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May 9, 2012
In stores August 28!
Warner Home Video has announced the brand new two-disc release Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: Chuck Jones Collection, due on August 28. As is now the norm for the studio's Looney Tunes releases, it will come out on both DVD and Blu-ray on the same day.
This title was first hinted at by Jerry Beck the last time he was on Stu's Show, referring to the release as merely being a collection of "Chuck Jones mice" cartoons and suggesting that it would be a part of Warner's Looney Tunes Super Stars series...no doubt with all the scattershot quality control that would be involved. Happily, it appears that instead this DVD will be handled by the team responsible for releases such as the Platinum Collection.
The release focuses on two Chuck Jones series that rarely get their due on their own, Sniffles and Hubie and Bertie. It's essentially "The Complete Sniffles and the Complete Hubie and Bertie" without actually saying such, as all of the shorts from the two series are featured. Such a concept continues to serve Warner's loose strategy of having their Looney Tunes Blu-rays contain complete filmographies of minor characters (a tradition that will continue on the Platinum Collection Volume Two). The only downside, though, is that by limiting the release to just the two series then other miscellaneous "Chuck Jones mice" cartoons are missing in action such as the one-shots Mouse Warming, From Hand to Mouse, and The Mouse on 57th Street. Considering there are only nineteen shorts spread across two discs, such omissions are disappointing.
The title will contain the following. Shorts that have already been released on DVD are noted....
Naughty But Mice (1939)
Little Brother Rat (1939)
Sniffles and the Bookworm (1939)
Sniffles Takes a Trip (1940) (released unrestored on Golden Collection Volume Six)
The Egg Collector (1940)
Bedtime for Sniffles (1940)
Sniffles Bells the Cat (1941)
Toy Trouble (1941)
The Brave Little Bat (1941)
The Unbearable Bear (1943)
Lost and Foundling (1944)
Hush My Mouse (1946)
The Aristo-Cat (1943) (Golden Collection Volume Four)
Trap Happy Porky (1945)
Roughly Squeaking (1946)
House Hunting Mice (1948)
Mouse Wreckers (1949) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
The Hypo-Chondri-Cat (1950) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Cheese Chasers (1951) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
The studio's official synopsis for this release reads as follows....
From animation legend Chuck Jones comes the big cheese of mouse collections! Enjoy 19 remastered animated shorts featuring some mischievous mice and their daring adventures! Introducing Sniffles. He's cute, curious and got a heckuva cold! In Naughty But Mice, audiences came to know Sniffles as a sweet, wide-eyed simpleton with a talent for getting himself into trouble. But over the years, Jones had evolved Sniffles into an overly talkative but endearing nuisance. A trouble-loving twosome with a passion for pranks, Chuck Jones let loose the mice, Hubie and Bertie, in the short The Aristo-Cat. A departure from his previous cute and naivé characters, Hubie and Bertie solidified a new direction for Jones. The change paid off with the Oscar-nominated Mouse Wreckers, which finds Hubie and Bertie tormenting their favorite nemesis Claude Cat with rapid-fire humor and sight gags galore. So steal a snack and scurry back to your hideout for some laughs and mouse-chief with the latest Chuck Jones Collection!
There are so many curious things about this title right off the bat. Both the DVD and Blu-ray editions are two-disc sets to contain nineteen shorts and extras, which is odd in of itself as at least fifteen shorts plus ample extras can comfortably fit on a dual-layer DVD let alone on a single standard Blu-ray disc. Spreading the content out onto two discs in either format seems quite excessive.
The cover (at top right) and title makes the release an oddity as well, as it shares formatting and layout with 2009's stand-alone Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection DVD, right down to the same font. One would think the banner title of Looney Tunes would be enough to identity the franchise without having to tack on the "Chuck Jones Collection" subtitle, tying it to an otherwise unrelated and obscure release that really didn't sell all that well in the first place (to say nothing of the cheesy "fake Chuck Jones signature" font that's used, because Jones's actual signature is evidently so hard to come by). It's kinda unlikely that there will be similar Friz Freleng Collection or Bob Clampett Collection releases, but at the same time it seemed unlikely that there would have been a Blu-ray release devoted almost entirely to Sniffles, so who knows what the plan is.
The announcement e-mail released by Warner Home Video indicates that this is the "first time on Blu-ray and DVD" for these shorts. Obviously, that's not true at all, though it would have been if this was a Blu-ray-only release (which seems to have been the original intention). As shown above, most of the Hubie and Bertie shorts have seen a DVD release before.
More intriguing in the announcement are the hints at the set's bonus content. Commentaries will be included, though most likely these will be the same ones as featured on previous Golden Collection volumes. There will be an all-new featurette titled Of Mice and Pen and--most welcoming--"bonus cartoons." No titles have been revealed yet, so we may very well in fact get those few remaining "Chuck Jones mice" shorts. The titles will no doubt be revealed when the back cover art gets released.
Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: Chuck Jones Collection will be released on August 28 and is currently available to pre-order it now on Amazon. The DVD will retail for $26.99 and the Blu-ray will retail for $34.99.
April 29, 2012
Not a normal news update, but we are excited to announce that we have just launched a Facebook page for our site, and we need people to "like" us!
