can anyone confirm that these titles are open matte/academy ratio?

Rescuers, The (1977) [1399 AS]
Rescuers, The (1977) [1399 CS]

Rescuers Down Under, The (1990) [1142 AS]
Rescuers Down Under, The (1990) [1142 CS]

i find the dvd to be a decent remaster, wish they would have left the colors intact and included an optional mono mix.
i'm never buying it on blu-ray, not after the "disney enhanced home theatre" mixes of the lion king, aladdin, beauty and the beast and, the little mermaid.
the audio mixes suck.

elie

With rare exception there is no such thing as "open matte" for an animated film as well put together as a Disney movie. They don't spend millions of dollars on paint you're not intended to see, they don't have the best talent in the world composing things at 4:3 just to cover them with a 16:9 matte. USUALLY.

Its not like a live action movie shot in Panavision where the viewfinder shows you the widescreen portion of the scene while the film captures everything outside of it on a 4:3 frame.

We've talked a lot about Lady and the Tramp, which was actually shot twice at two different ratios for this very reason.

The Rescuers Down Under was always wide throughout its creation since it was a digital-era production. Therefore, any LD is either going to be P&S or letterbox. There is no "open matte" of Down Under.

The original The Rescuers...this is unknown to me. Some say it was made 4:3 and cropped for the theater, some say the opposite. I have Rescuers, The (1977) [1399 AS] and could watch it again to look for obvious P&S-ing, but I'm not sure if there is any other way to tell without having access to a print other than just guessing from the way the frame is filled. If the camera does that nauseating side-to-side thing AND it looks like the tops of people's heads are cut off then I guess its possibly matted *and* P&Sed, the worst of both worlds. I don't have the DVD/BR for comparison.

i was wondering why the cav versions are listed as academy ratio.

Ah, so you just need to know of the ratio is any different on the CAV versions. I'd guess no, but I can't say for sure since I don't have both. They are probably P&Sed. Disney wasn't doing much letterbox back then.

I'm fairly certain the first WS laserdisc release of a Disney animated movie in the US was the Beauty and the Beast: WIP in 1992 followed shortly thereafter with Beauty and the Beast in 1993.

Before that, I wouldn't be surprised if they were using the same P&S transfers they used for the VHS releases for the LDs.

i know about the letterbox ld's, there is a letterbox version of the little mermaid in japan.
guess the lddb has a bug on listing "academy ratio" on cav disney ld's.

It's not a bug so much as it is just nobody knowing what the correct ratio of these movies were.

oh, okay.
i was wondering.

note to admin or laserbite34: this topic is ready to be locked and awaits deletion or trimmed to only the essential/important info.
thank you