The simple explanation of how this came to be is that the film was shot to be displayed in 16:9.
There are two common film ratios, 4:3 or academy ratio (square, just like a regular TV) and 16:9 or widescreen (rectangular, like a HDTV). They can shoot widescreen two ways - with an anamorphic lens (which compresses the image to fit in a 4:3 frame to be uncompressed by a special lens upon showing) or 4:3 with the top and bottom cropped by a metal frame in the projector. There is still more stuff in the frame, you just can't see it at the theater. I believe that "The Break-up" was shot the latter way.
These sort of things happen occasionally. Remember "Pee Wee's Big Adventure?" The scene where Pee-Wee was endlessly pulling out the chain out of his bike tire well? Well, if you saw it on TV or on video tape, you saw the chain feed up through the bottom of the bike well. It was funny, but it was also a mistake. When they remastered it for DVD, they corrected how the scene was cropped. Ditto for "Twilight" with Reese Whitherspoon. The scene where Liev Schriver walks nude to the the door? If you saw it without the cropping frame, you'd see that he was wearing sweats that just showed a lotta asscrack.
Things like this make me wish I still worked at the theaters.
* This post has been modified
: 18 years ago