The best 'political movie'?

There's nothing idiotic about hating colorization. How would you like it if you created some piece of artwork, and then along came some fast-buck scammer who decided to change it into something he liked, without giving you any say in the matter, and completely destroying what you had done? Consider:

(1) Colorization is not real color: it's a computer-generated fake that cannot, because of the very fact that it is mechanical and not natural, capture the true depths of actual color.

(2) Colorizers almost never know what the actual colors of the objects in a movie were. Most of the colors they add are their own whims and opinions and have no relation to the real color of most objects in a film. Even in those very few cases where they know an object's true color, they can never create it artificially so that it exactly matches the actual color.

(3) When a film is made in black & white, it's lighted in ways designed to enhance that form of cinematography. It's not simply shot as if it were in color, which is an entirely different art form requiring its own special lighting, filters and other techniques and equipment. Also, sets, costumes and other items are specifically designed to be shot in b&w, just as they're designed differently to be filmed in color. This means that, aside from all its other problems, you're trying to "layer over" fake color on top of a film specifically designed to be photographed in b&w. You simply cannot do this so that it looks authentic. It is not technologically possible, no matter what so-called "advances" they make in colorization.

(4) Colorizers don't bother coloring objects they think actually were black or white, which gives such objects an entirely different depth that makes them stand out (badly) amidst the phony colors in the rest of a scene. Also, they cannot color small or distant objects in their natural detail, or at all: for example, leaves on trees are just smeared a uniform, inexact green; there is no variation, depth, or individualization of color, as occurs in nature. Faraway objects are usually not colorized at all, just left in b&w, or at best are broadly dabbed some generic color that's completely unreal.

(5) Lastly, a b&w film conveys and entirely different feel, a different sense, than a color film (just as a color film conveys a different mood to a b&w one). Black & white is a more intimate medium, specifically designed and used to give a different mood and tone to a film. It isn't just a color film shot in b&w. By colorizing it, aside from all its other falsehoods and drawbacks, you're destroying much of what the movie was about and intended to convey to the viewer. You're not just "adding color": you're changing the film into something entirely different.

But, if you think colorizing a movie is great, then what about making other changes? Already we've had the music soundtrack to some movies changed at the whim of somebody who wanted another kind of music in it. We've had people cut out parts of films and replace those sections with new footage they've shot. We've had objects, and even people, digitally added, or worse, even changed into other people or objects using computers. (Spielberg, who hates colorization, did that to E.T.) Dialogue has been altered to suit someone's sensibilities or opinions. Where do you stop? If you claim colorization is acceptable, even necessary, then why not all these other changes? Let anyone do whatever they want, to someone else's work, or even their own. What's the point of even making a film if you get to screw around with it any way you want?

You mention watching the old Batman TV show (not "Batman and Robin") on a b&w TV. It didn't look right because it was in color, and color doesn't look good in b&w. Well, the reverse is also true: b&w doesn't look good in color. This is obviously something that never occurred to you.

If people like you can't stand watching a movie in b&w, then there's an easy answer: don't watch it. But you have no right to change it. The "idiots" aren't people who oppose colorization. It's people like you who have to have everything spoon-fed to them in color, who know or care nothing about black & white or the integrity and point of a b&w film, and who certainly don't care that the so-called "color" you get in a colorized movie is fake, inaccurate, incomplete and bears no relation to reality, who are the idiots. The notion that you have to colorize a movie to get some morons to watch it is ridiculous, but even if it's so, it doesn't justify colorization.

And by the way, not only is the "color" seen in the old colorized videocassette version of Advise & Consent garish, pale and inaccurate, but that print isn't even in the film's original widescreen format. It's panned and scanned, meaning you're only seeing about half the full picture to begin with. Of course, as someone who can't watch any b&w film unless it's been smeared with fake "colors", you'd probably prefer to lose half of every scene rather than having to watch the complete widescreen version with those "black bars" at top and bottom.