AMC – TV for Movie Sheeple
~ or ~
Little things mean a lot (like your IQ)
Whether you saw it in a commercial, heard it in a song, or it was
told to you by your mother on Mother’s Day (when you forgot to get her a
card, so you wrote “I Love You” on a piece of toilet paper in the bathroom
at the McDonald’s where you took her for brunch), you’ve probably heard the
old expression “little things mean a lot” at some point in your life. What
you probably didn’t know, though, was that this familiar colloquial
expression was changed from its original wording during the turbulent civil
rights era of the 1960s.
You see, the original expression actually said: “little black things
mean a lot.”
And, no, I don’t have any actual facts to back up this outlandish
proposition, but I swear it has to be true because of something I saw on
The Disney Channel late one night…
…That is, the ORIGINAL Disney Channel – not the “new” "Disney"
Channel.
I used to watch The Disney Channel in the middle of the
night, because it was the only time when Michael Fidel Eisner wasn’t watching.
Real Americans with whom I’ve spoken were universally delighted that the
Marxist fuck never knew what the hell was going out over his airwaves. But…
…Beginning in 2003, all that changed.
You see, the middle of the night used to be the only time you got
to see Walt (my he rest in peace at -273°C), himself, educating young
and old Americans in their nation’s history, its traditions, its cultural
heritage and its dreams and vision for a better tomorrow secured through
the principles of hard work, loyalty, honor and unapologetic TRUTH
before the age of the Extreme Left’s rampant “Political Correctness” (aka:
“Newspeak – the ‘New’ Fascism that’s exactly the same as the ‘Old’ Fascism”)
made these ideals a thing of the past on network television…
…But that’s not why I’m writing today.
I’ll cover what has happened to the real Disney vision in a future
article. I’m writing today about those “little black things” and why they
mean so much to this country… That and why the AMC (American Movie Classics)
TV’s motto of “TV for Movie People” is the single biggest crock of shit
since Michael Eisner decided to edit out those island natives being harmlessly
electrocuted on the deck of the Nautilus in Disney’s (the real
Disney’s) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea from all television airings
since 1990.
See? I was able to bring everything back on topic in only four
paragraphs. Not bad, huh?
These little black things (remember them?) mean a lot because
they define this nation’s perilous plunge into near oblivion every single
day, and, whether you choose to believe it or not, they can actually determine
whether you will understand a single thing you see on this webpage; for
I can actually tell how intelligent a person is by employing just one
simple question having to do with those little black things.
This question hasn’t a thing to do with one’s political affiliations,
quantum physics, or inverting the bell curve to accommodate the lowest common
denominator of your public school “educated” (read: “short bus worthy”)
children. No. It has to do with the not-so-recent phenomena of what’s known
as “letterboxing” – and it’s the key to saving Western Civilization as we
know it.
Now, this article isn’t intended as a film school/video transfer
tutorial, but…
When motion pictures are eventually broadcast on television, transferred
to videotape or Digital Versatile Disc (the “V” in “DVD” does NOT
stand for “video” damnit!), the film must be made to “fit” the television
screen because – Duh! – YOU’RE NOT WATCHING IT IN A MOVIE THEATER
ANYMORE, DUMB-ASS!
Okay, so this rant’s not intended as a comprehensive tutorial on
the various “widescreen” formats used in motion pictures since Abel Gance’s
Napoleon in 1927 (yep, forget John Wayne’s The Big Trail or
The Bat Whispers, Gance had it in theaters first – sort of) but in
order for me to lay waste to your ignorant family, friends and neighbors,
you should have at least some working knowledge of why movies look the way
they do when they’re projected onto the big screen – and the small.
Film itself has undergone many transformations over the years,
and they keep throwing out newer formats and improvements every few years
– or at least they did, because digital should supplant film altogether
(save for a very few diehards within the motion picture industry) within
this single decade. Television, in fact, dictated the sweeping changes in
the way movies were filmed back in the 1950s (hence CinemaScope,
etc.), and it’s television that is ruining film again now.
You see, your TV just isn’t BIG enough in its inherent width
(be it the 80-year-old standard “4:3” dimension sets, or the recent 16:9
“pseudo-high definition” sets) to show a film at its full screen height
and simultaneously show its full width as it was projected
in a movie theater. These aspect ratios (meaning “width to height”) for your
television (meaning either the original TV standard of “1.33-to-1” or the
latest “1.78-to-1” sets) simply can’t handle all of the different film aspect
ratios used throughout the history of cinema.
Remember, this isn’t a film school tutorial, but…
Cinerama, Scanoscope, Todd-AO, Grandeur, CinemaScope, CinemaScope
55, MGM Camera 65, VistaVision, VistaVision 8 Perf, Superscope, Panavision,
Ultra Panavision, Super Panavision 70, Super Technirama 70, Techniscope,
SuperScope, Dimension 150, Cinemiracle… The list goes on and on and on, and
every one of ’em (except for VistaVision, which is still used in most “filmed”
special effects) is wider than your Philco’s screen is, bubby.
