Another Columbia pan & scan travesty - "Castle Keep' (1 Viewer)

[John Hodson]

Ooooh I doubt that; probably more to do with the simple fact of the widescreen TV sales boom here in the UK, fuelled by most of our TV programmes being broadcast in 16:9.

 

[Jay E]

Sorry, I was being sarcastic.

 

[SteveK]

Although I'm not familiar with this particular movie, I simply cannot understand why studios continue to claim that the public prefers "fullscreen". The sales statistics clearly show that widescreen outsells "fullscreen", usually by a wide margin (pardon the pun). Even Blockbuster and Movie Gallery usually order only the widescreen versions of dual release DVDs, so obviously widescreen is preferred by people both by people who rent and by people who buy DVDs.

I also don't think most people are confused by two-sided DVDs. They can be a bit hard to read sometimes, but if the side that's playing is not the side you want, then simply turn it over. It's really not all that difficult.

Steve K.

 

[Malcolm R]

I think their oft-quoted "market research" must date back to the 1980's. :rolleyes

 

[John Hodson]

Apologies Jay; my sarcasm-o-meter was switched off! :b

 

[Thomas T]

Spherical? I guess my sources were wrong, Mr. Harris. It alleges the film was shot in Super Panavision 70 six track stereo.

Hopefully, the Columbia release will be the complete 154 version though I doubt the original intermission will be included since Columbia also omitted it from MacKenna's Gold.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

SuperPanavision *is* a spherical widescreen process (2.20:1 aspect ratio).

 

[Thomas T]

Thanks, Peter. I didn't realize spherical referred to 70 millimeter films. I assumed it referred to any non "scope" film width like 1.85 or smaller.

 

[Jon Hertzberg]

redundant information.

 

[WillG]

Jon, check out the previous page, it has been discussed there already.

 

[Michael Elliott]

http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/current.html

At the bottom of the page they're reporting a widescreen version will be released on 11/2/04.

 

[Robert Crawford]

That's great news, but I also found the following excerpt very interesting:

 

[Malcolm R]

Must be sales of the FS version weren't that great, otherwise I doubt they'd bother.

 

[Robert Crawford]

As much as I've been down on Columbia, I think the above reasoning for them releasing the proper widescreen version is not completely accurate. I think they took a lot of heat from the internet media, film critics/historians, and general public after releasing this title "pan and scan" and decided to do the right thing. I wonder if even some management people within Columbia realized the error of their way and decided to correct that mistake???? At this point, I don't care either way as long as they're releasing the proper aspect ratio and will minimize any similar mistakes in the future.









Crawdaddy

 

[jonathan_little]

But what about Annie?

 

[ArthurMy]

I should think that in addition to the things that Robert Crawford states above, that the bulk of the pressure and dissatisfaction came directly from Sidney Pollack. I'm sure he went in there and raised holy hell, something John Huston could obviously not do regarding Annie.

 

[Jean-Michel]

There's another update at Wells' site (it's buried in the "Wired" section). Hardly official info, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's certainly plausible enough:

An angry letter written two or three weeks ago by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Martin Scorcese to Sony vice-chairman Jeff Blake is apparently the main reason why a widescreen (2.35 to 1) DVD of Sydney Pollack's Castle Keep is being issued so quickly on the heels of that condemned pan-and-scan version that came out 7.20. Apparently Blake passed along the Lucas-Spielberg-Scorsese letter (which "raised hell" about the Castle Keep DVD, according to an insider who read it) to Sony honcho Michael Lynton, who in turn conveyed his concerns about negative p.r. over this issue to CTHV chief Ben Feingold. The letter also complained about a pair of Three Stooges DVDs released last month that offered colorized versions of four Stooges shorts, along with black-and-white versions. No word on what response, if any, CTHV had on the Stooges.

 

[Malcolm R]

Or whether this will carry over to other releases, or they'll just fix "Castle Keep" then continue on their merry P&S way.

I can't believe Sony Electronics isn't raising holy hell when they're trying to sell 16:9 HDTV's while their software arm is releasing 4:3 movies. It just boggles the mind.

 

[Bradley-E]

If the Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese letter is true, All I can say is "Thank You!". It is sad that SONY who was a pioneer in DVD is now clueless on how to handle it. They decided to pander to Wal Mart instead of the fans. I hope that Full Frame is not becoming the norm. I'm still disturbed by the possibility of Universal jumping the FF bandwagon.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

So why did Speilberg authorize pan&scan versions of his OWN movies then???
And where's the heat over all the dual-format titles that this backwards-thinking company REISSUED without the widescreen versions???