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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I wonder if Cronenberg's Total Recall would've been all that different from Verhoeven's, really. If it had starred Dennis Quaid (or was it James Woods?) or whatever, probably.
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# ? May 6, 2015 22:52 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 12:27 |
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FishBulb posted:I don't really know but I'm curious. yeah, that would've probably put it a lot closer to the short story where Quaid is a regular schlub i guess. if 'berg was working from the same Dan O'Bannon script though, i imagine it would've ended up pretty close to the version we got. it's not like 'hoev's version was short on the body horror and weirdness. i think those two have a lot in common, really. i was rewatching Total Recall recently and that movie has a goddamn excellent screenplay.
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# ? May 6, 2015 22:53 |
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Cronenberg's Return of the Jedi probably would have been relatively straightforward but his take on the Emperor probably would have been fun
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# ? May 6, 2015 22:55 |
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Any thoughts on The Zero Effect, written and directed by Jake Kasdan? I checked it out because I was looking for movies with Kim Dickens, who I adore. I thought it was a fun little romp of a movie that nobody else I know has seen. Does any other actress do the smart, sexy, kind-of-regular-person thing like Dickens? I'm thinking of her in Gone Girl, House of Cards, etc. I think she would have been great as Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs.
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# ? May 8, 2015 18:03 |
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socketwrencher posted:Any thoughts on The Zero Effect, written and directed by Jake Kasdan? I checked it out because I was looking for movies with Kim Dickens, who I adore. I thought it was a fun little romp of a movie that nobody else I know has seen. I liked it a lot, it's a pretty basic Sherlock Holmes adaptation, but has a really good use of the Irene Adler character type. It's one of those movies that sort of fell through the cracks.
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# ? May 8, 2015 18:21 |
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My friend and I were talking about Age of Ultron last night, and he discussed the things that Whedon said he fought the studio about--cuts, recuts, reshoots, etc. What kind of leverage does the director actually have in these situations? I guess he could publicly trash his own movie, but having the nuclear option or nothing seems like an untenable position. Perhaps the DGA usually sides with the director and advocates on their behalf? Also, now that Alan Smithee doesn't exist, what's the DGA's procedure for handling a director who's been screwed and wants their name off a film?
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# ? May 8, 2015 18:25 |
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Skwirl posted:I liked it a lot, it's a pretty basic Sherlock Holmes adaptation, but has a really good use of the Irene Adler character type. It's one of those movies that sort of fell through the cracks. That's what I thought too. Really liked the quieter scenes with Dickens and Pullman, which were a nice counterpoint to the comedic Stiller-Pullman scenes. Ryan O'Neal seemed well-cast too.
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# ? May 8, 2015 18:36 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Also, now that Alan Smithee doesn't exist, what's the DGA's procedure for handling a director who's been screwed and wants their name off a film? Accidental Love came out just this year, with DOR using the pseudonym Stephen Greene.
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# ? May 8, 2015 20:37 |
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Halloween Jack posted:My friend and I were talking about Age of Ultron last night, and he discussed the things that Whedon said he fought the studio about--cuts, recuts, reshoots, etc. What kind of leverage does the director actually have in these situations? I guess he could publicly trash his own movie, but having the nuclear option or nothing seems like an untenable position. Perhaps the DGA usually sides with the director and advocates on their behalf? The DGA basic agreement provides minimal protection. It'll come down to the contract, the studio's relationship with the director and producers and it's reputation at large, how big the difference is between director and studio, and the amount of money at stake.
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# ? May 8, 2015 22:49 |
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I wonder if Cronenberg's Total Recall would've been all that different from Verhoeven's, really. From his account it was much more a low key thriller. He had a lot of conflicts with another writer who wanted more of an action adventure feel. It still feels wrong to me that Cronenberg has never done a PKD adaptation.
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# ? May 9, 2015 02:27 |
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He did eXistenZ though, that's basically the same thing.
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# ? May 11, 2015 07:17 |
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Despite being five years late to the party, I just saw and loved Scott Pilgrim. One of the major reasons I did is that it's so wonderfully stylized and (while being video-gamey) rums that fun rut of *magic realism*. Then I realized I have a tendency to enjoy those kinda stories- Birdman, Kung-Fu Hustle, Terry Gilliam stuff, or if you want to do books Carroll, The Master and Margarita. So I'm curious if anyone has any recommendations on great films with some magic realism (and let's go with hyper-stylized too, as that's always fun) to em' that I probably wouldn't find from a Netflix suggestion.
