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| Special Features: |
Animated, Color, Closed-captioned, Box set
56 classic animated shorts restored and re-mastered to its original form (contains all the shorts from The Premiere Collection)
Disc 1 - Best of Bugs Bunny
14 Cartoons (8 with commentary, 3 with music-only track): Baseball Bugs, Rabbit Seasoning, Long-Haired Hare, High Diving Hare, Bully for Bugs, What's Up Doc?, Rabbit's Kin, Water, Water Every Hare, Big House Bunny, Big Top Bunny, My Bunny Lies over the sea, Wabbit Twouble, Ballot Box Bunny, Rabbit of Seville
Extras: A Greeting from Chuck Jones, Vintage documentary "Camera Three: The Boys Termite Terrace (Part 1)." New Behind-the-Tunes Featurettes: "A Rabbit For All Seasons," "Short-Fuse Shootout," "Forever Befuddled." Bonus Cartoons: "Blooper Bunny," "Bugs Bunny at the Movies (with commentary). Excerpts from The Bugs Bunny Show: "My Dream is Yours," "Two Guys From Texas." Vaults: "A Star is Bored." Bridging sequences: "The Astro Nuts Audio Recording Sessions with Mel Blanc." Trailer and still gallery
Disc 2 - Best of Daffy & Porky
14 Cartoons (5 with commentary, 4 with music-only track): Duck Amuck, Dough for the Do-Do, Drip-Along Daffy, Scaredy Cat, The Ducksters, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Yankee Doodle Daffy, Porky Chops, Wearing of the Grin, Deduce, You Say, Boobs in the Woods, Golden Yeggs, Rabbit Fire, Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century
Extras: Vintage documentary "Camera Three: The Boys Termite Terrace (Part 2)." New Behind-the-Tunes Featurettes: "Hard Luck Duck," "Porky Pig Roast," "Animal Quackers." Stills gallery
Disc 3 - Looney Tunes All Stars
14 Cartoons (7 with commentary, 1 with music-only track): Elmer's Candid Camera, Bugs Bunny and The 3 Bears, Fast and Furry-ous, Hair-Raising Hare, The Awful Orphan, Haredevil Hare, For Scent-imental Reasons, Frigid Hare, The Hypo-Chondri-Cat , Baton Bunny, Feed the Kitty, Don't Give Up The Sheep, Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, Tortoise Wins By A Hare
Extras: Documentary "Toon Heads: The Lost Cartoons." New Behind-the-Tunes Featurettes: "Too Fast, Too Furry-ous," "Merrie Melodies: Carl Stalling and Cartoon Music," "Blanc Expressions." From the Vaults: "Hair-Raising Hare Schematics," "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat Schematics." Still gallery
Disc 4 - Looney Tunes All Stars
14 Cartoons (6 with commentary, 3 with music-only track): Canary Row, Bunker Hill Bunny, Kit for Cat, Putty Tat Trouble, Bugs and Thugs, Canned Feud, Lumber Jerks, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety's S.O.S., Foghorn Leghorn, The, Daffy Duck Hunt, Early to Bet, Broken Leghorn, Devil May Hare
Extras: New documentary "Irreverent Imagination: The Golden Age of Looney Tunes." New Behind-the-Tunes Featurettes: "Needy for Speedy," "Putty Problems and Canary Rows," "Southern Pride Chicken." From the Vaults: "Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid," "Virgil Ross Pencil Tests." Stills gallery
Number of discs: 4
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| Video Format: |
Full Frame (1.33:1)
[SS-DL]
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| Languages: |
English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
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| Subtitles: |
English, Spanish, French
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| Captions: |
Yes
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| Casing: |
4-Disc Fold-out Case
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For years Warner Bros. Animation unjustly played second fiddle in prestige to the larger budget competition at Disney and MGM. However, the collection of brilliant animators holed up in the "Termite Terrace" (the affectionate name for the unassuming building housing the animators) churned out hundreds of classic animated shorts with
a unique style, aggressive humor and timing that would later be known as the "Warner style" of animation. Among the animation legends that worked under the Warner roof were Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, and of course the great Chuck Jones. Whole generations grew up on these shorts, and Warner Animation would eventually churn out over 1,000 of them. They included some of the most famous characters ever created, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner and Wiley Coyote, Marvin the Martian and my personal favorite Yosemite Sam.
Scenes from the Chuck Jones masterpiece "Rabbit of Seville"
In what is no doubt the first in a long line of "Looney Tunes" collections coming down the pipe (already there is a "Looney Tunes Premiere Collection" that
contains 28 shorts that are all included in this 56-shorts "Golden Collection"), someone at Warner had the impossible task of picking just 56 of these
animated shorts in an archive of over 1,100 to comprise this landmark box set. Needless to say Warner is using this as a pilot program of sorts, as the
collection is fairly incoherent in its seemingly random compilation. Nearly half of the films included are directed by Chuck Jones, with none from Tex Avery
or Frank Tashlin, and there are plenty of classics missing, including the Oscar-winning "Knighty Knight, Bugs," "What's Opera Doc," and "One Froggy Evening"
(a shocker considering the star later became the WB mascot). Still, it would be trivial to complain about omissions in a collection that includes just 56 shorts.