We'll not only post our site updates onto it, but we'll also try to post discussion questions about Looney Tunes video collecting, maybe dip into our archives a bit and post images of some hard-to-find releases (video-related or otherwise), and other fun stuff.
NOTE: WE WILL NOT ALLOW OR TOLERATE ANY DISCUSSION OR POST THAT DEALS WITH TRADING BOOTLEGS OR OTHERWISE UNAUTHORIZED COPIES OF THE CARTOONS.
So visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bugsbunnyvideoguide
March 16, 2012
In stores July 3!
In an incredibly surprising move, Warner Home Video has announced that its recent Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One Blu-ray will be released on standard DVD on July 3.
With all six Golden Collection volumes still in print, this DVD version of the Platinum Collection would seem mighty redundant, since it covers a lot of the same ground as the six sets had. It's very likely that this DVD release is meant to help the studio recoup its investment in remastering the shorts for Blu-ray, while at the same time it could be regarded as a nice starter set for those who have yet to begin their Looney Tunes DVD collection...but then that would just lead to the question of why they didn't purchase any of the Golden Collections or Spotlight Collections where many of these shorts are already found.
The bad news is that this DVD edition foregoes the Blu-ray's third disc, where all of the bonus features (minus commentaries or music tracks) were placed. So while one would have to backtrack through the Golden Collections to collect a number of the documentaries, rare shorts, etc. that had been included, they will still nevertheless be unable to own the ultra-rare 1968 short The Door and some of the revival cartoons that are exclusive to the Blu-ray release.
There is also something to be said of the DVDs' formatting as-is. The contents of the two discs are identical to the first two discs of the Blu-ray release, with each disc containing twenty-five shorts. On a Blu-ray disc there's plenty of space to fit that many without worrying about compression or otherwise compromising of the content, but on a DVD disc--even a dual-layer one--twenty-five, seven-minute cartoons might get a tad cramped.
What is slightly better news is that a few of the cartoons on the Platinum Collection had previously been released on the first two Looney Tunes Super Stars DVDs--Bugs Bunny: Hare Extraordinaire and Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl--automatically cropped in a fake "widescreen" format. They will be making their corrected, full frame DVD debut on this release.
Here is the breakdown of the two discs. Shorts that have already been released on DVD are noted....
Disc One
Hare Tonic (1945) (Golden Collection Volume Three)
Baseball Bugs (1946) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Buccaneer Bunny (1948) (Golden Collection Volume Five)
The Old Grey Hare (1944) (Golden Collection Volume Five)
Rabbit Hood (1949) (Golden Collection Volume Four)
8 Ball Bunny (1950) (Golden Collection Volume Four)
The Rabbit of Seville (1950) (Golden Collection Volume One)
What's Opera, Doc? (1957) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
A Pest in the House (1947) (Golden Collection Volume Five)
The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Duck Amuck (1953) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Robin Hood Daffy (1958) (Golden Collection Volume Three)
Baby Bottleneck (1946) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
Kitty Kornered (1946) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
Scaredy Cat (1948) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Porky Chops (1949) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Old Glory (1939) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
A Tale of Two Kitties (1942) (Golden Collection Volume Five)
Tweetie Pie (1947) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
Fast and Furry-ous (1949) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Beep, Beep (1952) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
Lovelorn Leghorn (1951) (NEW TO DVD)
For Scent-imental Reasons (1949) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Speedy Gonzales (1955) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Disc Two
One Froggy Evening (1955) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
Three Little Bops (1957) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
I Love to Singa (1936) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
Katnip Kollege (1938) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
The Dover Boys (1942) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
Chow Hound (1951) (Golden Collection Volume Six)
Haredevil Hare (1948) (Golden Collection Volume One)
The Hasty Hare (1952) (NEW TO DVD)
Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century (1953) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Hare-way to the Stars (1958) (NEW TO DVD)
Mad as a Mars Hare (1963) (NEW TO DVD UNCUT)
Devil May Hare (1954) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Bedevilled Rabbit (1957) (NEW TO DVD UNCUT)
Ducking the Devil (1957) (NEW TO DVD UNCUT)
Bill of Hare (1962) (NEW TO DVD)
Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare (1964) (NEW TO DVD)
Bewitched Bunny (1954) (Golden Collection Volume Five)
Broom-stick Bunny (1956) (Golden Collection Volume Two)
A Witch's Tangled Hare (1959) (NEW TO DVD)
A-Haunting We Will Go (1966) (Golden Collection Volume Four)
Feed the Kitty (1952) (Golden Collection Volume One)
Kiss Me Kat (1953) (Golden Collection Volume Four)
Feline Frame-up (1954) (NEW TO DVD)
From A to Z-z-z-z (1957) (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection: 15 Winners/26 Nominees)
Boyhood Daze (1957) (Golden Collection Volume Six)
The Looney Tunes Platinum Collection DVD will be in stores July 3 and will retail for $26.99. It can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
March 13, 2012
Includes CGI Tweety short I Tawt I Taw a Putty Tat!
Now available on DVD and Blu-ray is the computer-animated sequel Happy Feet Two.
Of interest to Looney Tunes fans--and especially to Mel Blanc fans--is that the release includes last year's charming CGI Tweety and Sylvester short I Tawt I Taw a Putty Tat. Please note, this is not to be confused with the classic 1948 cartoon I Taw a Putty Tat, which is still awaiting a properly remastered DVD release.
