Golden Fleece: BBC May Bank Holiday screening 2013

For those who've not picked up the DVD and have a few hours to spare waiting for the coverage of the Badminton Horse Trials to start, BBC2 have this lined up for broadcast on Monday 6th: Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece

Must've been a few years since this was last broadcast,

George

It was the May Bank Holiday Monday in 1978 - so 35 years and five days after its last airing! I like the fact that they do actually list it as a repeat!
Having seen (and been thrilled by) that original broadcast, I never thought that I'd have seen it on the big screen and actually own a copy (I couldn't have imagined DVD at the time - I might have just about believed I could have one day had a video-tape!) of it before it was shown again!

Oh, and a two star rating is unfairly low!

Thanks for flagging this up, george!

Ah, it is a bank holiday? I thought it was a bit of an odd day for this to be on. Thanks for flagging up the public holiday, it could've been very lonely in this office had I not been warned...

2-stars is a bit harsh. It is pleasent enough if only for the travelogue.

George

Well, you'll be best served if you check...!
I'm not the person to ask, as I'm used to working Saturdays and having Mondays off as a matter of course, plus in Scotland where I grew up, Bank Holidays and Public Holidays didn't always coincide - I only saw the original broadcast because I was off school sick, not because it was a holiday...!

Thanks very much for this. Looking forward to it. I remember the book back in the 70s at school. Haven't yet got the DVD, so this is one film that's going to remain on the Sky+ box.

TV Choice magazine has rated it 3 stars which is one star short of "Excellent". At least their critics know good quality films.

Even better, it's also being shown on the BBC 2 HD channel, for those of us who have high definition televisions. Could this mean a Blu-ray from the BFI is in the works for Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece or are the BBC simply upscaling the old DVD? And they had better show it in its correct aspect ratio...

Another possibility is that the BBC will have sourced the high definition version prepared for the French Blu-Ray from the distributor, and re-synched it with the English soundtrack.
Don’t know what aspect ratio that was released in, Amazon.fr just lists it as “Cinemascope”, which can be anything between 2.35:1 and 2.66:1, I think, but suggests that it would be delivered in a cropped format, were this to be the source.

The booklet that accompanies the BFI DVD claims it was transferred in "high definition from the best available pre-print 35mm film elements", so that suggests the BFI have a high definition copy which was scaled down to standard quality for the DVD release. I don't know if that's the source of the print the BBC is using.


The booklet also states the film's original aspect ratio was 1.66:1, an early widescreen format favoured in the UK & Europe. On a 16:9 screen it's displayed with a thin vertical bar on either side, so the BBC may crop it to accommodate (depending on their policy, I suppose).

It was actually the Blu-Ray itself about which I was musing, as it appears to have been letterboxed to "Cinemascope", without saying what ratio was used, in which case the broadcast ratio may be a decision which is out of the BBC's hands...