Everyone's bound to be upset about one of his or her favorites missing. Kudos to Warner Bros. for even attempting something this ambitious, as they've painstakingly
(and wonderfully) restored all 56 of these classic shorts. For anyone who grew up watching Looney Tunes (and just who among you weren't introduced to classical music
through them?), it's the perfect start to what will hopefully be the first of many more Looney Tunes collections to come.
Though the release of this 4-disc box set conveniently falls just a couple of weeks before "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" hits theaters (November 14th),
animation fans should be rejoicing. This collection of 56 of the best animated shorts in the Warner Bros. Animation archive is the first in what will hopefully be
a long line of Looney Tunes collections on DVD. Fully restored and completely uncut, the collection includes many of the all-time animated classics, from the
early years to several of Chuck Jones's greatest masterpieces "The Rabbit of Seville," "Duck Amuck," and "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century."
As expected there are several major omissions (how can there not be when you're taking selecting 56 shorts in a collection of over 1,100), but kudos to Warner for tackling
this ambitious project. There is a huge collection of extra features that cleverly accompany each of the four discs, including selected commentary tracks, and a boat-load
of featurettes.
Picture Quality: 8/10
All of the shorts are presented in 1.37:1 full frame format, obviously. The video has been restored very nicely from the older footage, which was really looking washed out and lacking in color. They were taking on that look of a picture that had been exposed to the sun for too long, where the colors look bleached. Everything is darker and much more solid in this restored footage.
The one thing they didn't get is all of dust on the cells and lenses. There are some really annoying instances where you can see dust filaments moving around the screen, especially in an episode with a dark background. "Scaredy Cat" was the worst offender of the bunch, since it takes place in a dark house.
Sound Quality: 7/10
The set is available in English and French Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, with subtitles in English, Spanish and French.
As you can imagine, this video is all in mono and it's all center channel, which is fine in almost every instance, but some of the skits involving music, like "Rabbit of Seville," really needed the front channel. It's too bad they couldn't fudge some kind of stereo audio for the musical segments.
But for the most part, the audio is very good. You can hear everything clearly without any hiss or distortion that might plague a recording this old. It's free of any static and there's a decent range of high and mid-range audio, with the low-end understandably lacking.
It's quite good for what it is.
Easter Eggs:
None found.
Extra Features: 9/10
The set comes in a four-disc digipak, listing all of the titles on the opposite sides of the disc holders. In addition to listing the titles, it also lists who does the commentary track.
Twenty-six of the 56 cartoons have an audio commentary, either by animation historians Michael Barrier and Jerry Beck, filmmaker Greg Ford, or actor Stan Freberg. Also, 12 of the tracks have a music-only audio track that lets you enjoy the action with the music.
The audio commentaries are quite interesting and as unique as each episode. For example, on "Speedy Gonzalez" Beck discusses an earlier incarnation of Speedy and his banishment from television for a short period until Mexican-Americans demanded his return.
All four discs have a still photo gallery. Disc one has a greeting from the late Chuck Jones, who passed away in February 2002. There is The Boys from Termite Terrace, a 1975 documentary with extensive interviews with Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng, discussing the origins of the animation unit. There's three shorts in the Behind-the-Tunes menu; A Rabbit For All Seasons, Forever Befuddled and Short-Fuse Shootout plus excerpts from The Bugs Bunny Show and a recording session with Mel Blanc.
Disc two has the second part of The Boys Termite Terrace plus featurettes in Behind-the-Tunes called Hard Luck Duck and Porky Pig Roast, which discusses Daffy and Porky, respectively. Animal Quackers is a comical look at the relationship between the two toons.
Disc three contains the documentary Toon Heads: The Lost Cartoons, a Cartoon Network special looking at some very early and very rare cartoons, some of which never aired. The Behind-the-Tunes featurettes this time are Too Fast, Too Furry-ous (brilliant title) that looks at the Road Runner/Coyote feud. Merrie Melodies: Carl Stalling and Cartoon Music discusses the role of music in the toons and Blanc Expressions is a look at Mel Blanc, mostly told by his son. From the Vaults shows the storyboards for "Hair-Raising Hare Schematics" and "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat Schematics."
Disc four features the documentary Irreverent Imagination: The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, a fifty-minute look at the Looney Tunes. The Behind-the-Tunes featurettes this time are Needy for Speedy, which looks at Speedy Gonzalez but never addresses the Cartoon Network controversy, Putty Problems and Canary Rows looks at the Tweety Bird character and Southern Pride Chicken is a look at Foghorn Leghorn.
That should be all of them. There's a lot, more extras than cartoons, I think. Maybe future sets will be more focused on the cartoons and less on the history. They seem to have gotten a lot of historical stuff out of their system with this release.
The Final Word:
Animation fans should be rejoicing. This collection of 56 of the best animated shorts in the Warner Bros. Animation archive is the first in what will hopefully be
a long line of Looney Tunes collections on DVD (already there is a budget "Premiere Collection" which essentially contains half of what's included in the "Golden Collection).
Fully restored and completely uncut, the collection includes many of the all-time animated classics, from the
early years to several of Chuck Jones's greatest masterpieces "The Rabbit of Seville," "Duck Amuck," and "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century."
As expected there are several major omissions (how can there not be when you're taking selecting 56 shorts in a collection of over 1,100), but kudos to Warner for tackling
this ambitious project. There is a huge collection of extra features that cleverly accompany each of the four discs, including selected commentary tracks, and a boat-load
of featurettes. A must have for any animation afficionado!
Stephen Wong
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