The short was the first of two recent Looney Tunes productions to utilize classic Capitol Records singles for the soundtrack, allowing Mel Blanc to once again voice his characters over twenty years after his death. In this offering, Tweety and Sylvester sing a duet as the latter resumes his ongoing pursuit of the former. June Foray returns to voice Granny with new dialogue.
This cartoon marks the first time Mel voiced Tweety in a theatrical short since 1964's Hawaiian Aye Aye and Sylvester since 1965's The Wild Chase. It's also Mel's first appearance in a theatrical short since 1988's Night of the Living Duck.
Happy Feet Two can be ordered on DVD at Amazon, where it is also available on Blu-ray. There is also a 3D Blu-ray that contains both the 2D version and the 3D version of the short.
March 13, 2012
No replacement discs planned
A minor technical error has been discovered on the fairly recent Looney Tunes Super Stars DVD Pepe le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best.
The audio drops out for a split-second during the cartoon Odor of the Day, just long enough to mute out a sneeze during the dog's initial sneezing fit (specifically when the non-Pepe skunk poses as a doctor and starts "treating" him). The drop-out has not appeared on previous home video releases of this short and seems to be unique to this DVD.
Unfortunately, the error seems to have been done during the remastering process, as a number of copies feature the same glitch including a "corrected" copy supplied by the studio.
It's doubtful this error will be corrected in a future pressing, as the studio has yet to correct the problems with the widescreen matte on the first two Super Stars DVDs.
The rest of the DVD plays just fine, so if one can ignore this one very minor flaw (or can hang onto previous video versions, such as the Pepe le Pew's Skunk Tales VHS), the DVD is still highly recommended.
Pepe le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best can be ordered on Amazon.
January 28, 2012
Not a normal news update, but earlier this week we posted a hypothetical guide on how the current Looney Tunes Super Stars series could continue and (attempt) to make all kinda of fans relatively happy. Read it, won't you?
January 11, 2012
WARNING: CROPPED CARTOONS! DO NOT BUY!
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With each one retailing for $9.97, the DVDs are part of the studio's recent line of budget family titles, marking that collection's first Looney Tunes offerings.
The two DVDs are made up entirely of repeats, with each release containing three previously released cartoons. Yeah, three! Three cartoons--that is what the studio that is supposedly struggling with its animation titles is blowing DVD technology on. At full price that's over three bucks per cartoon.
The Best of Bugs Bunny contains
The Million Hare (1963)
Napoleon Bunny-Part (1956)
Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)
Knighty Knight Bugs was previously released on the Golden Collection Volume Four and then again on a number of collections all the way up to 2010's The Essential Bugs Bunny. The other two cartoons were "released" on Bugs Bunny: Hare Extraordinaire in the controversial cropped format to create a fake widescreen effect. Neither short has been released on DVD uncut and uncropped yet.
Looney Tunes Unleashed, meanwhile, contains
Apes of Wrath (1959)
Stork Naked (1955)
Bad Ol' Putty Tat (1949)
Apes of Wrath is another cartoon that was cropped into "widescreen" for Bugs Bunny: Hare Extraordinaire, and Stork Naked was likewise given the same treatment for the concurrent Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl DVD. Bad Ol' Putty Tat has been previously released on Golden Collection Volume Two and then again on the single disc Tweety and Sylvester DVD Feline Fwenzy.
The big question, of course, is, "Are the 'widescreen' cartoons going to be corrected and released in full frame?"
It would be wonderful to imagine that these budget releases are intended to slowly correct the big mistake of those two original Bugs and Daffy DVDs (though ten bucks for each DVD just to get corrected versions would sound a bit rip-offish), but it's highly unlikely. The process used for these new titles was most likely "take this old file, this old file, and this old file, and release it." Even though the shorts were already fully remastered in the correct full frame aspect ratio, to render them back into full frame for DVD would nevertheless require more work than these DVDs ever intended to allow.
The seemingly ever-changing "aspect ratio" box on the back covers seems to confirm that these will be the exact same versions as seen on past DVDs. We've mentioned in previous news stories how convoluted the text in these boxes have become as the studio tries to reconcile all of the arguments in the great "Widescreen Looney Tunes Debate" without making it sound as if they ever screwed up in the first place.
The boxes on these new DVDs read as....
STANDARD VERSION/WIDESCREEN VERSION PRESENTED IN A FORMAT PRESERVING THE ASPECT RATIO OF THEIR ORIGINAL THEATRICAL EXHIBITIONS. "MATTED" (FLAT) OR "LETTERBOX" (SCOPE) SELECTIONS ARE ENHANCED FOR WIDESCREEN TVS.
The second sentence is incredibly awkward. No Warner Bros. cartoon was ever produced in CinemaScope--either in that specific process with those lenses or in that specific screen dimension--so there should be no need to even differentiate between that and the "matted" widescreen shorts. This seems to just be another example of the studio's family division not knowing what the heck they're double-talking about.
Everything related to these releases was announced all at once: the content, the covers (see images to the right), and even the back covers (again).
The text on the back of the Bugs disc reads as follows....
