Tideland Round Up

Okay then, here's a round up of Tideland news.

I never did receive the copy I was promised from Revolver. After all of the publicity they've recieved over the last week or so from my campaigning, I'm surprised.

Despite initial reports to the contrary, it seems that the Canadian release is faulty too.

Phil Stubbs' Dreams page have been running a forum on the issue. Phil is a good man and has done a lot to support Tideland, and Gilliam in general.

Aint it Cool, Cinematical, Davis DVD and The Digital Bits ran big pieces on ThinkFilm's faux pas, and were kind enough to link back here so that readers might get the full force of my ranting. I have to thank Drew McWeeny in particular for his forceful and effective piece.

Quick Stop Entertainment have published a new statement from Terry Gilliam himself. I'll post it below, but sadly, he appears to have been miseld again. He believes the North American discs are all simply unmatted presentations, whereas it has now been demonstrated to me that they do suffer notable cropping on the right and left sides of the picture. Why people are lying to Gilliam or feeding him bad info, I do not know. Shameful.

Don't forget, by the way, to get your R2 UK Tideland disc from Revolver. And if you speak to them, let them know I'm still waiting for the copy I was promised months ago. I'll review it all nicely and everything.

Here's Terry...

I'm embarrassed! Having been assured that the Canadian DVD was the correct format, I now discover I was completely misled.

What was I thinking? Why hadn't I jumped a plane and flown to Toronto to buy a Tideland DVD on the 1st day of sales? I would have known the truth before opening my big mouth. What a fool!!! I can begin to see why Stanley Kubrick went a bit whacko trying to keep an eye on every print of his films in every far-flung corner of the globe... and he had a full-time guy doing the legwork.

Any volunteers?

What I recommend for all the owners of the North Americamn Tideland DVD is to get a roll of wide black tape... sorry, before you do that, go out and buy a dozen more copies of the DVDs and pass them out to your friends, then... pause the disc at the Capri Films logo when it flares out into a blue sky. What you see is the correct proportion of 2.35:1. Then, unrolling the tape, mask off the black areas on the screen above and below. If you want to leave a little bit more space top and bottom of the logo you will end up with the UK proportion. Then you should just sit back and enjoy. All the information left to right is there. There was no panning and scanning. Just stupidity.

-Terry

p.s. Check next day to see how many of your friends will still look you in the eye. They are the people you should be spending time with. F*ck the others!