Scanning is generally performed at full aperture to capture the entirety of the image on the camera negative or other film element, and then those scans are cropped as needed during mastering.
The Last Emperor isn’t some random framing issue or a mistake or accident. It’s Criterion accommodating the wishes of the filmmakers by presenting the film on disc as the filmmakers wanted it to be presented.
There are a whole lotta Blu-rays from Universal from the time period of the initial disc that look more like brightly colored video than the look and texture the films had in theaters and were always meant to look like. To Universal’s (and their licensing partners’) credit, when those titles...
A title like Fast Times has the potential to sell well and subsidize some of those other titles that simply won’t. It’s a difficult landscape out there for physical media and even when it wasn’t, Criterion has always mixed more arty and obscure titles with more commercial fare. If you want to...
It’s probably just a cost/benefit analysis thing where they believe the additional licensing, mastering, authoring and replication costs outweigh the profit potential.
If you look at, for example, Vinegar Syndrome, the titles they release most likely have minimal licensing costs. Their mostly...