Join Looney-ville's one-and-only in this Best-of-Bugs Bunny bundle! In The Million-Hare, Bugs mixes it up with rival Daffy Duck in a race for the Big Prize! Who will walk away with the Mega-Bucks?! Next, Bugs takes one of those famous wrong turns and finds himself in a hare-raising predicament with none other than Napoleon himself in Napoleon Bunny-Part. The explosive laughs continue as Bugs' [sic - unless there's more than one of someone named Bug] quest for the Singing Sword puts him face to face with the Black Knight (Yosemite Sam) and his fire-breathing dragon in the Academy Award-winning Knighty Knight Bugs. See why Bugs is at his best in this riotous, rabbit-filled collection!
Meanwhile, the text on the back of the Unleashed disc reads as follows....
Prepare for side-splitting laughter--of the Looney variety--as toondom's greatest unleash their brand of fun! In Apes of Wrath, Bugs gets caught up in some serious monkey business as he becomes the bundle of joy for an expecting family--of gorillas! In another baby-related incident, a not-so-sober stork insists on delivering Mr. and Mrs. Daffy Duck a newborn. Daffy wants none of it, and will stop at nothing to keep this delivery from happening in Stork Naked! Everyone's favorite cartoon canary Tweety is on the run again, as feisty-feline Sylvester lives up to his namesake in Bad Ol' Putty Tat! Unleash the 'toons, and let the whole family enjoy!
Exactly who is Sylvester's "namesake" that they are referring to? A namesake is one a person is named after. For Sylvester to have a namesake would mean that there is a person or thing out there called "Sylvester Something-or-other" for which he was named. Namesakes don't refer to arbitrary nicknames, labels, or insults that another gives the person. What that sentence should probably say is "Everyone's favorite cartoon canary Tweety is on the run again, as feisty-feline Sylvester lives up to his nickname in Bad Ol' Putty Tat!" since Tweety often calls him a "bad ol' putty tat"; but that is not Sylvester's actual name. As we've said before, it's just lazy writing on the part of whichever intern at the home video division gets the supposedly unlucky task of writing for the cartoon releases.
We simply cannot and will not recommend these releases for any fan or collector, and like before we will not be including these DVDs in our main guide if the cartoons are released cropped. The ONLY thing that would make these releases valuable to anyone would be if they corrected the widescreen cartoons and released them in full frame, but that does not appear likely at all.
December 19, 2011
The future of Looney Tunes on home video!
On December 14, the one and only Jerry Beck appeared on Stu's Show, the awesome online radio show hosted by cartoon/pop culture/television nut and home video pioneer Stu Shostak. The show was a free stream for those who tuned in live, but fans can hear a "rerun" of the episode for a mere ninety-nine cents at the show's web site: www.stusshow.com. For those who have never listened to Stu's...um, show, you're in for a treat.
Usually when Jerry appears on the show, the topic inevitably turns to news about classic cartoons on DVD. Although Jerry and Stu tried to cover all bases--with the big-ish news seeming to be the wealth of UPA material that will soon make its debut on DVD in various formats--there was very little on the Warners front.
What was reported was...and keep in mind that Jerry was speaking only as a consultant and that the interview or his statements were not meant to be inferred as any official studio announcement....
Warner Home Video will continue with additional volumes of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection on Blu-ray
Looney Tunes Super Stars DVD releases will continue into the new year, with Jerry being asked to help select shorts (though no specific titles or featured characters were mentioned)
A Bosko DVD collection is still on the table for Warner Archive, though no actual work has been done on it yet
Jerry also took the time to explain some of the inner workings of the Warner Archive division, how it is literally only a few people tops working on the releases and that projects merely have to wait their turn in order for everything to be done right. Additionally, the small size of the Archive division's staff and resources are (in a roundabout way) causing a delay on one oft-requested DVD collection, that of the MGM Tex Avery cartoons. The paradox seems to be that Warner's normal DVD division is terrified of committing to it as a full-blown retail release because some there believe that the Tex series is too obscure for mainstream DVD buyers (no name recognition, etc.), while such a project is merely too big for the Archive division to handle properly.
Meanwhile, as for the other classic cartoon series that Warner owns, there is no news on more Popeye yet, while there will of course be more Tom and Jerry DVDs and Blu-rays in the new year.
The rest of the interview was a lively talk about all things animation, with Jerry repeating a cautionary warning from his last appearance that DVDs in general are supposedly not selling anymore. Whether that's true or not might be a matter of debate, as supposed lack of sales all around hasn't stopped Warner for example from mining their vaults for whatever Looney Tunes they already have remastered and ready to release ('60s Road Runner, etc.).
But anyway, more releases are coming!
November 1, 2011
Includes DVD debut of Porky's Duck Hunt!
Warner Home Video has released its latest Looney Tunes DVD title, the two-disc set The Essential Daffy Duck.
The follow-up to last year's Essential Bugs Bunny, the new release feels less "essential" and more "redundant"...and it doesn't even have any character-related birthday or anniversary to coincide with as its predecessor did. It smells too much of, "The first one was sort of a success, so let's do it again!" If this one does well, we will most likely see something like an Essential Tweety and Sylvester next.
