"The Cooler" - Anamorphic or not?
 

I just rented this and it is absolutely NOT anamorphic. Is my local video place renting bootlegs or is every place advertising this as anamorphic simply wrong? Not a big deal for me as it was a rental... but if I had purchased this I would be very unhappy. I go out of my way to avoid new non-anamorphic widescreen releases.

It is anamorphic.

My R1 Canada copy is anamorphic. 5.1 too.

Yep, it's anamorphic.

Weird. I guess he really IS renting boot... Well, maybe they're non-anamorphic "foreign imports" he got off fleabay.

With DTS ;)

anamorphic

maybe this person rents from the same place.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...40#post2212140

Well, I guess that explains it. Places I checked (DVD Empire and Amazon) show the AR as 1.85:1. On my system anamorphic 1.85:1 disks fill the screen while non-anamorphic disks in that ratio look about like 2.35:1 anamorphic should look. So the AR listed on these sites is in error and the correct AR is 2.35:1... right?
Thanks for the link to that thread.

Did the picture look stretched?

The legit disc is definitely anamorphic.

How was the transfer, other than being letterboxed?

A lot of times boots will be non-anamorphic (although I don't know why, as any DVD authoring programme will be able to encode the 16:9 enhanced stream).

Anyway, I'd re-think my rental habits. Have you tried Netflix?

Originally posted by jough
How was the transfer, other than being letterboxed?

IIRC it was OK. Not great, not awful... average.

Anyway, I'd re-think my rental habits. Have you tried Netflix?
I do netflix but usually reserve it for hard to find discs or TV sets/miniseries, especially in the summer when broadcast TV is, IMO, a total waste.

Anyway, I still don't know what happened here. If the AR of The Cooler is 1.85:1 as the sites I checked said, then it was indeed non-anamorphic. However, if the AR is 2.35:1 as indicated in another forum then the disc I had is anamorphic and the sites were wrong. Has to be one or the other. Can anyone verify the AR?

2.35:1 according to imdb.com (and my disc is 2.35:1).

My Disc is 2.35:1 and it's anamorphic!

Yeah, it's 2.35:1 anamorphic.

Anamorphic doesn't have to do with the ratio as much as the encoding (well, okay, the ratio has to be larger than 1.33:1).

It entails "squeezing" a wider frame vertically into a 1.33:1 frame, and then unsqueezing it on playback.

An anamorphic playback will not have black bars as part of the image - they'll be generated by the player. In a non-anamorphic widescreen image, the black bars will be part of the picture information - they'll be stored as bits in the data stream.

The easiest way for me to tell the encoding and ratio of a disc is to pop it into my computer - DVD Master (a little shareware programme) will tell you the average bitrate, ratio, and whether a disc is anamorphic or not.

Thanks all who posted the correct AR.
Jough, I know what anamorphic is. As I tried to explain previously, my widescreen does not automatically display the correct AR for non anamorphic discs, I have to know what it is to correctly set it manually. If I get incorrect AR from a website incorrect conclusions are drawn. :blush:

Ah, gotcha.

So you didn't get a bootleg after all, eh?

My copy of the dvd is 1.85:1 and says it OAR.

Kinyo,

If it's really 1.85:1 it's not the legit R1 release.

Are you sure the actual transfer is 1.85 or were you just reading the back of the box (which is incorrect)?

The back of the box says 1.85:1.

Yes, I know. The box is incorrect, as I stated above.

The transfer is 2.35:1, which is the OAR. The DVD is correct - the box is mis-labeled.

I know this is not the right thread - but, I can't seem to start a new one... Does anyone know the difference between The Cooler: Unrated and The Cooler: Rated?

Thanks,

D

Hmm... couldn't tell you, as there's only one version of the DVD.

No idea what you're talking about, son.

The Cooler Director's Cut (Unrated) is now only available on Video on Demand on Digital Cable and probably also on Satellite as Pay per view.

It is only available as edited R-rated version on DVD.

I have watched both the edited DVD version and the Unrated version.

The differences that I noticed are as follows:

1. The first sex scene is more explicit, you actually will see Maria Bello grabs William H. Macy's private.

2. Another sex scene is also more explicit, you will see William H. Macy going down between Maria Bello's legs and we also see her pubic area.

The total cut time probably about 15-30 seconds.

FWIW Easy, you can usually tell if the aspect ratio is set incorrectly by looking for circles - clock faces and wheels are the most common. If they look warped, you know you are viewing the movie with the wrong AR settings.