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Forum namePass The Popcorn
Topic subjectWhat's ignorant about it?
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=690528&mesg_id=690591
690591, What's ignorant about it?
Posted by The Analyst, Mon Dec-29-14 01:51 PM
>in pretty much every way possible.
>
>according to simon, if you want it the way the director
>intended -- buy the originally released DVDs.
>
>period. not even HD. even rescanning in higher res changes
>things.

Simon talks at length in that piece above about aspect ratio and how they could have elected to go widescreen after season two and they chose to stay with the "square" 4:3 ratio for a number of artistic and practical reasons.

What I'm saying is that they should have respected Simon's aesthetic choice. I get people saying that it looks "dated" now, but so what? David Lynch sure as shit didn't let them crop the 4:3 aspect ratio of the new Twin Peaks blu-ray release, for example.

There is no difference between cropping the top and bottom off of these images than what they did in the 80s and 90s to crop the sides off of widescreen movies to make them fit on square TVs. That practice was almost universally derided by anyone who cared about movies. This should be too.

I called that shit callous because the people who created these movies and shows made specific visual choices and composed their images according to their chosen aspect ratios, and to edit it for no reason but pandering shows a blatant disregard for the material.

And I'm not sure why you brought up the HD piece, which is irrelevant. Hundreds (thousands?) of old 4:3 movies are released on blu-ray ALL THE TIME with a new, high-resolution scans but with the 4:3 aspect ratio intact. Do people think we should start cropping Citizen Kane and Casablanca so they "fill up" rectangular TVs? The Wire was shot on film. Scanning those pieces of film in dvd-resolution for a dvd release was not an aesthetic choice. Scanning it in a higher resolution is a no-brainer.

I get that this a fucking nerd ass thing to bitch about on my part, but I'm pretty staunch on preserving aspect ratios.