Playing By Heart (1998) - March 26, 2013

[Brosef78]

Originally Posted by Veronica Mars

I guess this release has never been out with the proper AR. I assume this info I grabbed from dvdcompare is mostly correct. I guess they never decided to fix the problem on dvd and it's not a surprise Echo Bridge wasn't going to make any effort.

It may be the choice of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. In 2001 he shot another Panavision film, "Life as a House", that had an aspect ratio of roughly 2:1 on DVD (the Univisium aspect ratio), which reportedly he approved. It could be that he shot both those films with an eye for cropping them to such (with widescreen DVDs on the rise but widescreen televisions not prominent as of yet), maybe that's why his past films that are shot in Panavision are presented in proper 2:35:1 (with the exception of "Sliver", if memory serves). Knowing this I asked Kevin Smith on his message board as to whether or not he'd allow Zsigmond to crop "Jersey Girl" for video since it was being shot in Panavision, pointing out that "Playing By Heart" and "Life as a House" were cropped. Smith responded that he wasn't aware that that was Zsigmond's M.O., and said he'd talk with him about it. I don't know what conspired but "Jersey Girl" appeared on DVD in its full widescreen glory, and hopefully on Blu-ray as well.