Oh good! I can't remember most of the tracks used, but there's one inparticular that stands out, Fernando by Abba on the season finale, please tell me that's on there?
Oh yes, just watched
Water Park, and it includes both Beck's
Mixed Bizness and ABBA's
Fernando in their original versions! So no hassle there whatsoever!
It's true that it's mostly a straight port of the American DVDs. The menus and title sequence (mostly - some adapted to widescreen) are in 4:3, and then the screen switches to 16:9 for the episodes.
I'm not too sure about the widescreen format though. To quote Beck, indeed
mixed business. I mean, it really looks great, but it's also sometimes very revealing as far as black panels blocking or deflecting lights ('flag' or 'French flag' as they are called) are concerned. It looks like the disc editors sometimes rather haphazardly blotted out some parts left and right with black patches that would otherwise reveal light stands and the like. It would have taken an expensive Spielberg- or George Lucas-type approach with digitally created bits of sets and backdrops to get rid of these artefacts, and that's understandably beyond the manufacturer-distributors' means.
I watched the pilot again (by the way, Disc 1 includes
both the extended pilot (in 4:3), and the 'normal' pilot, in 16:9!), and indeed, as Bryan Cranston shows in the special feature on Disc 3, you see director Todd Holland guiding Craig Lamar Traylor (Stevie) through his stop-start dialogues, you see the light stands and French flag in the Krelboyne class, and the crew member on the right in the final shot with Malcolm on the trash can. It sure is distracting!
So, it's a really great package, wonderful to have it, many thanks to Fabulous, but I don't know about the widescreen. A general rule of thumb for me is, don't mess with the original intentions of the filmmakers. Don't colorize what was black-and-white originally, don't turn 'flat' movies into 3D, don't add digital effects that weren't there (other than image restoration, getting rid of scratches and such), don't add new soundtracks to make old movies more 'trendy' etc.
As all the set-up, blocking (positioning of the actors), camera angles, editing and other postproduction for MITM were done for 4:3, it looks really amateurish when it turns into widescreen sometimes, which is a shame as MITM truly has excellent cinematography, brilliant angles, perspectives, lensing, you name it!
Rich
P.S. Great, as someone noted, to have the English subtititles for all foreign fans! (Officially, they are for the 'HOH - 'hard of hearing' as the back insert reads). I hope this will be continued for the other seasons!
Crew member's intrusive hands pushing Stevie's wheelchair in episode Rollerskates
. OMG! Shots like these will lead to many undeserved goofs in the Internet Movie Database.