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# ? May 11, 2015 14:49 |
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EatinCake posted:
You'll probably like Kaguya if you haven't seen that yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM6hcHp0_kU
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# ? May 11, 2015 15:23 |
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EatinCake posted:Despite being five years late to the party, I just saw and loved Scott Pilgrim. One of the major reasons I did is that it's so wonderfully stylized and (while being video-gamey) rums that fun rut of *magic realism*. Then I realized I have a tendency to enjoy those kinda stories- Birdman, Kung-Fu Hustle, Terry Gilliam stuff, or if you want to do books Carroll, The Master and Margarita. Enemy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJuaAWrgoUY a bit darker and less vibrant than a lot of the stuff you listed, but does magical realism as well as its ever been done on film, imo.
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# ? May 11, 2015 15:55 |
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EatinCake posted:Despite being five years late to the party, I just saw and loved Scott Pilgrim. One of the major reasons I did is that it's so wonderfully stylized and (while being video-gamey) rums that fun rut of *magic realism*. Then I realized I have a tendency to enjoy those kinda stories- Birdman, Kung-Fu Hustle, Terry Gilliam stuff, or if you want to do books Carroll, The Master and Margarita. Amelie. Princess Bride. First google result too, decent list. http://www.scene-stealers.com/top-10s/top-10-modern-magic-realism-movies/ or Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Magic_realism_films - notably missing Holy Motors.
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# ? May 11, 2015 16:08 |
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If you liked the school-age pop-cultury wackiness of Scott Pilgrim, I'd add Detention to that list. Starring Peeta Mellark.
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# ? May 11, 2015 16:25 |
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computer parts posted:You'll probably like Kaguya if you haven't seen that yet. Uncle Boogeyman posted:Enemy effectual posted:First google result too, decent list. http://www.scene-stealers.com/top-10s/top-10-modern-magic-realism-movies/ Halloween Jack posted:If you liked the school-age pop-cultury wackiness of Scott Pilgrim, I'd add Detention to that list. Starring Peeta Mellark. EatinCake fucked around with this message at 21:04 on May 11, 2015 |
# ? May 11, 2015 21:00 |
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Ayoade's The Double/Submarine? Moreso the former for magical realism but the latter is also very stylish and conceptual. Also possibly check out everything related to Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze.
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# ? May 12, 2015 00:46 |
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EatinCake posted:Despite being five years late to the party, I just saw and loved Scott Pilgrim. One of the major reasons I did is that it's so wonderfully stylized and (while being video-gamey) rums that fun rut of *magic realism*. Then I realized I have a tendency to enjoy those kinda stories- Birdman, Kung-Fu Hustle, Terry Gilliam stuff, or if you want to do books Carroll, The Master and Margarita. Seconding Amelie. It's pretty much a textbook example of what you're looking for, and it's on Netflix streaming, to boot.
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# ? May 12, 2015 01:19 |
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EatinCake posted:Despite being five years late to the party, I just saw and loved Scott Pilgrim. One of the major reasons I did is that it's so wonderfully stylized and (while being video-gamey) rums that fun rut of *magic realism*. Then I realized I have a tendency to enjoy those kinda stories- Birdman, Kung-Fu Hustle, Terry Gilliam stuff, or if you want to do books Carroll, The Master and Margarita. While it does have the fish out of water stuff you aren't a fan of, Big Trouble in Little China would probably scratch that itch to a degree.
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# ? May 12, 2015 01:59 |
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Third for Amelie and if you like that, City of Lost Children.
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# ? May 12, 2015 04:52 |
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N'Thing Amelie. Awesome movie. I really do love Scott Pilgrim. Such an amazing movie every time I watch it. I have a terrible strike rate with trying to show friends the movie though. They just find it exhausting and odd. Such a shame, I can't fault it one bit. effectual posted:or Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Magic_realism_films - notably missing Holy Motors. Apparantly Grim Fandango is a movie. Got me excited there for a sec. EatinCake posted:Studio Ghibli is always good stuff. I don't know if I've ever heard of this one, and the animation style is really cool. Will definitely check it out, thanks! Full title is The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. It was nominated for an Oscar last year and it's good.
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# ? May 12, 2015 07:34 |
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There is also The Best Beef in the South: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF7i2n5NXLo
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# ? May 12, 2015 13:44 |
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Is there a thread somewhere that covers home cinema setups - projectors, screens, sound systems etc? Edit: found this thread in Post Your Gadgets is it the only one? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2385480 Red Rox fucked around with this message at 17:10 on May 15, 2015 |
# ? May 15, 2015 17:03 |
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If it's kosher to ask for recommendations here, how about movies with lots of good fencing? I really enjoyed The Duellists and Rob Roy. I'm not a stickler for realism, but I'm looking for historical drama rather than wuxia fantasy.
Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:12 on May 15, 2015 |
# ? May 15, 2015 17:10 |
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Halloween Jack posted:If it's kosher to ask for recommendations here, how about movies with lots of good fencing? I really enjoyed The Duellists and Rob Roy. I'm not a stickler for realism, but I'm looking for historical drama rather than wuxia fantasy. Errol Flynn! The Sea Hawk and Adventures of Robin Hood. And The Princess Bride has one of the single best swordfights ever, a perfect combo of action and repartee.
