Lots of directors hated color when it started being used widely because it clashed with some value they had about photography and cinema -- and because color film was so slow at first that working under the lights required for it was brutal. The decision to use color, since it was an expensive decision, was almost never aesthetic and almost always economic: if it's in color more people will come to see it and we'll make more money. Like color, widescreen photography disturbed some very sacred cows for filmmakers from it's very inception.
While I'm a child of the 50s and grew up LOVING widescreen - and stereo was insanely wonderful if you could find a theater that really showed CS Stereophonic Sound and you could get in the "sweet spot" - and adoring CINERAMA ,,,, lots of establishment cinematographers HATED widescreen when it came in because it wrecked the classically painterly proportions of 3 to 4. And many of them didn't use it very well, and lots of scope films are not particularly inspired widescreen. After all, widescreen had been around almost since movies were around, and had been tried before and had been viewed largely as a gimmick. It was the little screen in your living room that spawned modern widescreen, oddly enough. Anamorphic and wide gauge movies were made to make theatrical release films seem bigger, more involving, more important than TV. The genesis of wide format movies was economic -- to compete with the "free" movie in your home.
So when I see a film in really wide scope, all of that hype of fifty years ago is telescoped to me. To me widescreen films mean "more". That's a value that I carry about films from when I was a kid. I used to like movies wide no matter what. Now it's clear that certain aspect ratios may "fit" certain films better. Oddly enough, however, the same thing is happening today. Widescreen TV and HDTV is a dandy method of injecting some life into the TV hardware business. That's not cynical, that's a fact. But what happens when wide becomes the norm? It loses that panoramic "jazz" that made widescreen so appealing in the first place. When you see THE PRICE IS RIGHT in widescreen, that will be groovy, I guess. But it also robs LAWRENCE OF ARABIA of some of it luster because future audiences will come to FEEL that there is nothing special about widescreen.
Fifteen or twenty years ago Francis Coppola reprised this theme in an interview when he talked about making films that would be spectacular and would absolutely never be available in video. He did this to explore how filmmakers could inject life into the theatrical exhibition business. Because he knew something: that when all production is directed toward home video, the participation of the audience as a collective is diminished. And the control over the flow of a film is no longer really in the hands of the filmmakers: "Honey, put that on PAUSE, I gotta go to the bathroom." But that is what has already happened to the cinema. Films are being made today by people who have very nostalgic views of theatrical exhibition. That will be less so in the future, I think. Already many of my friends do not go to films at theaters. They might go once or twice a year. They have invested in fancy TV systems and they feel they are getting a return on their investment by watching films on them rather than paying almost ten bucks a seat to see it at the theater - where people talk, put their feet on the seats in front of them, and aren't always courteous. So, look forward to the day when you can see A STAR IS BORN on your wristwatch. Now that's scope.
And I agree with those rednecks that letterboxing sucks. It makes the best of a bad situation. It's even more apparent since I bought my Loewe widescreen TV - and can fill more or less the entire screen with picture - that letterboxing sucks. Because while you see the entire frame, yes, it reduces the size of the picture. So it's a crummy compromise. The new widescreen TVs address this problem handily, and sell a bunch more TVs in the process. Now who would have thunk it?
Visit http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/
Kirby McDaniel MovieArt Original Film Posters P.O. Box 4419 Austin TX 78765-4419 512 479 6680 www.movieart.net
On Aug 11, 2004, at 12:53 AM, JRS MoviePosterBid.com wrote:
Y'know, I always thought AMC was just making it up when they said during their promos that "some viewers feel cheated when they view a film in letterbox format because of the black bands at the top and bottom of the screen..." But apparently they were telling the truth -- some people actually object to viewing a letterbox version of a film and complain to the station when they see it (!)
This is what comes from lifting films like "Dumb and Dumber" to the status of social acceptability folks.
How can anyone object to being shown the WHOLE picture?
Why would they ever want to see less then the whole picture? They want to loose half the scene, just so what's left "fills the screen" of their TV set? That is what matters to them?
And now, just to please these idiots and coddle them in their lunacy, the manufacturers are putting a button on DVDs to automatically cut off the left and right sections of a widescreen movie -- just so the middle part will "fill the screen"? Unbelievable...
To think that it has come to this, after 50 years of Cinemascope and 70mm -- and these kids growing up on widescreen. After letterbox showings on TV have been around for over 20 years. Yet they still don't understand that is it a *good thing* when they see a letterbox image on their TV screen?
