The state of the 1982 movie Annie on DVD plus 1 comment regarding Follow That Bird

Here is a gripe of something I'm not happy about in regards to the 1982 movie remake of the Broadway musical "Annie." On the Region 1 DVD issued in 2000 with the yellow background and the picture of Annie and Sandy, it has the widescreen print on one side and pan and scan on the other. The Region 1 DVD of the Anniversary edition in print, it is pan and scan only while the Region 2 DVD of the Anniversary edition keeps it in widescreen. I may eventually go on the Internet and order the Region 2 DVD of this or get a used copy of the 2000 Region 1 DVD as I have long loved the movie growing up and is my sister's all time favorite movie and she still loves it to this day. If Sony sees this, although I don't have a widescreen TV, I would prefer Sony to issue the Anniversary edition widescreen DVD that is in print in Region 2, in Region 1. A lot of the musical performances in Annie are to be seen in widescreen.

In the case of the Sesame Street movie "Follow That Bird," Warner Bros. first released the movie on DVD only in pan and scan, but it got recently issued on DVD in its original widescreen form, in Region 1 in both cases.

 

If Warner Bros. can release Follow That Bird on DVD in widescreen after they issued it pan and scan, Sony ought to bring back "Annie" in widescreen form worldwide.

 

Heck, Annie is shown on TCM in widescreen and there are widescreen laserdiscs out there.

 

Waiting for a Blu-ray version might be your best hope - or just buy the 2000 DVD, though it had framing problems of its own...

 

I think that's my mastering on Annie, which I did for Sony Pictures back in the mid-1990s. Not a great element, but I did my best with it.

I'm positive this has been redone more recently in HD, and it's bound to look tons better with modern gear.

 

So what was up with the kooky framing in some shots?

 

No idea. I didn't reframe anything for the 2.40 letterbox. I panned/scanned the hell out of the 4x3, because director John Huston very clearly framed everything for widescreen, but there was nothing funny going on with the letterbox. 99% of the time, when letterbox, we frame it once and use the exact same framing for every reel. There might be one or two shots where we zoom in a pixel or two to cover up film damage, but generally, we try to use other techniques that don't require cropping any more of the picture than we need to.

Bear in mind that often, films get re-transferred -- sometimes two or three times -- with new versions replacing old ones. I did Annie twice, once to analog composite 1" for Compact Video in the late 1980s, and once to digital component standard-def in the early 1990s for Complete Post, and that version was on laserdisc. I don't doubt they redid it by 1997-1998, or whenever the DVD came out.

One problem with the video mastering business is that we very rarely get credit for our work, unlike audio mastering people. I doubt that I've gotten more than a couple of dozen credits on the home video work I did on more than 300 films, because that's just the nature of the biz. I did get credit on the boxed Star Wars set (me and two other people), but in this case, I did most of the work on episode 4 and about 2/3 of the work on episode 6, but I did none of the work on Empire (to my eternal regret).

 

Interesting story Vidiot

 

I wet ahead and gone on Amazon UK and ordered the Region 2 Annie DVD which is widescreen.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Annie-DVD-Albert-Finney/dp/B0000WSTKQ/

 

I'm surprised I've never seen "Annie" in widescreen. I watched this in pan & scan many times in the mid 80s and had all the songs memorized.

 

You ought to get a laserdisc player and the widescreen laserdisc or order the R2 DVD or the 2000 DVD or when it shows up on TCM again, watch it on there. Widescreen is the way to go for this movie.

 

In fact, for LD fans, there are a few widescreen LDs available at http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/shop/5911/

 

In fact I didn't even know there as DVD edition with the widescreen. We have the crappy, cheap@ss red-box fool-screen one that's in print, and oh boy, it's a doozy.
Anyway I will definitely look for the 2000 one.

 

Good idea. The 2000 DVD is at http://www.amazon.com/Annie-Widescreen-Aileen-Quinn/dp/0767853636

 

Annie is available in widescreen as a Region 4 title from Australia as well.

 

Cool, thanks Brad!

 

You're welcome. 2000 DVDs are cheap used if you want one for yourself, but for those with all region players and for you'd want to give it as a gift along with an all region DVD player, then the R2 and R4 options are the way to go.

 

The R2 DVD of Annie is excellent in picture and sound and I tried it on my computer and my hacked Apex 3 DVD changer and in both places the picture is great. This is the way to go for the movie on DVD. Click on the link in post 9 in this thread to order.

 

One thing I have to add is that the R2 Annie DVD in print in the UK does have all of the special features that the pan and scan DVD in print has as well.

 

Here's Play.com's listing of the Annie R2 DVD: Play.com

 

Do they ship to the U.S.? I don't see it under "eligible" countries.

 

As far as I know, Play.com doesn't ship it to the US. http://www.dvd.co.uk/buy/catcdr10072ce/annie-collectors-edition.htm is another site that has it and they do ship in the US

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-li...c?ie=UTF8&qid=1290830245&sr=8-1&condition=all has Amazon Marketplace links for the R2 DVD of the movie.

 

Here are some classic examples of Miss Hannigan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDkEXszYtdo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoY6Soy8cKE
I also love the scene where Miss Hannigan flirts with Mr. Bundles, the laundry man trying me make some whoopee.

 

One of these days someone will bring up a film or show that you didn't work on...perhaps.