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# ? May 15, 2015 17:16 |
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Maxwell Lord posted:Errol Flynn! The Sea Hawk and Adventures of Robin Hood. Came here to suggest Adventures of Robin Hood and The Princess Bride. I would also suggest Prince Valiant (1954). A lot of the fighting is highly structured choreography, of the "let's hit our swords together"variety, but there's a couple things that make it special. Firstly, they really go all out. In the climactic battle, both combatants start out with shield, but they wail on eachother so hard that the shields are quickly dented and deformed until they are unusable. The fighters are clearly exhausted during the course of their fight, and it works pretty well. Secondly, in order to create the impression of larger-than-life comic-strip knights, the swords in the movie are all oversized. The prop swords were so large that the blades actually had to be hollow. When I watched this movie dozens of times as a kid, it never occurred to me that swords were not that big, and video games have worsened this misconception. Prince Valiant also has my favorite design of King Arthur's round table to ever grace the screen. Fans of the Austen Powers franchise will recognize Robert Wagner(Prince Valiant) as "Number Two". Edit: did the Big Hero 6 thread die already? I finally got around to watching it and I wanted to share my opinions... Snak fucked around with this message at 19:22 on May 15, 2015 |
# ? May 15, 2015 17:45 |
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Halloween Jack posted:If it's kosher to ask for recommendations here, how about movies with lots of good fencing? I really enjoyed The Duellists and Rob Roy. I'm not a stickler for realism, but I'm looking for historical drama rather than wuxia fantasy. Scaramouche is a classic Mask of Zorro was really good the rest of the movie mostly sucks, but there's a shockingly good swordfight in the middle of Die Another Day. I seem to remember the sword fighting in the first Pirates of the Caribbean being good On Guard (Le Bossu) is a French film with great sword fighting, though I have to warn you, it get's incredibly French at the end. Ending spoilers the happy ending of the movie is the main character (an actor in his forties playing a character that's also in his forties) making out with his 16-year old adoptive daughter that he raised for most of her life
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# ? May 15, 2015 21:29 |
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Snak posted:
The animation thread had a fair amount of chat about it already.
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# ? May 15, 2015 22:14 |
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A historian might know this. Was there ever any debate about transferring films in their proper ratio on VHS and other earlier formats? I know some films did get the proper treatment but who capitulated to 4:3 and why? Concern that people wouldn't buy the media? Cheaper cost? TV channels and/or TV makers complaining? 1.85 and 1.66 look fine on a standard TV. I understand it a little more with a tiny TV and 2.35 or higher but it still seems like a lack of leadership by someone.
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# ? May 15, 2015 23:46 |
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Zogo posted:A historian might know this. Was there ever any debate about transferring films in their proper ratio on VHS and other earlier formats? I know some films did get the proper treatment but who capitulated to 4:3 and why? Concern that people wouldn't buy the media? Cheaper cost? I do not know about real motives, but you must have somehow missed all the complaints that "black bar" letterboxing got. Or seen the epidemic of people who have their media stretched to fit their screen. Flatscreen technology leading to widescreen TVs becoming common place is the why I think widescreen became acceptable to the general public.
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# ? May 15, 2015 23:50 |
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Snak posted:I do not know about real motives, but you must have somehow missed all the complaints that "black bar" letterboxing got. Or seen the epidemic of people who have their media stretched to fit their screen. Flatscreen technology leading to widescreen TVs becoming common place is the why I think widescreen became acceptable to the general public. I know it did get its complaints but I wonder if VHS and other media had been releasing stuff in letterbox back in the early 80s and there was a backlash (or something else). Same for TV broadcasts. If I was in charge I probably would've said those are black bars and they're not going away.
