I’m still not sure what to make of this letterboxing lawsuit against MGM. I don’t have fullscreen and widescreen copies with which to compare, but my rudimentary knowledge of film projection suggests that the plaintiffs are a bunch of whining idiots who don’t seem to grasp that most 1.85:1 movies are shot with an open-matte. And if they’d study the widescreen versions more carefully they’d see that the picture information being masked on the top and bottom is just dead space to begin with; along with the fact that there’s also usually more picture information on the sides. A detail that seems to have escaped them. The fact that MGM is reportedly settling the lawsuit, likely because it is cheaper in the long run, will only reinforce the plantiffs’ ignorance. These two sites, DVD File and The Digital Bits, have better write-ups on the lawsuit, complete with screen grabs to compare.Speaking of ignorance, I’ve been reading a lot about how people should get the new Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2-disc special edition just because it’s so rare to have a Charlie Kaufman commentary track. This may be true, but it’s too bad these DVD reviewers are too lazy to do any research and see that the commentary track was already available on the single-disc release of the movie.
