| Posted: 15 Aug 2009 09:24 |
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Last night, I saw Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk on HBO, and found the HBO cut rather disappointing. Not only were there too many commercial breaks, but the film was shown in 4:3, with the sides cropped. Because of that, I couldn't see the "Days Without Incident" counter that came in the theatres. Because of the cut, I couldn't even get a glimpse of that so-called Thor quickie in the mountains. The annoying thing about it was that the flashback scenes in the beginning were shown in cinemascope, but a little later on, it was back to TV size. Has anyone else noticed this? It seems to be a routine thing for movies on television. I wonder what I've missed in the Spiderman movies, the 2003 Hulk, Fantastic Four II and Blade because of the clipping.
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| Posted: 15 Aug 2009 12:03 |
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Commercial breaks on HBO? What next? I haven't had premium cable in quite a while. This reminds me why. It's dvds or blu-rays for me.
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| Posted: 15 Aug 2009 19:43 |
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There's no commercials during movies on HBO. I watch TIH on HBO a lot and have seen all the things you said you missed. Not sure why that would happen. You must be watching it on TBS or something, cause HBO might suck for not having great movies a lot of the time but I have never seen commerical breaks. Are you watching outside the of USA?
TIH (the incredible hulk) is just as it was in the theather as it is on HBO for me. I really like the parts where Blonsky is given the Super Soldier Serum, a small does of course.
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2009 11:23 |
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I'm watching it in South Asia. Here, all the Hollywood channels (STAR Movies, HBO, Zee Studio, WBTV and Sony Pix) show these movies in TV size, rather than cinemascope. Moreover, there are way too many commercials (some out of turn- for instance, when Banner falls into the ground from the chopper, there's a break), and a lot of them are out of turn.
Cropping movies and filling a standard TV screen seems a done thing for Hollywood movies and new TV shows here in India for a very long time, though our local movies (Bollywood/regional) are shown fully, end to end. I've noticed that some American channels also tend to crop movies to TV size.
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2009 14:44 |
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Exaclty, there's very few channels that don't have much commercials...I mean, JUST RUN THE MOVIE! Then they can have all the commercials they want.
I don't have HBO, but I have Starz. So, I'll be wating...
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2009 20:11 |
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It's been over a year since the Incredible Hulk came out, and I usually catch them on TV to see if they still 'hold up' or still evoke that same excitement and entertainment when you first saw it. Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes was on tv, and other than the wreck blasting the army, it's not good. I saw Highlander dozens of time on tv, lately, it's lost it's appeal, looking campy and silly.
Hulk still pretty good after 5th viewing. I practically stopped watching that Ang Lee Hulk and the tv shows that's popping up here and there.
Iron Man, Dark Knight, Wolverine, Xmen movies, any of these movies looking silly and campy after numerous viewing or watching them after a long length of time???
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2009 20:47 |
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That sucks that HBO does that to movies outside of the U.S.
Movies are cropped for TV because a lot of people don't like to see the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. They would rather have a bigger picture that is cropped. I know when I was a kid it bothered me but know I'd much rather see what was intended to be seen. Movies are made for the theater where the aspect ratio is wider than typical TVs. That's changing I'm sure since so many TV's are now widescreen. Maybe movies will be shown normally, and they'll put black bars on the sides for show's made for TV. Maybe that is..
All I know is that I think that 'pan and scan' thing they do for movies on TV is odd looking. Don't do that. It looks horrible.
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2009 21:31 |
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Pan and Scan is terrible. You lose sometimes up to half the intended image and you are not seeing the movie as intended. There is a push in America for the letterbox format which works well with today's new flat screen wide HD TV sets.
Sorry that HBO in India does that. I use to be a regular watcher of American Movie Classics for my classic movies years ago until they started to add commercial breaks in their movies, even when they didn't have anything sold (just station promos). They use to respect the film, the film maker, and the viewer, but went too commercial. It's not like they show better movies with that extra movie now either. They really lost focus on what they were started as.
So when soliciting opinions on the new AMC a few years back, I told them it was going to drive me away and I'd pay more to get Turner Classic Movies, which is exactly what I've done. It is what AMC was in the 1990s only better. Limited commercials and only between movies. Rare and classic movies. Letterbox when available. Truly a classic movie-lover's dream.
I have OnDemand as well with some movies but have learned to avoid Fear.net's sponsored movies. They too use commercial breaks and have a distracting logo. Not what I expect paying more for OnDemand unless it is a network TV show with designed breaks.
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