All Under Heaven

Hi.

I just had to voice my little rant so hopefully the studio can actually hear some consumer complaints about their products. I don't know Miramax's website to directly complain to them so IGN will have to be the messenger.

The change at the end of the movie where Tony Leung writes in the sand has to be the stupidest localization I've ever seen. "All Under Heaven" is more powerful and informative than "Our Land." What the hell is our land? The "all under heaven" more convincingly conveys that Tony Leung's character has reached an epiphany with his martial art and philosophy skills. Some actual themes from the movie. It makes more sense that Tony's character will actually fight to stop the assassination attempts as the King of Qin wants and has the drive to unite "all under Heaven," creating China, whereas the other kings are not as strong mentally, financially, militarily etc. But with "our land" that made no sense to me, thus the Western ending did not give the same wow factor as the Asian version did when ending credits were rolling. I'm sure most Westerners would have understood the meaning of "All Under Heaven."

-- Keith

Well said. And yes, I've noticed there is no consumer feedback option on the Miramax site. Probably a good thing, considering the earful they would get over their video transfers.

-- Andy

Problems With The Sandler Set?

Hey - I got hold of the Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison 2-disc widescreen set a few days early thanks to a local K-mart who put them on shelves several days before the due date.

I watched them tonight and noticed that the transfers are both 'zoomed in' and crop off significant parts of the screen. I compared the new remastered Billy Madison to the original Universal disc and sure enough, it's badly cropped.

I wanted to know if IGN editors have seen this yet and if you've heard from Universal on why such a piss-poor transfer was made.

-- Doug

I'm sure this letter will thrill Universal, both the early release and the video quality report. I have not seen the DVDs, having taken a pass on them since I had first-run DVDs to worry about. But if other readers have noticed this, please let me know and I will contact Universal.

(Note: Four days after posting this, and all I've heard so far is that the discs are fine. So it seems we have only one report of a problem.)

-- Andy

Cartoons In Fullscreen

Hi Andy!

I have a question that's been bugging me for years. You mentioned in your review [Looney Tunes Golden Collection vol. 2] that all the shorts are in full frame. Was the screen ration of the original shorts similar in framing when they were shown in their original theatrical form? I remember as a kid thinking that some shorts almost seemed like they were meant to be seen in a wider format, almost as if the cartoon was cropped somehow.

-- Mark

Most if not all of the shorts on the second Looney Tunes collection were filmed before the advent of widescreen video in 1953. They were being shown in theaters in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and the theater screens were in 1.33:1 format at the time.

-- Andy

Review Request

Will you guys please review the Ultimate Edition Van Helsing DVD? I wanna know if it's worth 40 bones or not! Well, seeing as you guys hated the movie, you'd probability automatically answer know, but it's the extra goodies I wanna know about!

-- Tim

The Ultimate Edition is just the movie bundled with three horror movies from the 1930s. But as for the Jackman movie, it's the same creature, but my understanding it's a second disc of extras. We just never had to the time to do the Ultimate Edition so I never got around to it.

-- Andy

Miscommunication

What's up with the Riddick review? First Andy acts like the Unrated version only exists in some hypothetical universe ("hopefully someday Twohy will get to revisit it..") and then theres a little blurb mentioning "Oh btw theres an unrated version." What's the deal?

-- Metarad

Think you misunderstood me, bud. I was hoping Twohy could revisit the Riddick universe and the trilogy, not that individual film. It went into that subject with him in the interview. One way or another, I want to know how that story ends.

-- Andy

Separate Matrix Release?

Hi Andy,

Will you be able to get the original Matrix movie with the new transfer separate from the collector's set? I Don't feel like buying all these discs again when all I really want of the original from the ten disc set.

Sorry if this was answered somewhere before.

-- Steven

The most common question of the past two weeks. At this point, the answer is no, but I wouldn't be surprised if they release it separately in a year or so. But for now, I have no word on any stand-alone DVD plans.

-- Andy