FMC ran 'OTTOS' in P+S...again!


Fox Movie Channel ran On the Threshold of Space again this morning (March 7, 2010), its first broadcast of the film in almost seven months...but once again (and not unexpectedly), only in a pan & scan version, eliminating a real appreciation of the film by depriving us of its full, widescreen glory.

I don't know why FMC insists so often on running many of its widescreen films in a fuzzy p&s print that cuts out half the picture. Their practice has been to run w/s films in p&s for a few years before finally broadcasting them in their original aspect ratios, which makes no sense. And some films seem never to make it onto TV in their 2.35 (or 2.55) :1 a.r.'s anyway. Currently FMC is still running films as varied as Prince of Players, Space Master X-7, Untamed, Son of Robin Hood, Seven Women From Hell, as well as most low-budget B westerns and war films from the late 50s and early 60s, in that grainy p&s format, while (presumably) the pristine, widescreen originals sit somewhere in the Fox vaults. (Even movies the channel has finally begun running letterboxed have sometimes shown up back in so-called "full-screen" prints for occasioanl showings.) For the company that pioneered CinemaScope and the modern use of widescreen processes, this is inexplicable and inexcusable -- reminiscent of VHS days, when the company adamantly refused to release its films in w/s until late in the day, and then only a select few "major" films.

OTTOS, as we affectionately abbreviate it here, is exactly the kind of film that needs to be seen in its complete, widescreen format. But every widescreen film should be broadcast that way -- what reason is there not to, especially these days, when more people expect to see such films properly presented?

Bad enough that Fox has halted all DVD releases of its classic films. FMC should at least present them as they were filmed and so proudly promoted by the company, and as they really need to be seen. C'mon, 20th Century Fox -- ditch the old-fashioned, bad-looking and incomplete pan & scan format once and for all, and start showing this and other films in the way they were supposed to be seen -- in all the widescreen glories of CinemaScope!

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