Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Okay, so the running theme today is correcting my f-ups from last week. Here’s a reader who wrote in to correct all the horrifically boneheaded misinformation I posted originally:
Hi,
Someone showed me your article about the original pan&scan announcement of Heavenly Creatures.
Unfortunately, the 2.35:1 letterboxing is the most minor issue (and actually a controversial one since the film was originally made in 1.66:1) with the upcoming release of Heavenly Creatures on DVD, since the film was heavily censored my Miramax before it's release in the US and several other countries!
In case you weren't already aware, there are several problems with the Miramax *edited* versions of Heavenly Creatures:
Heavenly Creatures was originally released in New Zealand to much critical acclaim at a length of 108 minutes.
After it was shown uncut in just a few other countries, Miramax purchased distribution rights to most fo the rest of the world, but made Peter Jackson remove 9 minutes from the original version because they were "too Brittish for American audiences". However, there were several other edits made to censor content Miramax/Disney thought was not suitable for general audiences, including violence to clay people, more dream sequences, and even the final shot of the film was removed, significantly changing the effect of the ending!
Miramax did later allow Peter Jackson to restore 3 of the 9 removed minutes to the UK release only, so there are actually 3 different cuts of the film in existance now... (The "workprint" version is just the original New Zealand uncut version with a timecode on it used to make the US edits...)
As for the aspect ratio, the film was shot in 1.66:1, and matted to 2.35:1 for theatrical releases, but the matte was opened for home video releases in all countries other than the US/Canada - we got a Pan&scan of the already matted 2.35:1 image, so we missed almost 3/4 of the original image on video (as did the Canadian DVD)
Here are some low quality .rm videos of the open matte versions of most of the cut scenes taken from a copy of the the open matte NZ PAL videotape (scroll down to the end)
The ideal presentation of Heavenly Creatures will be open matte 16:9 enhanced 1.66:1 with matting via subtitles (as was done very nicely on Pioneer's Bride of Re-Animator DVD) with a seamless branching presentation of all 3 versions of the film.
Unless they clearly state otherwise, I believe that Miramax unfortunately intends to release only the most edited version, and not even include the cut scenes and shots as extras on the DVD.
Here is the petition for the full uncut version on DVD:
...however, I think only a serious letter writing campaign has any chance of succeeding unfortunately, but you never know...
-GregorM
Thanks so much, man. Definitely worth digging into deeper.
"Moriarty" out.
