DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Looney Tunes - Golden Collection Volume Two (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). (2 Viewers)

[Craig S]

This was discussed on the first page of the thread, before all the Road Runner bashing got started...

 

[Mark Zimmer]

Ah yes, thanks. I skipped over that section completely. :b I don't expect we'll be seeing an exchange for that disc any more than for the misflagged Tom & Jerry disc.

 

[Chris Farmer]

Count me in as another fan of the Roadrunner cartoons. Always among my favorites as a kid, and when I worked at Six Flags AS a Looney Tune for two summers, Wile E. Coyote was always one of my best characters (along with Sylvester, I made a great Sylvester...).

 

[Mark Edward Heuck]

Dumb question, but on "The Heckling Hare," while performing the restoration, did they ever find the original "Here we go again!" ending that Leon Schlesinger had ordered cut, or is it still the abrupt "Fooled ya" ending we've always had?

 

[Patrick McCart]

It was most likely disposed of after cutting. There are exceptions for other cartoons (Hare Ribbin', for example, actually got out to a few theaters before being replaced with an "improved" version)... but it's probably long gone.

There have been rumors that it was smuggled out, but given how other cartoons were carefully reconstructed (I didn't even know the complete original titles for I Love to Singa and Baby Bottleneck existed, unlike the other 5 Warner has restored) I doubt it exists. Of course, if something turns up in the next few years, it would be neat if Warner included it. On the Golden Age of Looney Tunes sets, they included the original versions of Hare Ribbin' and A Wild Hare despite being on previous volumes as cut versions.

 

[Paul Miller]

This set was great, but I'd like "The Mouse That Jack Built" and "The Honey Mousers" on the next set.


Paul

 

[TedD]

I referred the combing problem on disc 4 to an expert in the field and here is the story:

"Discovered the issue is that the stream is encoded as interlaced video with the progressive_frame = 1 flag set. This is a conundrum for us because in order for us to believe that it’s real interlaced video (that will be checked for Inv3:2) progressive_frame needs to be 0."

"We currently treat this type of stream as progressive WEAVE because of the WHQL Annex disk’s main menu is encoded with this same exact signature. I know it sounds stupid, but we’d fail WHQL if we didn’t treat this as progressive. My advice is to force to “video” mode for now."

So, as you can see, not only is it mis-flagged, it's mis-flagged in such a way as to be currently un-correctable.

Ted

 

[JoSAN]

.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Character sets are good, but the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are too varied. For example, from 1931 to 1940, nearly all of the Merrie Melodies were one-shot cartoons. So, character sets would basically keep these cartoons from being on DVD until the more popular Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck collections were out.

Also, Warner is having to restore the cartoons at the same time they're working on the DVD releases. When the Walt Disney Treasures came out, Disney had already restored and remastered most of the cartoons for laserdisc sets years before. I think only a handful of cartoons scattered across the Mickey sets, as well as the bulk of On The Front Lines, were newly remastered. While I think Disney did a good job with the DVD's, I really wish they had gone for a similar "mixed" approach. Only the Goofy set was really fun to go through, since almost all of the cartoons are hilarious.

The casual fan may just want 5 hours of Bugs Bunny. However, I'd hope that most fans of the Warner Bros. cartoons are keen on the other great cartoons. In fact, after the first set came out, the biggest gripse people had were the omissions of One Froggy Evening, What's Opera, Doc?, one-shot cartoons, no Tex Avery, no B&W, not enough Roadrunner, etc.

One thing that makes the Warner Bros. cartoons so great is the variety. They can put 15 cartoons on a DVD ranging from Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, one-shots, Porky Pig, Roadrunner, etc and it'll still be an excellent compilation.

 

[george kaplan]

This is just an educated guess, but I doubt if any WB cartoons will ever be in your collection if you're waiting for this.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

I think George is right, for the reasons Patrick mentioned previously, reasons that I happen to agree with. I used to be on the character box set band wagon but Volume 1 shoved me right off, and now I see this as the better way to go.

 

[Matt Rexer]

In that vein, I think director box sets would've been nice. I'd give my left arm for The Looney Tunes of Bob Clampett: Chronological Edition. Ditto for Tex Avery.

 

[Gonzalo Merchan]

When John K. of Ren and Stimpy fame was at the American Cinematheque recently he said he was trying to convince Warners to do a box set of all the Bob Clampett stuff called Bob Clampett and the Looniest Looney Tunes. I certainly hope this comes to pass.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Actually, a Bob Clampett set would be an extremely good "survey" of Warner Bros. animation. Besides nearly 40 B&W Porky cartoons, you'd have a handful of each for Tweety, Bugs Bunny, Daffy, about a dozen great one-shots, and even the two Snafu cartoons he directed. There's also the "Any Bonds Today" trailer.

