I've just seen Spinal Tap for the first time ever in widescreen (after a lifetime of watching it in pan and scan) and one of the jokes, which never made sense before, sprang beautifully to life for the first time.
In the hotel with the twisted old fruit on reception, the Tap bump into a rival metaller whose album sleeve is worse than theirs. In the pan and scan version, this metaller looks like a country and western Rob Halford and is older than the Tap, which makes no sense if he's supposed to be a young whippersnapper with "this much talent". In widescreen we see that the old geezer is just the manager, and there's a Jon Bon Jovi / Eddie Van Halen clone to his far right.
Another gag spoilt because morons can't cope with black bars at the top and bottom of their screens...
We saw it in a Soho cinema earlier. Lots of lovely little bits here and there we hadn't picked up on before. And the stereo soundtrack was magnificent.
You won't believe how pleased we were that the 'Pop, Look And Listen' and 'Jamboreepop' bits were left in mono (as indeed they would be). Also, that Derek Smalls' bass cuts out at vague moments during the pod sequence - accounting for the fact that he'd have to stop playing to try and free himself.
Subtle little details like that hold the bigger picture together.
And you've not experienced true joy until you've seen Tony Hendra's incredulous facial reaction to 'Money talks and bullshit walks' on a great big enormous screen.
The Soho Curzon is also showing 'The Apartment' at the moment, and the original Spinal Tap 'cheese rolling' trailer is being played...um, as a trailer. Great!
How good was the picture quality on the big screen version? The (admittedly 2nd generation) video I have of the film (from the early 90's) is horribly scratchy and the picture sometimes jumps horizontally just before a new scene starts. I know the film was shot on 16mm to save costs, but most Comic Strip films look better produced than the copy of Tap I have. Despite the poor quality lending a further leap of authenticity to the 'rockumentary' format, I could do without the shakiness and scratches on the film.
I need a DVD player, don't I?
The quality of Tap wasn't perfect - slightly snowy if you looked closely.
>The Soho Curzon is also showing 'The Apartment' at the moment, and the original Spinal Tap 'cheese rolling' trailer is being played...um, as a trailer. Great!
I saw that too. (Mike, are you following me around?) Made my evening, it did.
The Curzon always shows great trailers. They had a Douglas Sirk melodrama season once and advertised it by showing the original 1940s pulsating, hand-wringing, twelve minute trailers. By the time the main feature was on you felt like you'd been through World War II.