The good news is that there's finally now an official DVD of Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, and as the screen grab above attests, it's taken from a very nice print. But there's also bad news. For the whole story, check out today's Foreign Region DVD Report, over at The Auteurs.
That’s disappointing to hear, Glenn, but your framegrabs are counterfactual. That letterboxed cap is what the disc will look like on *4×3* sets–whether it was “optimized for 16×9 displays” (i.e., anamorphically enhanced) or not–whereas a 16×9 example, sans zooming, would be windowboxed, with black on all four sides.
I realize you can’t grab a true 4×3-within-16×9 frame in something like PowerDVD or WinDVD, but you could simulate it with virtually any Photoshop-type program. Barring that, you should maybe just say “black borders” and dispense with the illustrations to avoid confusion.
Man, I’m annoyed about that, and I don’t even LIKE Antonioni!
Yeah, what Bill C said. I was confused about that too.
I’m still working with a 4:3 TV, partly because I’m more comfortable with the letterboxing situation on it than on 16×9 sets. If and when I do upgrade, it might not be until they come out with 2.35:1 sets, which is probably gonna happen before too long. Right?
Weird timing; I just put up a YouTube clip of the ending (not optimized for any screen, it would appear) and called it “Apropos of Nothing.” Guess it was apropos of something, after all.
I didn’t much care for most of this film – though I was glad to see it and would happily see it again, being somewhat obsessed with both 60s cinema, and 60s youth/counterculture.
But God, that ending. It has to be on a top 50 list of greatest endings in film history. Just…gorgeous.