Hello,
First time poster. Doubleofive alerted me to this thread, and I thought I'd add some thoughts. For whatever reason, I'm obsessed with aspect ratios. I also worked as a projectionist for years, and I picked up a lot of useless trivia in that time. Hope I can help.
First off, in regards to the list at hand, here's what I've come up with:
Grand Budapest Hotel: Uses 1.33, 1.85 and 2.39 to differentiate time periods
Dr. Strangelove: This one is weird. It was originally 1.66 theatrically, but for home video it had "variable aspect ratios" at Stanley Kubrick's request. Much has been written about this, but I handled a print myself, and it's quite clear that the variable AR version is just open matte to 1.33, and some of the footage was hard matted in camera. You also see boom mic's and fuzzy-edged gates, etc. It's clear to me that the film was originally intended to be shown in 1.66 throughout. Then again, Kubrick says it wasn't. So take that as you will. The Blu-ray has opted to go back to the constant ratio though.
In regards to the second list, I think that's a good idea, but I also think that some restraint might be good. Including all movies that have been shown open matte is basically the HD equivalent of including movies that have been panned and scanned. It's standard operating procedure to make a 1.78 master of 2.39 movies that were shot in Super 35 or HD. It would be a really long and kind of pointless list, because most times, they're only shown on TV, and not even the filmmakers themselves have watched them.
On the other hand, I do think that it would be very beneficial to have a list of movies with aspect ratios which were changed either theatrically or on home video for creative reasons. And there are a lot of those.
In reply to some stuff mentioned in the thread:
I'm pretty sure the Imax ratio for Apollo 13 was 1.44 theatrically. They did this for Attack of the Clones as well, but I think that was 1.78. I heard they actually recomposited shots for that one.
Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol is 1.78 on Netflix. So you can see the Imax footage opened up a bit, although the 35mm footage is cropped.
Avatar was really weird. Cameron composed for 2.39, then realized that he preferred the added height for 3D. So the Imax version was windowboxed to 1.78. the 2D version was 2.39. But for standard theaters showing the movie in 3D, 2 versions were sent out. One was 2.39 and one was 1.85. Theaters were told to use whichever version would produce the largest image, depending on the screen masking. Then for home video, he decided that the movie looked best at 1.78 regardless of 2D or 3D.
Titanic went through a similar (if simplified) process for its 3D release. Shot in Super 35, it was originally composed for 2.39. This is how it was presented in regular 3D theaters. But in Imax, it was opened up to 1.78. On the Blu, the 2D version is 2.39, and the 3D version is 1.78.
bigrob, is the changing AR on the Catching Fire Blu confirmed? I heard that the European release would have both, but the American release was going to be 2.39 throughout.
There are a number of other movies like Prometheus that were 2.39 in regular theaters and 1.90 in Imax. The ones I know of are:
Skyfall
Oblivion
I, Frankenstein
Hope this helps.