Perhaps the set's lone highlight is that it features the DVD debut of Daffy's debut cartoon, Tex Avery's 1937 classic Porky's Duck Hunt...although it is unknown at press time whether the cartoon has in fact been remastered or whether Warner used the same sped-up video master it created back in 1985 for the original Golden Jubilee VHS series (or worse, whether we'll instead see the 1990 computer-colorized version!). The only other new-to-DVD short is the mediocre 2004 effort Duck Dodgers in Attack of the Drones from the repulsive batch of "modern" cartoons produced by Larry Doyle.
This DVD includes
Porky's Duck Hunt (1937)
Daffy Duck & Egghead (1938)
The Daffy Doc (1938)
Plane Daffy (1944)
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946)
Nasty Quacks (1945)
Book Revue (1946)
Duck Amuck (1953)
Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century (1953)
The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950)
My Little Duckaroo (1954)
A Star is Bored (1956)
Deduce, You Say (1956)
Ali Baba Bunny (1957)
Robin Hood Daffy (1958)
The Duxorcist (1987)
Night of the Living Duck (1988)
Superior Duck (1996)
Duck Dodgers in Attack of the Drones (2004)
Daffy Duck for President (2004)
Apart from the shorts, the DVD set also includes the TV specials Daffy Duck's Easter Egg-citement (already released on Golden Collection Volume Six) and Daffy Duck's Thanks-for-Giving (new to DVD); the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Duck Dodgers, Jr." (already released on Season 1, Volume 2 of the series); and the Duck Dodgers episode "The Green Loontern" (already released on the Green Lantern: First Flight DVD). So very little actually new to the format at all.
The Essential Daffy Duck is now in stores and retails for $26.99. We'd appreciate it if you ordered it on Amazon.
Still coming December 27!
Warner Home Video has revealed the back cover of the upcoming next installment in its Looney Tunes Super Stars DVD series, Pepe le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best.
The text on the back reads as follows....
Sniffing around for di-stink-tly hilarious animated antics? You're in luck, ma chérie! You hold in your hands a nose-crinkling collection of cartoons starring the most malodorous mammal ever to go lookin' for l'amour with all the wrong species: Pepé Le Pew! Including 14 shorts never before seen on video or DVD, these 17 trés aromatique outings feature the love-struck skunk falling hard for felines, canines and -- sacre maroon! -- the occasional fur coat! In Dog Pounded, our powerfully perfumed protagonist costars with Tweety and Sylvester. Then there's Pepé's Academy Award-winning tour de farce in For Scent-imental Reasons (The rumor his Oscar was made from Le Pew-ter is unconfirmed). And that's just a whiff of the richly fragrant fun you'll have watching "ze locksmith of love" in action: the one-and-olfactor Pepé Le Pew!
This description is indicative of the problem a lot of fans have with Warner concerning its Looney Tunes releases: the studio just doesn't care. The text states that fourteen of the shorts are supposedly new to "video or DVD." Though granted the majority of the Pepe cartoons are making their DVD debut with this release, they are hardly new to home video. As we detailed back on September 16, the only Pepe cartoon never to have been released on VHS or laserdisc back in the day was 1953's Wild Over You. The rest have all been made available on home video before, some numerous times. So, why even claim that they were "never before seen on video or DVD" when that is not exactly the case? Isn't simply saying "never before seen on DVD" impressive enough??
Meanwhile, someone at Warner Home Entertainment needs to look up the definition of the word "protagonist," as they seem to feel that Pepe fit that role in Dog Pounded. Well, the only problem is that his appearance in that short was nothing more than a cameo...at the very end of the cartoon...to provide a punchline for the final gag. A protagonist is actually the central character with whom the audience is supposed to identify and/or side with. In Dog Pounded the protagonist is Tweety. Pepe is merely providing a cameo, and he certainly isn't a co-star in that cartoon. Either words mean something or they don't.
The standard "aspect ratio" box is also slightly reworded for this release than it was for previous Super Stars DVDs. After the flap over the cropped-for-widescreen cartoons on the Bugs and Daffy DVDs, the information regarding the widescreen presentations was worded on subsequent releases as: "WIDESCREEN VERSION PRESENTED IN A 'MATTED' WIDESCREEN FORMAT. ENHANCED FOR WIDESCREEN TVS." The text at the bottom of the Pepe DVD now instead reads, "WIDESCREEN VERSION PRESENTED IN A 'MATTED' WIDESCREEN FORMAT PRESERVING THE ASPECT RATIO OF ITS ORIGINAL THEATRICAL EXHIBITION. ENHANCED FOR WIDESCREEN TVS."
Without going into the argument again (we covered that in detail on our home page), it seems as if Warner Home Video is attempting to suggest that they were correct to crop the cartoons in the first place, even though on the packages for the Foghorn Leghorn and Road Runner DVDs the studio was at least willing to concede that the widescreen versions were not necessarily the preferred way to view the cartoons. This kind of back and forth just speaks volumes of the risk and danger in letting the family entertainment division handle the Looney Tunes releases instead of Messrs. Beck and Feldstein--or worse, as seems to be the case, a family entertainment division that thinks it's the theatrical catalog division while thinking it's doing the correct thing...without doing any real research or gauging any reaction from experts first. It results in nothing but carelessness and inconsistency.
