Mal ,'Out Of Gas'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
So - let me get this straight: Instead of putting out a widescreen version (as the DVD case claimed) they put out a panned-and-scanned version (with the right and/or left side of the picture cut off). And then, to make it look like it was a widescreen version, they chopped part of the top and/or bottom off?
Fuckers.
Also, stupid, fraudulent and cheap. I have 7 on that list, although only 2-3 are actually worth making a fuss over. From the site, it's not 100% clear that they will actually replace the crap versions with good versions of the same movies.
H'rmph. Zmayhem has Bull Durham, Ghost World, The Princess Bride, and The Producers. But I went to the settlement site and read every damn thing on it, and the settlement doesn't sound so great. It doesn't sound like you turn in your DVD and get back another copy of the same film in the proper aspect ratio; you turn it in and get to choose from a list of 385 other MGM DVDs.
Which I guess is okay (assuming they're not lying about the aspect ratio on all their DVD releases), but what about these particular titles? Was the problem fixed in editions after 2003 so we can exchange the old copy for the new, or are we just SOL? I don't want some other MGM movie, I want these movies, dammit.
Off to Google up more info.
And be careful with that DVD of Pajama Game.
From the article:
"My wife and I were very shocked but we watched it until the end because we couldn't believe what we were seeing.
Oh yeah, that's why you watched the whole thing anyway....
It doesn't sound like you turn in your DVD and get back another copy of the same film in the proper aspect ratio; you turn it in and get to choose from a list of 385 other MGM DVDs.
This bothers me too, JZ. Also, I'm not crazy about the "turning it in" bit to start with -- mailing the DVDs off and waiting to get the new ones back, at class-action speed, seems a bit excessive for a problem I've never noticed.
It's kind of funny that with all the film snobbery about aspect ratos and so on, nobody caught MGM for more than six years.
Checked with DH, and we apparently own a lot (damn Virgin's 2-for-1 bin!):
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Annie Hall
Bull Durham (although I'm not sure if this list refers to the Special Edition or the original release. We own the SE)
A Fish Called Wanda
The Last Waltz
Sid and Nancy
Spaceballs
This is Spinal Tap
Yellow Submarine
Princess Bride
Crap.
Ghostworld
I remember seeing something about The Princess Bride a while back, so someone noticed on some of the movies.
I guess it's lucky I'm cheap and haven't gotten around to buying many DVDs. I'm with tommyrot on this one. This is just crap.