Movies you see on TV that were originally made in any of the above
processes were projected in theaters in a dizzying array of aspect ratios;
including, but not limited to: 2.76:1, 2.66:1, 2.60:1, 2.55:1, 2.50,
2.40, 2.35:1, 2.21:1, 2.20:1, 2.05:1, 2.00:1, 1.85:1, 1.66:1, 1.37:1 (just
don’t get me started on Super 35 and the 80/20 Split)… Well, you get the
picture – or maybe you don’t.
Now… Try converting any of the above numbers into the aforementioned
1.33:1 or 1.78:1 aspect ratios of the television currently sitting in your
living room.
Do it now.
Go ahead.
Don’t worry… I’ll wait.
Uh-huh… No matter how hard you try, there’s no way on this earth
that you can make a film fit to its original full width on most television
sets without having some “dead area” on your screen – meaning without horizontal
“little black things” appearing both above and below the original image.
And, as is increasingly the case nowadays with the 1.78:1 set upon which
you’re watching Battleground (1.37:1) or a rerun of Gilligan’s
Island (1.33:1) or some Euro-Widescreen travesty (1.66:1), some vertical
“dead space” that needs to be similarly filled utilizing two side-bordering
black or gray things… But let’s forget about the latter situation until I
can afford one, shall we? I mean, I’ve only got so much bandwidth to play
with, ya know?
And why is that (the black bars at the top and the bottom situation,
that is), you ask? Because…
YOU CAN’T FIT SOMETHING THAT’S WIDER THAN THE TELEVISION SCREEN
ON THE TELEVISION SCREEN WITHOUT MAKING THAT IMAGE’S OVERALL
HEIGHT SHORTER IN THE PROCESS, DUMB-ASS!
Because, if you do fit something that’s wider than the television
screen is in order to match the height of the television screen, you’re
going to have to lop off the sides of the original image to make that happen.
Translation?
UP TO 50% OF THE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE IMAGE IS GOING TO BE LOST
IN THE TRANSLATION, DUMB-ASS!
It’s called “pan and scan” technology, and it describes what some
minimum-wager on an editing console has done to Ben Hur to make it
look like it does (square, with characters speaking to thin air and then
the “camera” artificially moves [panning] across the landscape to see who
precisely they’re talking to [scanning] and/or why they’re ducking) when
it’s on The Family Channel.
It’s a completely artificial process meant to appease the pea-brains
of the short bus demographic.
It destroys the “framing” of the movie and ruins the director’s
vision. It is the work of Satan.
Jeezus, you inbred assholes… Walt Disney introduced what he called
“The Magic Screen” (i.e.: letterboxed) on his television program
in 1959(!) to show clips from Sleeping Beauty (which had been animated
and shot in Super Technirama 70, 2.35:1), so if a 1959 television audience
can get it, why the fuck can’t you?
And what, you may ask, does this have to do with the salvation
of our country, Walt Disney, and my innate ability to ascertain how smart
a person is?
And just what does this have to do with AMC TV, anyway?
Good questions, but you may wish to visit www.widescreen.org
before I address them so you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about
from a technical standpoint, because my “non tutorial” ends here.
*** ***
Now, on with the show…
Shit.
I forgot what I was going to say.
Shit.
Oh, yeah… AMC TV sucks – just like the adult diaper-wearing
technophobic-pinheads who now make up their “revised” demographics.
I know who you are. I know how you vote. I know how your children
will vote. You are a threat to Freedom’s gene pool and a disgrace to all
America by making the French look intelligent.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. *
You heard me. I don’t care if you’re just tuning in to catch Shane
for the sixty-fifth time, you are the reason I
now have to watch adult diaper and realty ads and sit through an insufferable
number of AMC self-promotional spots that constantly interrupt their “edited
for content” movies to tell me what station I’m watching at an alarming
FCC standard of 12.5 minutes every half hour! It’s worse than any spam e-mail!
At least there’s some “counter-terrorism measures” you can install on your
computer for that bullshit!
But on AMC TV, there is no respite. You just sit there, thinking
you’re getting an uncut movie – JUST LIKE YOU USED TO BE ABLE
TO ON AMC – but all you get is panned and scanned T-spam, instead! Die
you fucking in-need-of-potty-training-geriatric-freaks, you! Now I can only
find UNcut flicks on Turner (Turner Classic Movies). Please! The
sonofabitch used to be married to Hanoi Jane, for Christ’s sake!
Then again, he did make Gods and Generals and regularly
shows Blazing Saddles uncut and in its original Panavision widescreen
(2.35:1) format, so maybe divorcing the cunt allowed him to pull his head
out of his ass long enough to see what was going on with the talking monkeys
who now run AMC.
Either that, or all of my death threats finally got his attention.
Question is…
…Will they get YOURS?
* From the 1986 remake of The Fly shot in Academy Standard 1.85:1,
not the original 1958 Fox version shot in CinemaScope, 2.35:1 – just in
case you were wondering.
***
“Target. The only store in the world where you
have to buy panned and scanned music CDs.”
— Scott Wood of
Pryde Business Systems,
www.prydebiz.com