Widescreen? Pah!

I nipped out yesterday to Blockbuster to pick up Vanilla Sky and Monsters, Inc. I'd seen the latter, and I've got to admit that the real reason why I was picking up Monsters, Inc. was so that I could see the wonderful short For The Birds that screened before the film in the cinemas--that, and the new short Mike's New Car and ~2 minutes worth of Finding Nemo, the next Disney/Pixar film. Because of all that, and the time spent playing Boo's Door Game and watching the storyboarded parts of Monsters, Inc. that got dropped, it was a while before I actually sat down to watch the film.

I saw around two minutes of it. Maybe less than that, really. I watched the amusing cow-obssessed THX certification short, and settled in to see the hand-drawn/construction-paper alike credits at the beginning of the film. Within about two seconds, though, a look of worry had not so much crept across my face as stampeded like a herd of angry elephants, undoubtedly having just remembered something terrible that had happened to them many years ago.

The intro sequence was filling the entirety of the screen. This is, of course, wrong. I fast fowarded.

A young boy's bedroom filled the screen. I'm talking filled. There were no bars at the top and the bottom.

Someone had deliberately butchered Monsters, Inc. and I was sitting stunned on the sofa. Surely, I thought, I wouldn't have asked for the pan and scan version, would I? I mean, we don't own any DVDs that are pan and scan. None. All of them are lovingly purchased in the belief that watching films in the original aspect ratio is the right and proper thing to do. Otherwise, well, you're not really watching the film. I was, to overuse a phrase, more than a little pissed off.

I ranted for a while. I went upstairs and, probably rather too indignantly, told Adrian that the DVD was the pan and scan version. This annoyed him somewhat, but not to the extent for him to mutter more than a murmur of dissent at this horrific tragedy.

I went back downstairs. You see, all this was a little unsettling. I recalled reading, earlier in the day, about Blockbuster US only stocking full screen, pan and scanned DVDs and assuming that Blockbuster UK would do no such thing and I wouldn't have to fill in a petition. It turns out I was wrong. See, I hadn't accidentally chosen the pan and scan edition of Monsters, Inc. It turns out there wasn't a widescreen version to choose. Blockbuster UK will not rent you the widescreen version.

Anyway. Widescreen vs. pan and scan is apparently a heated debate, and there's the inevitable slew of websites devoted to advocacy of one or the other. IGN has an analysis , whilst widescreen.org (wow, a whole dedicated domain), has its own take.

Me? I watched Vanilla Sky instead.

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