As if the back cover wasn't awkward enough, there is even a strangeness to one element that Warner Bros. DVD packaging usually does perfectly in its sleep. Typically when the back cover text of a Warner DVD needs to invoke an Academy Award--either earned by the production itself or by one of its cast or crew members--a quick and concise footnote usually suffices. For example, if the text to a movie needed to say something like "Oscar winner Heath Ledger* does blah blah blah..." then a small footnote at the bottom of the back cover would say, "*Best Supporting Actor, The Dark Knight" with maybe the year listed as well. Heck, if the production on the DVD itself had won the Oscar in question, then rarely is a footnote even needed; that accomplishment alone is noteworthy enough to mention in the basic text.
The back cover presented above clearly makes a point to mention Pepe's Academy Award win, which is spelled out pretty well in the body of the text. Yet at the bottom of the case there is also a wordy sentence after the copyright information: "*For Scenti-mental [sic] Reasons won the Academy Award in 1950 in the category of Best Short, Cartoon." Why a reiteration was even needed is a question in of itself, let alone why is it so poorly worded? The main body of text explains which industry award it is and for which short, so why is there not simply a footnote that says, "*Best Short, Cartoon, 1950" or something equally short and sweet? The entire back cover reads like it had been written by an intern or a temp worker.
Pepe le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best will be released on December 27 and will retail for $19.97. Pre-order it now on Amazon.
October 4, 2011
Also available to order!
Warner Home Video has released the latest entry in its controversial Looney Tunes Super Stars DVD series, Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote: Supergenius Hijinks.
The DVD was already made available in Walmart stores over the last month, but the studio's official street date for other retailers is today...plus, we have no interest in promoting Walmart or encouraging people to shop there, as we want Looney Tunes fans to retain their souls.
The title was originally announced to have been released on May 24 (and originally with an erroneously different list of contents), but Warner Home Video decided to delay it for three-and-a-half months to better coincide with an animation promotion through the end of the year that will also include releases of The Looney Tunes Show, more Tom and Jerry (groan), and the long-awaited Blu-ray debut of Looney Tunes via the Platinum Collection.
The DVD's contents have angered a number of Looney Tunes fans as it does not feature any of the classic Road Runner shorts of the 1950s or '60s directed by Chuck Jones--in fact, Jones is represented by a lone 1990s effort. The first half of the DVD is made up of modern revival efforts starring the characters, including the three CGI shorts produced last year. The second half of the disc features the low-budget mid-60s Road Runner cartoons directed by Rudy Larriva and one almost equally weak effort by Bob McKimson. All of the 1960s cartoons are new to DVD (and new to North American home video, for that matter), but it hardly makes up for the lack of any "real" classic Road Runner cartoons.
This DVD includes
Coyote Falls (2010)
Fur of Flying (2010)
Rabid Rider (2010)
Whizzard of Ow (2003)
Chariots of Fur (1994)
Little Go Beep (2000)
Sugar and Spies (1966)
Clippety Clobbered (1966)
The Solid Tin Coyote (1966)
Out and Out Rout (1966)
Shot and Bothered (1966)
Chaser on the Rocks (1965)
Highway Runnery (1965)
Boulder Wham! (1965)
Hairied and Hurried (1965)
Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote: Supergenius Hijinks is now in stores and retails for $19.98. The DVD is available to order on Amazon, but they are at press time not listing it on its product page as actually having been released, instead indicating that it will in fact come out on December 26 (which is wrong because that's a Monday).
September 28, 2011
Now available to pre-order!
Warner Home Video has revealed the back cover of the Looney Tunes Showcase Volume One Blu-ray, still scheduled for January 10.
The text on the back reads as follows....
You saw them at the movies. You saw them on TV. You saw them instead of studying for your finals. Now you can watch the world-class Looneyness as never before in this first-time array of 25 Theatrical Shorts [why is this phrase capitalized??] dazzlingly remastered and presented in the stunning audio and visual experience of hi-def Blu-ray. Here you'll find Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig - plus Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn and Speedy Gonzales - in a dizzily delightful showcase of cartoon icons at their animated best. Outstanding shorts from the Warner Bros. vault stand out even more in Blu-ray brilliance. Now more than ever, they're a must-see.
The back cover headline refers to this release as being the "debut collection" of the shorts on Blu-ray, and the text also makes references to this "first-time array"...even though the Platinum Collection will already be out for two months by the time this one is released. It's pretty clear now that both the Platinum Collection and Looney Tunes Showcase were originally intended to be released on the same date, much like how the Golden Collection and Spotlight Collection DVDs always came out simultaneously. Sadly, it's become commonplace for studios to release a bigger boxed set first at a higher price point and then later pare down the more popular elements into a smaller (and cheaper) release...because they want consumers to purchase the bigger set in fear that it would be the only way to view any of the content.
But of course, any true Looney Tunes collector will just merely buy the Platinum Collection as it will include material never before released on home video such as The Door, A Hitch in Time, Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension, Father of the Bird, and more...productions that are unlikely to appear on future "smaller" releases.
Looney Tunes Showcase Volume One will retail for $24.98. The title is now available to pre-order on Amazon.
September 21, 2011
Coming January 10! Retail for $24.98!
Warner Home Video has announced the release of Looney Tunes Showcase Volume One on Blu-ray with a street date of January 10, marking the first Looney Tunes home video release of the new year.