I do believe there is no hope left for western civilization.
-- JR ----- Original Message ----- From: Joseph H. Bonelli To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 18:04 Subject: Re: [MOPO] The Stooges in color? Soitenly!
Hi from Joe B. JR is absolutely right on this one. It's a frustrating situation.
It's true that the colorization-- no matter how clever or well done-- subverts the original. But-- Three Stooges shorts or Little Rascals shorts or Roy Rogers westerns are NOT "The Maltese Falcon," "Citizen Kane" or "Night of the Hunter"-- films whose mood would be totally destroyed by colorization. So if it will encourage younger folk to see these classic funnies, I have no problem-- particularly since a pristine black & white restoration can be toggled back and forth (for those of us who remember Gabby Hayes fondly in monotone). After all many young people will check out the b&w original and maybe like it. Our friend Tom Martin's son made a very respectable black and white film and enjoys working in black and white and he's still in his teens.
It's the letterboxing thing that gets me. Many mainstream films are releasing separate pan and scan and letterboxed discs so they can include all the extras. At least when both versions are available on the same disc or in the same set it allows for choice and those with letterbox-itis may be converted when they can instantly see what they are missing-- particularly if they are young. But there's a new feature on many newer dvd players that is really tacky! It' is an automatic "letterbox-defeat." And it's called just that. This is worse than pan & scan because at least p&s is planned for and engineered. But the letterbox-defeat merely cuts out the sides and shows just the middle of the picture without regard to anything else. At my friend's house recently his teenaged son was showing off their new system (purchased at Target!!) and treated me to the Pod-Race from Star Wars Phantom Menace in glorious "mid-screen" (I refuse to call it pan and scan 'cause it Doesn't!!). It was, of course, wretched and one could barely make out what was going on. I told him not to expect me to waste two seconds watching a widescreen movie like that when I come to visit. But he got "his" in a couple of minutes. He dropped in a widescreen teen flick, put the letterbox-defeat on and within two minutes, saw the girl of his dreams in a bikini-- disappear from the screen "off-stage-left." You never saw a teen reach for the remote so quickly in your life!!
Joe B.
"JRS MoviePosterBid.com" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The legal argument on this was resolved long ago -- whomever "owns" the film can colorize it if they want and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. Whether they should or not will be debated forever, but there's no question that a colorized version of a black-and-white film is something that a lot of younger viewers will watch while they would not watch the black-and-white version. Sad but true.
Since that is the reality of the situation, I applaud the fact that these producers are including BOTH a nicely-restored black-and-white version and the colorized version on the same DVD. That actually satisfies both young consumers and older purists. It's a far better solution than just putting out a colorized version only and leaving the purists out of luck.
-- JR ----- Original Message ----- From: Movielegends To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 11:41 Subject: [MOPO] The Stooges in color? Soitenly!
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS August 10, 2004
The DVD era is resurrecting the great colorization debate of the 1980s, and at the heart of the matter are Moe, Larry and Curly.
Sony's Columbia TriStar home-video unit is releasing two Three Stooges DVDs that allow viewers to watch the original black-and-white or digitally colorized versions. Purists consider it desecration, while Sony executives say the process can introduce movie classics to young audiences reluctant to watch anything in black and white.
The Stooges discs coming out today also give die-hard fans better black-and-white versions, the studio insists.
To prepare for the colorization process, Sony did a more extensive restoration than it had with previous black-and-white- only Stooges DVDs, said Bob Simmons, a technical specialist who worked on the project.
"The best thing about this DVD release is it gives the consumer the ultima! te choice," said Suzanne White, vice president of marketing for Columbia TriStar. "They can watch the very best, the finest restored image of the black-and- white version, or watch the new colorized version and switch instantaneously between the two." The new DVDs, "Goofs on the Loose" and "Stooged and Confoosed," contain four shorts each featuring Moe and Curly Howard and Larry Fine.
Offering a choice does not appease colorization critics, who include Sam Raimi, director of Sony's "Spider-Man" blockbusters. "I don't think they should mess with black and white," said Raimi, who is such a Stooges fan that credits on some of his movies label extras as "fake Shemps," a reference to doubles used to complete Stooges shorts after the death of Shemp Howard, who both preceded and succeeded brother Curly in the act.
"I think they should just leave it as they are and try to preserve them as best they can," Raimi said. "I f! eel like it's an artistic interpretation that's not anybody's right to make except the director's."
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