Funny stuff, Van Pelt 
Aw, shucks. But I can’t take credit. Read Extraneous post above mine. Unless he/she was making some sort of “Pan” pun, in which case I take full credit.
The sad thing is, I have heard that there was a time (I believe in the 60s and 70s) when some early movies (although I don’t know if that includes any that I mentioned) were re-released in “widescreen”, with predictably bad results.
This happened with the Gone with the Wind re-release, which was uniformly considered a disaster since many of the exhibitors didn’t know themselves or were inclined to educate their patrons as to why GWTW wasn’t “widescreen”.
Of course, there’s the argument that seeing information that wasn’t in the theater is also seeing it differently than intended. Another problem with soft-matting is that not all the films are “protected”–meaning that an effort has been made to keep extraneous information outside of the Academy frame, even if it’s in the area that’s blocked out by the aperture plate in the cinema. Not all films are protected as such (which accounts for the boom mike scenarios that get posted here periodically); those films (more than you realize) can’t be transferred full-frame, and are subjected to pan-&-scanning as well.
If I had to pick one film that I refuse to watch pan-&-scan more than any other, I’d have to go with my favorite widescreen flick: 2001.
I would think watching any Terence Malik flick in pan and scan would be a disaster.
Extraneous, you don’t understand the joke. Fantasia was released in 1940, at which time there was no such thing as widescreen. The square picture (Academy Standard) became the standard for television as well, so to compete, the film industry came up with a bigger picture. The three films Linus Van Pelt mentioned were all released B.C. (Before Cinemascope). Although it is true that Disney has removed a politically incorrect sequence from Fantasia, showing the film in widescreen wouldn’t really improve the overall experience. It’d be like watching a full screen feature on a widescreen TV.
I watch Patton on tv yesterday. The version wasn’t even pan and scan it was just the center of the shot. Lots of scenes with two people talking but you could only see their arms.
Just show the bloody widescreen version or not at all ya bastards
Ghostbusters. Even when I was a wee child and didn’t know what widescreen/pan and scan were, I could tell there were things wrong with that movie. Like when they are in the hotel elevator turning on their packs? Anyone? Bueller?
The disaster films from the 1970s are more candidates, especially The Towering Inferno. Seen in pan-and-scan, it’s almost impossible to tell that Paul Newman and Steve McQueen are in the same scene with each other, which is one of the main selling points of the film.
Sidebar to this:
I don’t know how true this is but -
McQueen was quite sensitive to his status relative to Newman who was still a bigger draw. When McQueen read the script he counted Newman having 16 more lines and told the studio to rewrite it so they had the same number. Then McQueen insisted that his picture be on the left hand side (so it would be “read” first). Newman’s people started to get annoyed and said that if that’s the case then Newman’s picture had to be 2 inches higher. Can you believe this shit? Here’s the poster:
http://www.blarg.net/~dr_z/Movie/Posters/Reproductions/TowerInferno_Rep.html
I agree with both of these, and the first (Ken Branagh’s Hamlet) was the first film that came to mind when I saw the thread. I’ve seen it in pan and scan form on one of the cable channels, and it’s an absolute travesty. The “to be or not to be” soliloquy loses all the power Branagh gave it with his skillfull treatment. Many of the other scenes are similiarly butchered in pan and scan. I’m very glad I found a widescreen videotape of Hamlet, even though there’s still no DVD release of it.
I’ve never been unfortunate enough to watch Fellowship of the Ring in pan and scan, but ricksummon’s description sounds about right. Yuck.
I’ve never seen Fight Club or Seven in pan and scan format either, but I imagine that either film would suffer for it.
Any film by Sergio Leone, even A Fistful Of Dynamite.
When I want to explain to people why I love seeing movies letterboxed on DVD, I point out a scene in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. It’s while Tuco is forcing “Blondie” to walk through the desert in the brutal heat. Eastwood has collapsed at the bottom of a dune from exhaustion and dehydration and he lies prone across the bottom of the frame. Tuco, riding on a horse while shading himself with an umbrella, crests the top of the dune totally silhouetted with the sun behind him. He tosses a water bottle onto the sand and it rolls in a wide perfect arc to come to rest perfectly next to Blondie’s cheek (thanks to a cut to a different angle). That sequence uses the entire widescreen frame with just a few elements and the center of the frame is mostly empty. Pan and scan or straight cropping for TV ruin the beauty of that scene.
I’ve never seen Brainstorm in pan-and-scan, but I can’t imagine how that could be pulled off.
The baseball scenes in A League of Their Own suffered badly when panned and scanned. I don’t think anything important got cut, but there’s that awkward “pull” to keep up with characters running across fields that are too wide for the TV screen. It’s ticked me off every time I’ve seen the movie on cable.
I still am a bit torn on this one. On one hand, yes it is a crime to show any Star Wars movie or LOTR in pan-and-scan.
On the other hand, the letterboxing takes up half the farking screen, and my screen is only 17’ to begin with (it’s my computer screen, and I’ve looked for bigger ones, but they’re way out of my price range).
I wish there were a compromise of some kind.
I’ve tried to watch John Boorman’s Zardoz a couple times on the pan and scan VHS tape, and have never been able to make it more than about 30 minutes in. Now, my failure may be due in part to the fact that the movie is extremely strange, but I can’t help but attribute some of the incomprehensibility to the destruction of Boorman’s widescreen compositions.
This is exactly the movie I thought of when I saw this thread, and exactly for this reason! The scene where Karl Malden’s arm is talking to George C Scott’s boots is incredibly frustrating. If Patton was around he’d probably slap the editor.
Planet of the Apes (the original version) should only be shown in widescreen format.
There’s a great visual joke that takes place when Charlton Heston’s character is testifying in front of a panel of three orangutans. In the pan and scan version, you can see the center ape slowly cover his ears with his hands as he hears the “heresies” being spoken. What you miss, however, is seeing the ape on the left covering his eyes with his hands, and the ape on the right covering his mouth, thereby mimicking the classic “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” tableau.
Barry
Koyaanisqatsi. Just wouldn’t work. At. All.
To the OP: EVERY film ever shot in 2:35:1 should never been shown in pan and scan, with NO exceptions. They ALL suffer: You lose half the screen for god’s sakes! The only good thing about pan and scan was in that in the 70s, 80s and 90s it enabled people to be able to see films which without it they would never have got the opportunity to view. And people generally didn’t like the black lines at the top and bottom of the screen. I know, I was collecting widescreen VHS tapes back in 1991, when the majority didn’t even care for widescreen and didn’t like it either! Pan and scan has NO place in modern society and definitely not on DVD. I am astonished that even today you still get pan and scan DVD releases. WTF???
Zombies ate my widescreen television to make this thread relevant again.