Serial Mom in Anamorphic anytime soon? (1 Viewer)

I watched the HBO DVD of Serial Mom last night. It's non-anamorphic letterboxed at 1.66:1 and boy oh boy does it look bad on my TV. It was the old laserdisc transfer and it shows. Supposedly there was a 16x9 R2 disc in England but it is long OOP and unavailable anywhere.

Any chance of a 16x9 remaster here? And who ended up with the copyrights to the tiny Savoy Pictures catalog when it went under?

did not realize it was even letterboxed. every cover/website description i have read says 'fullscreen'

Sam,

You mean French TV, right? Because if it were on an American HDTV channel such as HDNet Movies I would certainly know about it. Does France even have HDNet?

Despite their format neutrality, I doubt HBO (who still owns the home video rights) is dipping into its back catalog for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD anytime soon. This definitely deserves an upgrade.

Yes it was French TV. It was not HD, it was on SD, Widescreen, letterboxed.

If few years ago you would have told me about this movie, I would have never believed I would like it, it's not my kind of movie. But somehow everything clicked and worked!

This is my favorite John Waters film and one of my top wanted remasters. I had a similar experience recently showing the DVD to a few friends. By today's standards, it looks pretty crummy. I suspect it may not be high on HBO's priorities, unless they want to do it and splash "From the creator of Hairspray!" across the top.

SWEET!!!

Now if only somebody would release John Waters' pre-Pink Flamingos movies on disc...

Yes!!! I hope it's a new 16x9 remaster and ports the extras from the old DVD.

As to Waters' earlier films, he says they are working on trying to get Multiple Maniacs out again in 2008; the amount of music has kept these films out of print for years; clearing music for the 1997 re-issue of Pink Flamingos cost half a million dollars. He doesn't seem to be especially fond of anything he's done pre-Multiple Maniacs.

I do hope, in addition to Multiple Maniacs, they'll at least be able to do a release of Mondo Trasho. However, since that one is ALL music and some of it is from fairly well-known artists like Elvis Presley, I'm sure it will be a long time. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a 2008 release of Multiple Maniacs as it may well be my favorite of all his movies.

I recently watched the original DVD, and it didn't look that great on my TV. Luckily I have a Samsung player, so I can use the EZ-View button that makes it so non-anamorphic DVDs don't look squeezed. I'll definitely get that new DVD when it comes out.

Talk about coincidence. I watched this on WGN just yesterday and was telling my friend how I hoped they'd re-release this properly. Here's hoping that it is indeed 16x9 enhanced. This film is a guilty pleasure for me.

According to DVD Town, the Serial Mom SE will have the following extras:

- 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen (which proudly boasts being 'digitally remastered')
- English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
- English, Spanish and French subtitles
- Commentary with director John Waters
- Commentary with director John Waters and star Kathleen Turner
- The Kings of Gore: Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman
- The Making of Serial Mom
- Theatrical trailer

I was able to see many of John Water's early films when he had an art exhibit in NY a few years ago. They looked like they were in good shape. Great exhibit for anybody interested in John Waters.

He mentioned on his Christmas tour that them music rights were very expensive for some of his films but it seemed like he was working on something. Other than that he didn't mention past films that much. He had a Q&A at the end but my mind always goes blank when those come up.

I've heard him make similar statements over the past couple years. I'm sure it will happen someday, hopefully sooner rather than later.

One of his early movies--Roman Candles, I believe--was actually 3 separate movies projected simultaneously so I'm not sure how they would do a DVD presentation. I would love to see it, however, as it has a scene where Divine plays Jackie Kennedy during a re-enactment of the JFK assassination.

Another Waters film I hope sees the light of day on DVD--maybe as a bonus feature with Multiple Maniacs--is the short, The Diane Linkletter Story. It was part of a short-lived exercise the Dreamlanders did called Instant Movies where they would take a recent tragedy and churn out a movie version--a practice that's now depressingly common, only not as funny as when Waters and company did it.

Anyone pick this up yet? Comments? Thanks.

I received it yesterday and watched it. The transfer is anamorphic but only so-so. A little soft, too many source defects, and generally bland. Dunno if it's an improvement on the old DVD - never saw that one - but it's not an impressive transfer for a 14-year-old movie...

It's definitely an improvement over the non-anamorphic release. I'm sure Colin has a much better critical eye than me but the new release is definitely an upgrade compared to the original release.

Plus, there's a 30 minute making-of, a couple of featurettes, a new commentary with John Waters and Kathleen Turner and the original commentary with John Waters.