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# ? May 16, 2015 00:13 |
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Zogo posted:I know it did get its complaints but I wonder if VHS and other media had been releasing stuff in letterbox back in the early 80s and there was a backlash (or something else). Same for TV broadcasts. Oh i'm telling you the answer is yes. Letterbox VHS tapes did exist, but they were very uncommon. I know people complained about letterboxing in the 90s... Those were the complaints I was talking about. Any time people see that part of their screen isn't being used, they feel like they are getting ripped off. Why do you think squishing and stretching pictures to fit screens is a thing? It looks completely terrible but many people prefer it to seeing part of their screen unused. edit: The only solution was the make TVs wider so that the general populace of morons would shut up. edit2: In order to try to support my statements, I'm doing some googling. So far all I have found is that people are still this way. My favorite comment, in response to an explanation of the various reasons black bars exist: someone in 2007 posted:"Oh my god, how annoying. Why can't everyone just use the same format, and I'll buy a TV in that size. It sucks that you buy a widescreen TV only to still have letterbox." Snak fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 16, 2015 |
# ? May 16, 2015 00:16 |
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Zogo posted:A historian might know this. Was there ever any debate about transferring films in their proper ratio on VHS and other earlier formats? I know some films did get the proper treatment but who capitulated to 4:3 and why? Concern that people wouldn't buy the media? Cheaper cost? TV channels and/or TV makers complaining? Haha, um, I don't know if "lack of leadership" is something you can pin this on. Mostly there just wasn't a precedent for it. If you watched a movie on tv it was going to be shaped like your TV, and the only people who gave any kind of a drat were obsessive cinephiles, who were also the only people who bought laserdiscs for that exact reason. This was back when there were pretty regular revival screenings at cinemas, too, where you'd see the movie in its proper ratio anyways, even if you had no control over when you could see it. But the main reason was that most people either didn't care or didn't notice, so it didn't matter. Just the fact that you could rent a movie and bring it home and watch it on demand was exciting enough, even if it was open-matte or pan-scan. Once the whole concept had settled in and the technology got better (and the tvs got bigger), widescreen VHS tapes started coming out, mostly in the early-mid 90s, but then DVD came along and that was the end of that. Also, people still don't give a poo poo. At the place I work we have a DVD library for guests to use and I still get people who panic about "getting the whole image". It just doesn't matter to like 99% of the population - so long as it's big and now.
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# ? May 16, 2015 00:57 |
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Zogo posted:A historian might know this. Was there ever any debate about transferring films in their proper ratio on VHS and other earlier formats? I know some films did get the proper treatment but who capitulated to 4:3 and why? Concern that people wouldn't buy the media? Cheaper cost? TV channels and/or TV makers complaining? Yes. Pan and scan actually didn't start with tape or even video. 16mm and 8mm prints were often optically reformatted to work best in 1.37:1. Home viewers would not really change out aperture plates for non-scope films, nor would they always own an anamorphic lens. Most scope films would at least have anamorphic prints available, though. For video and TV, there were early experiments. The Disneyland TV special for Sleeping Beauty's theatrical release had clips from the film letterboxed with a theater cut-out instead of black bars. Walt Disney even comments on it being a way to show the full Technirama frame. That was 1958! On the earliest days of home video, some films were simply kept in their original format or close to it. Woodstock was formatted so that all the multi-screen sequences were letterboxed, while the single screen segments were full screen. Some films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King of Hearts, and Amarcord were all letterboxed without much fanfare. Letterboxing became a big deal when Woody Allen refused to allow Manhattan be panned and scanned, as well as Sidney Pollack not allowing The Three Days of the Condor to be cropped. Stanley Kubrick wasn't happy with how 2001: A Space Odyssey was handled since MGM's first tape and laserdisc were pan & scan (circa-1983), while he supervised a widescreen transfer for Criterion's laserdisc in 1988. After Kubrick supervised/approved remasters of his films for MGM/UA Home Video and Warner Home Video, 2001 remained unavailable in pan & scan from 1991 onward.
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# ? May 16, 2015 01:12 |
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The irony is that now even normally tech-savvy and film-literate people are demanding that shows like The Wire and The X-Files be released in wide-screen because they can't stand having black bars on the side of their TVs, even though the shows were shot in 4:3 and the "widescreen" releases just fill that space with a bunch of extra crap that was never blocked properly during filming and usually shows equipment and crew members.
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# ? May 16, 2015 01:46 |
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Sleeveless posted:The irony is that now even normally tech-savvy and film-literate people are demanding that shows like The Wire and The X-Files be released in wide-screen because they can't stand having black bars on the side of their TVs, even though the shows were shot in 4:3 and the "widescreen" releases just fill that space with a bunch of extra crap that was never blocked properly during filming and usually shows equipment and crew members. Anyone who is demanding that media be released in a format it wasn't filmed in is, by definition, not film literate.
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# ? May 16, 2015 01:53 |
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Pan and scan was necessary. I prefer the original format above all, but letter boxing is anything but optimal on an analog 20" CRT screen running from VHS. There were less excuses for DVD and with HD, there are no more reasons for altered aspect ratios.
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# ? May 16, 2015 04:28 |
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Egbert Souse posted:Pan and scan was necessary. I prefer the original format above all, but letter boxing is anything but optimal on an analog 20" CRT screen running from VHS. Yeah, also this, especially when it was an older tape (or a rental that'd been around a while).
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# ? May 16, 2015 04:38 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 12:27 |
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Siskel and Ebert did a special episode of their show about bad video transfers in 1988. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf-IgoUqutA
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# ? May 16, 2015 04:52 |