't doubt it. I hope I am wrong though. The above expalains why I would rather start the petition now, rather than wait until confirmation, when it could be too late to have any effect.

I've been wanting to get this since I got a DVD player and I was definitely excited to hear about the Special Edition. No chance now. This film's even 2.35:1! Fullscreen isn't just a joke, it's butchering it!

Not to mention Last Action Hero, Excess Baggage and Johnny Mnemonic, which originally included both widescreen and pan and scan, but have been REISSUED with ONLY pan-and-scan this time! Something is definitely going on with this company.

What is wrong with these studios? Are they trying to antagonize their paying customers?

Very illuminating list of twenty-four titles (you're missing Anatomy of a Murder). Yes, it is regrettable that those twenty-four titles were not done correctly, but what about the hundreds of other titles that were done correctly? They far outnumber the ones that weren't. Just about every studio has been guilty of doing some incorrect transfers, and one can hope that they will fix the ones that weren't done correctly. But these days it seems to be the exception rather than the rule, yes? Yes? Yes.

DVD File just confirmed Matilda, and then they revealed this gem.....

"Just in from Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment is their January 13th lineup of new and catalog releases. Getting the special edition treatment at last following a disappointing movie-only edition released two years ago is the 1982 musical flop Annie. This new reissue inculdes only a 4:3 full screen transfer (yes, really), Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround tracks....."

They're doing this to Annie too!!! There is no excuse for this, these are not obscure titles with limited audiences. Ron has some contacts at Columbia...any chance we could get some kind of reason for this? I remember people from HTF who visited Columbia last year saying they seemed truly dedicated to ensuring the quality of their releases.....guess those folks are either unemployed or good liars. Bruce, I see where you are coming from, but if we give them an inch on fairly major releases like this, then the floodgates will open, and any family-skewed title will suffer.

These are two titles I would have purchased as soon as they hit the shelves, too.