Wazzles said:

I just today bought the fullscreen DVD of An American Tail. Does anyone know if this is open matte or pan and scan?

Open matte. The official widescreen transfers (Region 2 DVD, HDTV airings, Blu-Ray) have almost no extra picture on the sides.

Actually, the widescreen versions have always looked a bit tight to me, I am still not sure whether the official widescreen transfers are all zoomed in too much, or if that's how tight the framing actually was in theaters.

The open-matte transfer is likely still zoomed a bit just to hide the edges of cels and stuff like that, but for it's odd for the widescreen to have essentially NO extra picture on the sides in comparison. I've seen 35mm frames of The Fox and the Hound, The Great Mouse Detective, etc., with cel garbage at the edges of the frames that you don't see in official 4:3 transfers. And I know I have seen widescreen transfers - e.g., the HD airings of The Land Before Time - that have a little extra picture on the sides even with less on the top and bottom. With widescreen transfers they don't have to worry about exposing the top/bottom crap so extra stuff can be shown on the sides. I wonder why An American Tail never has extra image on the sides...maybe someone needs to find a 35mm print.