Bridges of Madison County P/S or 1:85.1? (1 Viewer)

[widescreenforever]

Discovered today that the 1997 DVD Warner Bros 'Bridges of Madison County', I was planning on purchasing, is only available in 1:33.1,, yet the Laser Disc I owned back in 1996 was 1:85.1 .. I found this quite alarming as for the year 1997 and especially the Studios of Warner Brothers would release only the P/S version and not the letterbox version.
I guess what we should really like to see released is an anamorphic 16 x9 upgrade of this 1995 film from Clint Eastwood. I just found it strange as usually 99.9% of studios releases (except for Columbia pictures recently) release their films in wide screen or 'flippers' of that time frame (1997-1998) of these early DVD releases to entice people at that time to buy into DVD .

Strange??? or was this commonplace? I can't seem to locate too many other WB releases that followed this trait.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I know that there are strong rumors about a WB Eastwood promotion later this year. If that happens, I'll bet that you see a new SE of this title.

I'm waiting for re-releases of the Clyde & Dirty Harry films.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I believe this was one of a series of titles that Warner Bros. released as part of campaign to deliver low priced DVDs to combat DIVX. Other titles included Sharky's Machine, Doc Hollywood and Peter Weir's Fearless. There were additional titles that I can't recall at the moment. Pity that these films didn't get OAR releases.

Would especially love to see Bridges and Fearless get re-visisted.

- Walter.

 

[Matt Hough]

DEATHTRAP, ARTHUR, and the original pressing of BONNIE AND CLYDE were all full frame editions. Warners has since rectified the situation with BONNIE AND CLYDE, but not these others.

 

[Will K]

There were also full-frame only editions of THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS, JOE'S APARTMENT, WITH HONORS and Warner still has yet to correct these.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Just out of curiousity, are any of these "open matte"? I own Doc Hollywood; and that transfer, at least, certainly seems to be ... I know I can "zoom" it to 1.78:1 and the framing looks perfect.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I was thinking that this was really overdue for a proper release. Get on the stick, Warner.

As a point of interest that is interesting mainly to me, I saw this in the theatre in Winterset, Madison County Iowa, and it was amusing to come out of the theatre and see various buildings that show up in the movie; had breakfast in the diner that's in the movie too.

 

[MielR]

I don't get this- why the delay with proper WS editions of Deathtrap and Arthur? Both were very popular at the box office, it's not like they're little cult films.

 

[widescreenforever]

Exactly, and also note this .. When Arthur was released on Video ( VHS ) in 1981-82 , our video store at that time was just switching over from the paper card system to an 'actual computer' with a video rental and tracking software program .
One of the titles we monitored at that time was Arthur, and we discovered it was the single most rented title duriing the Year., It had rented ( this one tape and bar code) every day (and more) for a grand total of 400 plus rentals @$3.00 was a very profitable video for us. All other titles we had in inventory maybe rented 100 to 250 times before either the Tape wore out, or the Title was availabale on PayTv.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

If your player can handle PAL and R2, our version is 16:9 anamorphic. Not a great transfer perhaps, but fully adequate. Great movie, one of the few that brings tears to my eyes