Product: Bebe, Un Coninito Va Muy Lejos (Babe -- Spanish edition) [VHS] (1995)
Rating: 2.0
No Widescreen? -- Universal Video Blows it Again!
This film, which was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1995, is fabulous, on both the DVD and DVD-DTS versions now available.But why in the world would Universal Home Video take one of its golden movies from its great library and slap it onto a DVD in a full aspect ratio (TV Land) format? The video and audio quality are terrific. Otherwise, the "no-widescreen" decision doesn't make sense at all.Is this a "trend" adopted by some home video divisions at the studios in California to accommodate the still larger group of non-purists who prefer seeing movies in the dumb pan and scan or what I laughably call the "HBO format?"Go over to AMC and Turner Classic Movies on cable and the trend over there, for people who are movie purists, is in a completely opposite direction. More of their films are being shown on cable in the widescreen format."Babe" is the second major crtically acclaimed Universal studio release on DVD that is being offered without the widescreen format. The other, and you'll choke on this when you hear this, is "The Sting," the intricate "con" film that WON the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1973.Even more puzzling is Universal Studio's decision to release the sequel, "Babe: A Pig in the City," which was little seen in theaters, in full widescreen format on DVD.Why widescreen on one and not the other? I could understand it if the studio released information indicating to consumers that the awful 1:33:1 aspect ratio (the 35mm norm for nearly all films released in the United States before 1953) was the original theatrical issue, but I don't believe this was the case for 1995's masterful "Babe."Another atrocious miscue by another company, is being commited by Fox Video for its DVD version of Alan Parker's gloriously intoxicating film, "The Commitments," another film that deserves the widescreen treatment and not crummy pan and scan.Please, fellow Amazonians out there, get on the bandwagon and clamor for the studios, at the very least, to offer both formats on DVD, and not one at the exclusion of the other! This is the way most of the major DVD releases are done right now anyway (widescreen on side A and pan and scan on side B).Perhaps Universal's handling of "Babe" was to cater to the "kiddie crowd." But that's insulting if the film's popularity hadn't crossed over to adults, it wouldn't have made as much money as it did and just as important, it would not have been nominated for Best Picture in 1995.But the lack of a widescreen DVD for "Babe" is truly, truly a puzzle, a riddle, a baffling decision by Universal. I can think of no acceptable explanation other than they didn't want to spend the money to treat one of its gems on DVD the way it treated it for the currently available widescreen version of "The Sting" on VHS. Does anyone at Universal/MCA at Universal City, California have an answer that makes sense?This is truly a travesty for DVD fans!