Tuesday, April 5

Another "Horrifying" Echo Bridge Victim: Halloween: H20 (1998)

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The hits keep comin'! Echo Bridge looks to have "hobbled" Steve Miner's Halloween: H20 to 1.78:1 from its original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. The film was shot Super35 which is meant to give filmmakers more freedom in frame composition. This is done by capturing a larger square area onto film and then being able to move the matte around in post-production to achieve the desired widescreen presentation. So theoretically H20 isn't "cropped", but more incorrectly framed to what was intended.

I haven't seen this Blu-ray (like hell I'm buying it now), but being at such a ratio most likely means the HD master is an existing one created who-knows-when for cable broadcasts (perhaps at 1080i). So it wouldn't be surprising if the picture quality is underwhelming since it wasn't expressly created for this Blu-ray. Also EB dropped the supplements and 5.1 surround audio. Keep those DVDs and wait for eventual Blu-ray imports...

7 comments:

Frank White said...

Note to self: avoid Echo Bridge like the plague.

Eric Cotenas said...

Did they misspell "stereo" on the BluRay cover?

Anthony1138 said...

I can only imagine what the Echo Bridge Halloween 6 Blu-Ray is going to be like. At this rate it may wind up being a full frame transfer of the "Producer's Cut" workprint.

Buscemi said...

It looks like they ported the Canadian Blu-Ray (which is also open matte).

Next Echo Bridge Blu-Ray crapfest: Equilibrium, which not only isn't OAR but deletes the two commentaries as well.

Jayson Kennedy said...

Are you sure Buscemi? I'm reading that H20 in the Canadian Blu-ray Triple Feature is 2.35:1 and has 5.1 DTS-HD MA.

Jayson Kennedy said...

Alliance Blu-ray:

H6 = 1.78:1 1080i
H20 = 2.35:1 1080i
H8 = 2.35:1 1080p

Anonymous said...

Not defending EB here (at all!), but I just wanted to point out that those supplements on the DVD never came to fruition. (Except maybe some little ones.)

So EB didn't "drop the supplements", they never existed.


Regardless, this sounds terrible. Fans are better off just importing the Canadian blu-ray - which includes H6/7/8. It's not great, but the PQ/AQ is decent.

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

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