In the studio's announcement e-mail, they said....
25 of some of the greatest Looney Tunes cartoon [sic - unless there is in fact only one cartoon on this release] are together for the first time on Blu-ray. This collection has been digitally restored and remastered. The disc contains some of the franchise's most enduring shorts featuring all your favorite Looney Tune Characters!
Although in a perfect world this new title would in fact feature twenty-five new-to-Blu-ray shorts, alas the Showcase Blu-ray is merely just the first disc of the by-then two-month-old Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One Blu-ray boxed set--with not only the exact same cartoons but also the exact same special features...so hardly making these available "for the first time on Blu-ray."
Clearly the Showcase series will serve as a lower-priced alternative to the bigger Platinum Collection sets, much like how the Spotlight Collection DVDs served a similar purpose for the Golden Collections. But of course, the big difference here is that this release will in fact include bonus content.
The main program on this Blu-ray will include
Hare Tonic (1945)
Baseball Bugs (1946)
Buccaneer Bunny (1948)
The Old Grey Hare (1944)
Rabbit Hood (1949)
8 Ball Bunny (1950)
The Rabbit of Seville (1950)
What's Opera, Doc? (1957)
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946)
A Pest in the House (1947)
The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950)
Duck Amuck (1953)
Robin Hood Daffy (1958)
Baby Bottleneck (1946)
Kitty Kornered (1946)
Scaredy Cat (1948)
Porky Chops (1949)
Old Glory (1939)
A Tale of Two Kitties (1942)
Tweetie Pie (1947)
Fast and Furry-ous (1949)
Beep, Beep (1952)
Lovelorn Leghorn (1951)
For Scent-imental Reasons (1949)
Speedy Gonzales (1955)
Again, Looney Tunes Showcase Volume One will be released on January 10 and will retail for $24.98. A pre-order link will be posted soon, but in the meantime feel free to instead pre-order the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One: Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-ray on Amazon.
September 20, 2011
Still coming November 15!
This is nothing too earth-shattering, but Warner Home Video has revealed the back cover art for the upcoming Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One: Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-ray.
The back of the packaging is essentially the same "beauty shot" of the entire set that has been making the rounds online for a while now, but with the general disc breakdown and specs tacked on underneath. Perhaps the only thing that's mildly noteworthy is that the studio has misspelled Marc Antony's name as "Anthony." And sadly, this new image fails to reveal any information as far as packaging dimensions go.
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One: Ultimate Collector's Edition will be released on November 15 and will retail for $79.98. Pre-order it now on Amazon.
September 16, 2011
Coming December 27! Retail for $144.92!
Warner Home Video has announced the release of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 1-6 gift set with a street date of December 27, the same day as the release of Pepe le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best.
In the studio's announcement e-mail, they said....
Propelled by the creative genius of Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Friz Freleng, Warner Brothers' LOONEY TUNES introduced the world to some of the greatest cartoon characters to ever grace the animated cel: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzalez [sic - that's "Gonzales"], Pepe LePew [sic - "Le Pew" is two words, guys, and "le" doesn't need to be capitalized for that matter, but that's nit-picking], Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Tweety, Sylvester, Marvin the Martian, Tasmanian Devil, and many more. This release includes the first six volumes in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection.
Now, this is not the first time the studio has bundled Golden Collection volumes together, nor is this even the first time all six volumes have been offered in one SKU. But unlike previous Golden Collection bundles that merely shrink-wrapped the volumes together and sold them for essentially the individual prices added together, this new collection is not only packaged in an all-new slipcase box but also value-priced at $144.92.
The new low price is actually quite a steal, as that breaks down to a little over twenty-four bucks for each volume (considering they each originally retailed for $64.92). The previous shrink-wrapped bundle of all six volumes from 2008 retailed for a whopping $389.51. As most fans know, the first Golden Collection contained fifty-six shorts in the main program, while the subsequent five volumes contained sixty each, resulting in 356 remastered and restored cartoons. This new price amounts to about forty-one cents per cartoon...not to mention all the various bonus features such as additional shorts like Blooper Bunny and Daffy Duck for President, Private Snafu and Hook shorts, TV specials, the Adventures of the Road Runner featurette, Bugs Bunny Show footage, vintage TV commercials, Army recruitment shorts, Chuck Jones's MGM cartoon The Bear That Wasn't, Friz Freleng's MGM Captain and the Kids shorts, and much more. So really, you're getting well over 300 animated shorts plus--as the slipcase package boasts--"over 25 hours of special features."
Perhaps the only other thing that can be mentioned is that the packaging for each volume seems to have gone through a major revision. The initial image supplied by Warner Home Video (top right) has the faint air of maybe being a Photoshopped mock-up, but it looks as if the original digipaks and slipsleeves will be replaced with clear keepcases and cover inserts. Since the packages of the original volumes varied in thickness, clearly the move was made in order to standarize them and slim them down to fit into the bigger slipcase. The slipcase itself looks to have the usual unimpressive collages of '90s stock poses that have graced Looney Tunes consumer products since the demise of the Studio Stores, while the discs themselves are identical to those contained in the original individual volumes.
