And this is why Wells's jeremiads piss me off so much. There are legitimate cases of aspect ratio mishandling, and where those exist, the cinephile community needs to speak up in protest. The Barry Lyndon thing wasn't the end of the world - at the end of the day, 1.66 and 1.78 aren't that different - but WB's position was clearly absurd on the merits and it needed to be pointed out.zedz wrote:And look what happened with Kubrick! Despite his obsessive concern for optimal projection, there's probably more confusion and contention over the aspect ratios of his films than for anybody else's - even when, as with Barry Lyndon, he spelled his position out with complete clarity.
Wells, however, repeatedly cries wolf, and does so in a willfully ignorant, stupid and belligerent manner. Besides completely discrediting himself individually, he's marginalizing the issue in general, to do his part to make sure that any time the issue comes up, more people's first reaction is "oh no, not this shit again". Or, even worse, he's helping to create an atmosphere where actual expertise is denigrated and ignored; his repeated personal attacks on Bob Furmanek especially have been downright defamatory.