Monday, September 18, 2006

"Lowpoints" or "George Lucas, why have you forsaken me?"

Today I have a few lowpoints to share with you. Aside from these, it was a good day, and not unlike most days.

  1. Comcast DVR died (okay, to be fair, it died last Friday, but today I had the joy of taking it back and exchanging it, after spending way too much time on hold).
  2. Xbox 360 died (okay, this makes me thing something's amiss... two pieces of hardware die at the same time? hmm... still, stranger things have happened!)
  3. Speaking of stranger things: George Lucas, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME? (caps definitely mine, for effect). I buy the stinking "Unaltered" versions of the DVD and find some things horribly awry:

    1. The Unaltered versions are Disc 2. Wait, I thought the title of the project was "Star Wars: UNALTERED." So why are the unaltered versions relegated to Disc 2-status?
    2. 4:3 Letterbox format (Aspect Ratio 2.35:1). Now, I'm not a swearing man on general principle, but this made even me go "what the f***?!?" Now, if BOTH disks were 4:3 Pan & Scan, I'd be willing to forgive and go back to the store and say, "Excuse me, apparently *I* am a bonehead and picked up the WRONG BOX. Please let me exchange this for the 'Widescreen' version..." But then I look at the first disc which contains the 'Special Education Edition' version and it says "Widescreen format enhanced for 16:9 TVs (Aspect Ratio 2.35:1). Even the front of the box says "WIDESCREEN."

      Excuse me, Mr. Lucas, but the ONLY reason I bought this version (I already OWN the version you included on Disc 1) was for the UNALTERED version. So when I see a box that says WIDESCREEN on it, I expect a WIDESCREEN (read: anamorphic, read: enhanced for 16:9 TVs) version of the original, UNALTERED film.
    3. It looks remarkably like the letterbox versions of the originals that came out on VHS over a decade ago. Seriously. At best, it looks like a laserdisc->DVD transfer that I bought off Ebay (out of sheer curiosity) 5 years ago.


So, there you have it. Despite it all, I still love Star Wars.

Darth Lucas would apparently like to change that.

1 comment:

Tom said...

You have officially sold me on NOT buying the unaltered versions.

Also, why the virtual make-over? Didn't like the old look here?