 

[JoSAN]

.

 

[george kaplan]

Maybe, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that certain things may never get released.

I'm still waiting for the following, which may never come to pass:

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (with the gas station scene intact)
Grumpy Old Men (OAR)
WKRP in Cincinnati (with all of the original music)
Wiseguy (with the original music)
Star Wars (with Han shooting first)
etc., etc.

Some of those I have anyway, others I have on laser disc, some I'm just passing on, but I don't believe any of those (except possibly an OAR of Grumpy Old Men) will ever actually arrive. Nor do I believe the Looney Tunes, reissued the way you want is ever going to arrive. But if you can wait...

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

George Feltenstein said in the interview with Robert Harris that because of the time and expense of the restoration process, they can only do 60 cartoons a year and "I wish we could do more." Which makes sense -- restoring 60 cartoons from the original negatives is the equivalent of doing four feature films.

To me the ideal way to release the cartoons would have been in sets for individual years -- not necessarily in chronological order, just sets covering the WB cartoon output for an individual year. Wave 1 could be three sets covering the cartoons for particularly good years (at random, let's say 1942, 1946 and 1951). That would be a much more logical and satisfying arrangement than sets by character (which can get repetitive) or by director (unless you're a Clampett-firster like Kricfalusi or a Jones-ite like some critics, the identity of the character is going to be more important than the identity of the director, except in the case of Tex Avery's MGM cartoons). Each individual year automatically contains a good mix of characters, one-shots, and directorial approaches.

However, I understand that the expense of the restoration process, along with the need to appeal to both buffs and general audiences, makes this an approach they probably can't take. I think they're doing a good job of appealing to both cartoon buffs and people who just want to see their favorite characters (not that the two groups are mutually exclusive). If only they could fix that damned interlacing problem...

BTW, the real unsung hero of this set is Friz Freleng. Unlike Clampett and Jones, he doesn't get any featurettes devoted to him, but many of the biggest laughs on the set come from his extraordinary sense of timing and his knowledge of just how to stage a gag for maximum effect. You don't normally think of cartoon gags as being understated, but Freleng knew that less can be more when it comes to cartoon violence, and (as Greg Ford points out on his "Ain't She Tweet" commentary) it was a Freleng trademark to place the violence offscreen and leave it to us to imagine what's going on, which is often funnier than just showing somebody getting flattened. Freleng's Bugs Bunny cartoons of the '40s may be the best ever; they certainly offer my favorite version of Bugs: not annoying like Clampett's Bugs could be, nor too refined like Jones' Bugs could sometimes be, but aggressive, likable, mischievous and intelligent. And the Tweety cartoons here are probably the best in the series -- most of them have solid stories and running gags rather than just being a series of blackout gags, and Tweety still had some of the sadism he displayed when Clampett first created him ("Ho ho ho! That putty got a pink skin under his fur coat!"). Plus there was some great animation by the likes of Virgil Ross (Bugs playing the piano in "Stage Door Cartoon") and Gerry Chiniquy (the dance sequences in "Stage Door" and "Bugs Bunny Rides Again").

 

[Roger Rollins]

That may not be true. It's far more complicated than that.
They still have to gather an evaluate elements on 60 different subjects. Whether they're one reel in length only has minor impact in that regard.

Secondly, it is likely more time consuming to restore from successive-exposure negatives than traditional negatives, especially when registration issues are involved.

 

[MikeGifford]

I was really surprised that I enjoyed I Love To Singa as much as I did - I don't usually go for those older shorts (they're too cutesy/Disney for my taste), but this one blew me away as far as how much I enjoyed it. I even had to call my wife in to watch it (she doesn't go for cartoons like I do), and she laughed and thought it was cute, too.

What I liked about it, mainly, was the moral behind the story: let your kids be themselves. Fred "Tex" Avery won me over on this one, and I generally didn't care for his Warner Brothers material - I was more of a Tex Avery/MGM kind of fella.

Kudos to I Love To Singa. Excellent toon.

 

[TedD]

Well, based on the flagging issues on some of the cartoons in this set and the inconsistent windowboxing of the title sequences, I would have to question the claim that ALL of these titles were remastered from original elements.

Some clearly were, as in the T&J set. I have to believe that some weren't.

Just my $.02 on the subject.

Ted