In my latest piece about 1.85 aspect-ratio fascism (“Will Dial M For Murder Be Mauled By Fascists?”, 4.28), aspect ratio know-it-all Bob Furmanek contended that Elia Kazan‘s On The Waterfront was initially projected and was intended to be seen in a 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio — a truly sickening notion given the compositional balance … Read more
Sydney Pollack, whom I knew and interviewed from time to time over a 26-year period, died nearly four years ago. He was always a fretting, hard-working, impassioned director-producer who never took his work lightly, and who was determined every time to make his films as intelligent and full-bodied and emotionally whole as humanly possible. I … Read more
No confirmation that Criterion will release a Bluray of Roman Polanski‘s Rosemary’s Baby, but if it happens — if — it’s been hinted they may crop it at 1.85 to 1 instead of the more correct 1.66 to 1. That would be dead wrong. Only two years before he was shooting Rosemary’s Baby Polanski shot … Read more
At 5 pm (95 minutes from now) Alec Baldwin and James Toback will be leading a post-screening discussion of Barry Lyndon (’75) at Savannah’s Lucas Theatre. The Stanley Kubrick film began showing around 2 pm. I waited in the green room before it began to do a chat with Toback (which I’d been told I … Read more
Remember the old days when DVDs would deliver boxy, full-frame versions of films shot at standard Academy ratio of 1.37 to 1 (but which are routinely masked off at 1.85 to 1 when they’re shown in theatres)? Those are pretty much gone, and I kinda miss ’em. I like height (i.e., lots of headroom) and … Read more
I’m front-paging a retort that I wrote this morning to the adherents of cropping all older non-Scope films to a 1.78/16 x 9 aspect ratio. (They posted in response to yesterday’s article called “They Won’t Forget.”) I’m calling them the Aspect Ratio Brain Police, in part because they’ve been insisting that I’m “wrong” in claiming … Read more