Savant's new reviews today are
Well, Savant is back after his holiday break ... with some key work finally turned in I can focus on reviews again. By the end of next week I should be back up to full steam. January has a lot of interesting product to review, and it's time to catch up on some tardy reviews. Screeners only arrived over the holidays for some discs that came out as long ago as October.
An interesting public notice appeared in the LA Times last week, of a class-action suit against MGM for, of all things, putting those inaccurate widescreen graphic representations in their old DVD inserts, the ones that often gave the impression that widescreen movies were much wider. The notice is unclear whether the suit was won or lost or is being settled preemptively, but there's mention of an exchange of seven dollars or a replacement disc for certain titles purchased between 1998 and 2004.
In my opinion, this is the kind of thing that makes DVD companies distrustful of consumer gripers and web critics. The annoyingly inaccurate diagrams were obviously meant to be generically informative and not literally accurate. That it could mislead more informed fans and give a false impression of the image on the disc is true, and was worth noting in DVD reviews. But from the facts presented here, I doubt that any real harm was done anyone. If the lawsuit thinks it can hold DVD companies accountable to strict truth-in-advertising for the often fuzzy facts of how movies should be presented on DVD - aspect ratios, "original versions", etc., it's a joke. To avoid future hassles, the companies could easily use a lawsuit like this to rationalize adding a 'formatted to fit your TV screen' disclaimer, put everything out in a one-size-fits-all flat format, and be done with it.
The suit is called Eallonardo, et al. v. MGM, et al. and has an informational website at This web address.
While I still have your attention, let me point you once more to the DVD Savant 2004 Favored Disc Roundup and also get in a last 2004 plug for the incredibly entertaining and highly fashionable DVD Savant Book.
Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at December 31, 2004 11:41 AM