| Author | Message | ||
     Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
A local art cinema was showing "The Red Shoes" last night and I was really psyched to see it on the big screen at last. Well, it was "The Red Shoes" for people who hate ballet. :-/ It's the big night, Vicky's big entrance. Julian's madly conducting the orchestra through the overture. Vicky's fretting about forgetting her cue. Lermontov tells her there's nothing but the music. And then... She's at the barre, stretching. Eh? What just happened? For a moment I thought I was misremembering the film, that perhaps there WAS a teasing skipover of the premiere and the actual ballet was later on. But then they stopped the film and said, "Oops - technical problem. Take five." Ten minutes later they started again - in the wrong bloody aspect! There were only about 20 people in the cinema but no one but Lord P and I seemed to notice. He finally called out, "Hey, can you fix the aspect?" and the projectionist wandered back into the booth. Nothing happened for the first half of the squashed and skewed ballet sequence and then he reset it at 4:3 and ZOOMED IN. Now the film was in the right aspect but too big for the screen. Vicky's head and feet were often missing altogether. **sigh** Ah well. I DO have the DVD. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.182.231.124 |
Nooooo! What a wasted opportunity. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That's an absolute bloody crime!! I've longed to see 'The Red Shoes' on the big screen. It's arguably P&P's masterpiece. I'd have asked for my money back, grrrr... | ||
| Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker) Username: Patrick_walker Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 217.171.129.73 |
I went to see The Touch at the National Film Theatre's Ingmar Bergman season a few years ago. Ironic this, considering that it's actually a half-English language film, but it soon became apparent that they had hired the Swedish print of the film. So the English language sections all had Swedish subtitles and for the Swedish parts of the film, well, nobody had any idea what what going on. Unless they were Swedish obviously. A disappointment of course and I can't think what prompted me to stay or not ask for my money back afterwards. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.5.235 |
When THE ABYSS was re-released in Britain I went and saw it at the Greyhound in Chester. At some point the film went out of sync, so was showing with a horizontal bar across the screen about a quarter of the way down. As Lord P wasn't there to draw attention to the fact, and the Brits in the audience were too polite to say anything, I finally went in search of someone to fix the problem, and eventually tracked down the manager, who got it sorted. Also saw PULP FICTION at the Greyhound; packed cinema. About four rows back or so, a couple of teenage lads had one of those laser pointer things, and through the ads and trailers were playing it over the screen. When the movie started they stopped for a bit, and then resumed the red-dot hi-jinks when Bruce Willis's character is introduced (maybe they hadn't liked HUDSON HAWK, I don't know). There was a bit of murmuring going on, and several angry looks directed at them, but no one said anything, not even the usher who was standing at the back of the cinema. Finally, mustering my broadest North American accent, I turned around and said loudly and clearly 'Would you put that thing AWAY?' And they did. | ||
| Skunsworth (Skunsworth) Username: Skunsworth Registered: 05-2009 Posted From: 92.16.77.13 |
Wendy and I had to leave the showing of the Others that we went to - not because it was bad, but because there were a large gorup of children throwing sweets at the screen, and the staff refused to stop them. It was a sunday afternoon, and they excuse given by the cinema manager for doing nothing was that the children's parents had probably dropped them off while they went to the pub, and they didn't want to get into trouble for turfing the kids onto the streets. We got our money back and wento another showing at a better cinema. S | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
I would request that the projectionist be made to watch all the Carry On... films in one continuous stream until he breaks down and admits he's unfit as a human being and throws himself under the nearest Feed Wagon. I admit that, when in the UK, I occasionally use an accent approximating George Bush Sr., purely to get people to do things in order to prevent me pulling out a handgun and shooting them. Because most Brits seem to think that 90% of the USA are gun-toting nutters, the technique seems to be effective. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Barbara - I'd be terrified to tell off anyone in this country after that lady got attacked with bleach for asking some kids to be quiet during a Harry Potter film! Why do they pay the outrageous cost of cinema tickets just to be obnoxious and throw things and text their friends? Sad, sad, sad.  My follow-up question is how can people not notice when something's in the wrong aspect? It absolutely baffles me. I used to think there must be something wrong with my eyes because no one else seemed to be seeing what I was seeing. At a friend's house once with several other people I was the only one who asked them to fix the aspect on the TV. "What's that?" asked my friend.  Needless to say, I loved the bit in Grin of the Dark where the characters insist that they bought a widescreen TV to see things fill the screen and were oblivious to HOW they were filling the screen. I just googled "wrong aspect" for an example and here's a good one:  I can't even tell who that's supposed to be! How can anyone NOT NOTICE??? | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
I think that's Patrick McGoohan. It could also be Peter Sellers in a bad wig. Actually, that could also be Roger Moore in a good wig. The more i look at it, that could be Judy Dench in a costume not quite suited to her gender. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
Back to the topic: a friend recently recounted the moment his mother said — and this is within the last 18 months — that the DVD he lent her had something wrong with it because "there wasn't any picture on the top and bottom of the screen; it was just black". Being reasonably worldly, one would think she might vaguely recall "Panovision" or "Cinerama"... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.37.218 |
Exactly - aspect ratio is a real bugbear of mine. Even nowadays it's possible to see a TV on display in a shop with the aspect set up incorrectly, although this is now not seen so often as it once was, probably because most TV broadcasts are now 16:9 and so fit the screen perfectly. Years back, chatting with a friend about having bought a widescreen TV said friend said he'd never buy one as he couldn't watch short, fat people all the time. Argh! By the way, that's Patrick Macnee as John Steed, from an episode of The Avengers entitled "The Superlative Seven", from 1967! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.37.218 |
Patrick McGoohan? Hah! | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.5.235 |
Patrick MacNee, surely. . . . I used to notice wrong aspect as a kid, even before I figured out what was going on (a widescreen movie was being stretched to fill the screen). I also noticed pan-and-scan - and was annoyed by it - before I understood what was going on. If you haven't seen it, watch this short special feature produced by Turner Classic Movies, which shows just how ludicrous widescreen films look when they're stretched to fit the entire TV screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx2xUyh9QRc | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.37.218 |
Barbara - Patrick MacNee indeed - see my post a couple above yours! That's a great YouTubeclip; I may nail some folk I know into chairs and make them watch that. I read some time back that the majority of film directors using some form of wide picture often group the important stuff into a 4:3 section of the screen so it can be panned & scanned for TV without missing any information. Michael Mann always refused to do it, which is why in his films (most noticeably, I think, in LAST OF THE MOHICANS) he'll happily have characters on opposite extremes of the screen, making it impossible to deal with by pan & scan. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Great clip, Barbara! I wish that had been around back when I worked in a video store and had to resist killing people who said they didn't like letterbox because "it cuts off the top and bottom and I want to see the whole picture". Argh! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I'm quite terrified that people genuinely didn't recognise Patrick Macnee... I mean come on!!!! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.37.218 |
Exactly! | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
Sorry, wh9ile his face was quite familiar I meant to dig into the IMDb and locate his name, but got Macnee and Magoohan swapped in my mind. He played Bond in one film as well, didn't he...? Or was he a friend of Bond, or something...? At least I didn't call him Patrick McMahon! | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.191.136 |
He worked with Roger Moore's Bond in A VIEW TO A KILL. |