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Old 19th October 2012, 01:03 PM
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First of all, the new transfers come from a 1.37:1 source supplied by Warner. The only 1.77:1 version is the old Warner DVD.

I think everyone can agree that the 1.37:1 version looks the best. That doesn't actually mean that it should look the best. The big issue is the headroom on the 1.66:1 version and the fact that it's too tight. It'll look even worse for anyone watching it on DVD with a CRT display because overscan will likely crop it more to the point where tops of heads are being lost.

The point is, the 1.66:1 version SHOULDN'T look that bad. Hammer have chosen to just crop a central 1.66:1 image from the full frame. There is another well-used method to frame it using a common top, which would have ensured plenty of headroom, thereby losing more of the bottom where there is extra space to accommodate. To compare the screengrabs on the Hammer blog, you're just comparing virtually an open matte against a badly cropped and misframed version.

Hammer still maintain their stance of 1.37:1 being the intended aspect ratio, despite the efforts of specialists and experts in the history of widescreen and projection claiming otherwise and providing evidence to show that COF in particular was meant to be projected and seen in widescreen, which is perhaps the most infuriating part. Had it not been half-arsed, we would have had the 1.37:1 version and a properly matted 1.66:1 version which shouldn't be too much to ask and would have been very simple to do. All they had to do was consult someone, one of which was regularly posting on their blog so they didn't have far to look.

So, here we are with a similar situation to The Devil Rides Out, where it would have been easy to completely satisfy everyone and provide both versions but what Hammer say is right (because of course, this is the real Hammer from way back when????) and they simply chose not to bother doing it properly.
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