Although I stress I am not objecting to the content, I am requesting that TPL remove one specific pressing of Lost Highway (DVD) from its collection.
Sample TPL barcode: 37131 139 439 715 (YO)
Item UPC: 7 74212 00703 3
Item number on disc: 75490
Lost Highway is a now-almost-forgotten curiosity by David Lynch. I saw it when it came out – at the Capitol Theatre at Yonge and Eglinton, where Sharon Stone later saw it (Toronto Star, 1997.03.07) – and felt I understood it for five full minutes after I left the theatre.
Lynch is known to be a control freak in home-video versions of his films. Until recently he wouldn’t allow chapter stops on the principle that movies don’t have chapters.
The Universal Studios DVD release of Lost Highway is considered close to canonical. It uses the full 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is treated well in an online comparison of nearly every DVD release of Lost Highway save for the one I’m complaining about here.
I gather TPL recently added this rendering of Lost Highway to its collection. I say that due to the unscuffed condition of the case and disc and the fact it has a StingRay tag instead of an RFID. Presumably the disc arrived via ARP, or a selector saw it as a rerelease and bought it.
It’s a disaster.
It looks like a bootleg but probably isn’t. It’s issued by the conglomerate that now basically owns the Canadian film industry, eOne. (So this is the kind of thing we can look forward to.)
It was clearly digitized from a videotape. Here, a broadcast-quality videotape, possibly in PAL. Do not be deceived by the terminology. “Broadcast-quality” does not mean “high-quality.” I’m talking about a standard-definition tape in 4 × 3 aspect ratio with at most 525 lines of resolution. There’s a white line running down the left side of the image throughout, and at several points a part of the image shears to the side for a moment, consistent with videotape playback.
It’s a pan-and-scan DVD of a “widescreen” movie, which should disqualify it right there.
You get French opening titles even if you select English. (And they’re clearly post-facto, hacked-together French titles.) Actually, the issue here is wildly nonstandard DVD authoring. One of my devices wouldn’t play it; another gave me French titles and English audio; a third revealed that the language of opening titles is handled by the DVD angles feature instead of branching (the correct method). Just at a technical authoring level the disc is substandard.
To sum up what I am trying to tell you here: A lush widescreen movie by a notoriously exacting director is presented in the resolution of a late-night TV broadcast from the ’90s. It barely works in DVD players.
Watch it for yourself on a widescreen device. Notice that you don’t get a widescreen picture. Now buy a copy of the Universal DVD release and compare. (I haven’t.)
We are not talking about a feature film or TV show shot on video or any other moving image where there is only a low-resolution, TV-aspect-ratio version to start with in the first place. Here we are dealing with a slipshod pressing and an adulteration of a significant work of cinema.
This pressing is substandard in terms of technical and picture quality. Remove it from the collection. Replace it with the Universal Studios DVD release, which is still in print and commercially orderable. The result will be this: TPL will stock a version of Lost Highway that people can actually stand to watch and that will actually function in their players.
The precedent I would note here is from 2010: CFA: 100 Success Secrets – 100 Most-Asked Questions was deemed not to live up to its billing as a preparation for a financial exam (“Book purports to be a test preparation but is useless for that purpose”). This pressing purports to be a DVD of Lost Highway but is useless for that purpose.
I would never in a million years argue for the removal of library materials due to content. Right-wing assholes do that, and I’m not one of those. (And the items to which they object tend to be important to me.) I’m the one who keeps petitioning the library to add more items, not remove them.
So I must ask that, in reporting this request for reconsideration of an item, you clearly note that the patron has no objection to the content. In fact, I’m a fan of the movie, even if, like most people, I barely understand it.
Posted: 2013.02.04