I ordered Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Netflix, and being the August fan that I am, was looking forward to watching all the special features. But when you order the movie, you just get the movie itself. All of the features are on another DVD, which you would have to order as a seperate movie.

I guess that 2 DVD’s is perceived as a good value for retail, but the downside is that most rental customers will never get to view the features…

I just wish there had been a commentary, either by Mr. Burton or by Mr. August–or even better, by both. I also wonder why there were no deleted scenes available, as I do know some things were cut because they were in the TV spots but not the final movie.

Do you think there’ll be a future DVD for CatCF that will feature more?

Oh, well, even if there isn’t, the main feature of the DVD is the movie, and I’m so excited to finally own the best movie of 2005 so I can watch it whenever and however many times I want!

Joy

With wide-screen vs full-screen, I don’t care how someone else wants to see the movie as long as I get the aspect most representative of how the film was intended. Kubrick’s The Shining makes sense as full-frame, I think, because the film seems to have a horizontal orientation to some of the shots (like a sense of people being dwarfed by walls, hedges etc.). Whereas something like Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West has a vertical orientation. His use of landscapes and the width of the screen for framing is incredible. I can’t imagine seeing that cropped.

Anyway … if I have any complaint, it is that discs should be VERY clearly labelled as to whether they are full or wide. I’ve encountered a few where it wasn’t that obvious. (And I hate that business of putting the wide version on one side of the disc and the full on the other.)

What really bugs me though is fake widescreen. I’ve seen countless short films shot on video, with no intention for a theatrical release, masked to give the appearance that they were shot in widescreen originally. So you end up with a picture that’s being cut off on the top and bottom just to give the illusion that you’re being true to the original format, when in fact just the opposite is occurring. Take the still frame of John above for instance. Obviously that’s a shot that was solely intended for the DVD, not theatrical release, so what purpose is the letter boxing? I haven’t seen it yet so I suppose there may be a legitimate reason. For instance if it’s being intercut with shots from the film then it makes sense to keep the framing consistent, but otherwise it’s just a gimmick.

But of course filmmakers know that this illusion works for their audience and that’s why they do it. In fact, despite my annoyance with such contrivances, I recently did it myself. I shot a feature in standard 16mm, which is a 1.33:1 ratio, the same as a standard TV, but I masked it for a 1.78:1 (a.k.a. 16 x 9) ratio. Why did I do such a hypocritical thing? Because I was advised that it would find distribution easier in that format. Why will it find distribution easier? Because people have an irrational obsession with “wide screen”. And this is no rare occurrence. Most applications for film festivals will ask you what the original format was and what the actual projection aspect ratio is. Some will even give you a choice of “true 16 x 9″ or “masked 16 x 9″.

I recently saw a rant by someone on one of the IFC blogs claiming he wouldn’t watch IFC anymore because of some film being shown in full screen. Of course, the film may have been shot in that format originally anyway. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Academy aperture is the same format as a television screen, but this guy just assumed that he was getting cheated because there was no letter boxing.

The problem is that most people actually believe that the theatrically released film is the truest vision of the director and that anything done in the ancillary markets to alter that is a butchering of the auteur’s vision, but there’s not a director alive who doesn’t know more people are going to see his film in the ancillaries than in the theater. And there’s not a cinematographer alive who doesn’t know he needs to compose each shot so that it will play well both in the theatre and on TV. Of course I don’t know every director or every cinematographer, so I could be wrong.

Having said all that, Charlie is the kind of film I do want to see in its original aspect ratio.

Thank you for the interview tutorial. I edit those DVD BTS docs, and am constantly slamming my forehead into my desk as the interviewer steps on the interviewees lines.

It’s a must read for all your “name drop” friends.

Brad

On topic: where I live at the moment (Germany), they don´t even have several versions of one film – except the “special edition/normal edition” difference. Normally, well-made DVDs (what I expect Charlie to be and what is usually the copy of the U.S.-version) come as widescreen versions, whereas the few really crappy releases (even those of good films) get zoomed, lopped and raped. Hell, “Man on Fire” even got rid of the comic-like subtitles in this country.

What about pay-tv in the U.S.? Do they air “Fullscreen” or “Widescreen” versions? ´Cause here, more and more they seem to be into zoomed fullscreen films…