I went to thier website and was APPAULED at the fact that they think that they can IMPROVE what they call directorial mistakes. They totally trashed cinemascope and 70mm, and insinuated that everything should be in IMAX format because most tv's are in the same 4:3 format.
4:3 will eventually go by the wayside. Why would we want to convert our old classics into digital recomps just so we can show em in an overly done IMAX house or keep our old antequated tv's?
And besides, A BUGS LIVE dvd and video recomps that kept all the elements from the widescreen into the 4:3 version was easy as all the elements were digital in the firstplace, all you had to do was reprogram the placement of everything and WALAH! With movies shot in 70mm, it will look just like that bud light commercial with john wayne facing off against a drill seargent looking for his beer and pretzels. It was sacrilidge to do it and it would be a shame to alter forever the amazing films that this company is doing, Lawrence of arabia and Ben Hur. LEAVE EM ALONE!!!
Hey, I know, why don't we recomp old classics done in 4:3 into cinemascope? We can cut out James Stewart then do a closeup shot of the background of Bedford Falls then shrink him a bit then put him back in and then... well it would look like complete and total crap, because it is and doing any digital recompositioning to these classic films to placate the 4:3 crowd or IMAX is sacrilidge. Cinemascope, widescreen, 70mm, panavision, whatever you want to call it, was the best invention in film history and should NEVER NEVER NEVER be tampered with.
Maybe I'm wrong.
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"If it's not worth doing, I have allready been there and done it"
It's a JOKE.
(Although they did actually utilize a similar process to transfer A Bug's Life)
I was looking for somewhere to fire off an evil e-mail to them for even thinking about doing this to these films.
Oh yeah, Har-har-har-de-har-har!!
I thought i was going to have to play joan of arc and lead a revolution.
I had enough of ted turner colorizing things and damn I just freaked!!!
YOU GOT ME MAN!!! Admitted shmuck at your service.
Well at least you know where I stand right?
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"If it's not worth doing, I have allready been there and done it"
Thank God it's only a spoof. I sure hope it stays that way...
Come to think of it, I could see George Lucas advocating this type of process. For example, if his first "Star Wars" had been 1.33 (hypothetically speaking) and his second two 2.35, he would have used Dave's reverse process to make it into a Scope flick for the Special Edition release, much as he tried to uniformitize all three films' soundtracks into modern 5.1 digital. But he's only doing these things with his own films, so that's not a problem.
You have to admit, though, Turner has saved the Pre-'48 Warner films, all the MGM titles, and many RKO features since he got them. Remember how nasty prints of KING KONG and 42ND STREET used to be?
I, too, hate colorization, but the idiot kids now cant stand B/W movies! Believe me when I say that I try to convert the colorized kids.
I have a colorized "Dark Victory" (1939) that looks awful. If I turn down the color, it still looks washed out. My old 16 print looks vastly better, and it was a rental!