Unless you are a die-hard merchandise collector who needs to own every variation of packaging, if you already have the six individual Golden Collection volumes then you absolutely would not need this set. This is meant for the fans just starting their Looney Tunes DVD collection.
The gift set will be available through the usual retail channels, but as always you can pre-order it on Amazon.
(NOTE: For the purposes of our guides, this set will not be counted as a unique release, as it is merely the six Golden Collection volumes bundled together.)
Features 17 shorts! Pepe's entire filmography!
Our long national nightmare is finally over, as Warner Home Video has finally updated the cover art to its newly announced next entry in the controversial Looney Tunes Super Stars DVD series, Pepe le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best.
The studio's original announcement indicated that the DVD would contain seventeen shorts, boasting to feature Pepe's entire theatrical filmography. The studio was including in its tally both the non-Pepe skunk cartoon Odor of the Day and the Sylvester and Tweety cartoon Dog Pounded (in which Pepe has a cameo at the end)...because those two were listed on the character's Wikipedia page at that time, continuing a very lazy recent practice at the studio of using the user-edited web site as its sole resource in programming the Super Stars DVDs. This trend had already caused problems earlier in the year when early press materials for another entry in ths series--Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote: Supergenius Hijinks--announced that the DVD was to contain Flash webtoons made for the Looney Tunes web site and segments originally from TV specials...because such productions were being listed on the characters' theatrical filmography.
Confusingly, even though the Pepe DVD was being touted as containing seventeen cartoons, the cover art released at the time nevertheless exclaimed "15 Cartoon Classics" like the other Super Stars DVDs (or really, "Cartoon 15 Classics," because among other things Warner now expects us to read phrases from the middle and work back to the left). Ironically, if Warner Home Video hadn't copied and pasted Pepe's filmography from Wikipedia and didn't include the two shorts not part of the official Pepe cartoon series--Odor of the Day and Dog Pounded--then there wouldn't have been an issue. OR, if Warner Home Video had actually kept its original word on never double-dipping shorts in its primary Looney Tunes DVD series and removed the three Pepe shorts that were already included on past Golden Collection volumes, then there would have been room for not only both Odor of the Day and Dog Pounded but also even a third short without compromise (Fair and Worm-er would seem like the obvious choice, since it also features a non-Pepe skunk who at least has the decency to hop like our French hero).
But apparently seventeen shorts are in fact intended for this DVD and seventeen shorts shall remain, with the new cover artwork (see top right) reflecting that. Considering how little attention Pepe had received during the Golden Collection series, a single DVD containing all of his theatrical appearances (plus Odor of the Day) is a nice surprise. After the very rough first year of Super Stars releases since the line's inception in mid-2010, this might be a sign of better things to come in the series. A series of self-contained character DVDs like this one would allow fans to quickly fill holes in their collections, leaving the Warner Archive to handle remaining areas such as Bosko, the Merrie Melodies shorts, etc.
For those of you just joining us, this DVD will include
The Odor-Able Kitty (1945; a male cat paints himself as a skunk in order to have a better life but is chased by a seemingly French ladies' man skunk; Bugs Bunny has a cameo of sorts; already released on Golden Collection Volume Three)
Scent-Imental Over You (1947; feeling embarrassed by her lack of a beautiful coat, a lonely Chihuahua dresses up in a skunk fur but attracts Pepe, named "Stinky" in this short) NEW TO DVD
Odor of the Day (1948; not a Pepe short, but a silent Pepe-looking skunk and a dog vie for a warm bed on a cold, snowy night in this oddity directed by Arthur Davis) NEW TO DVD
For Scent-imental Reasons (1949; the Oscar-winning short that established the series, in which Pepe chases Penelope for the first time throughout a Paris perfume shop; already released on the first Golden Collection)
Scent-imental Romeo (1951; Penelope disguises herself as a skunk in order to sneak into a zoo for free food, but resident skunk Pepe chases her into a nearby park) NEW TO DVD
Little Beau Pepe (1952; Pepe joins the French Foreign Legion, only to chase base mascot Penelope throughout the Sahara Desert) NEW TO DVD
Wild Over You (1953; a wildcat escapes from the zoo, giving Pepe a violent run for his money at every turn) NEW TO HOME VIDEO
Dog Pounded (1954; Pepe makes a surprise cameo at the end of this Friz Freleng-directed Tweety cartoon after Sylvester paints a stripe on his back in order to enter a dog pound where the canary is hiding) NEW TO DVD
The Cats Bah (1954; Pepe is interviewed about the greatest love of his life, leading to a flashback--inspired in part by the Charles Boyer film Algiers--about the skunk chasing American tourist Penelope all across the Casbah) NEW TO DVD
Past Perfumance (1955; a director needs a skunk for his latest movie, causing an assistant to use Penelope as a substitute...just as Pepe crashes the studio to go autograph-hunting, leading to a chase onto various sets) NEW TO DVD
Two Scent's Worth (1955; a robber uses Penelope to clear out a bank, inadvertently attracting Pepe and leading to a mountain chase on skis) NEW TO DVD
Heaven Scent (1956; in a quasi-remake of The Odor-Able Kitty, Penelope paints a stripe on her back to get revenge on menacing dogs and to steal food, but Pepe gets her in his sights and chases her throughout the French Riviera; already released on Golden Collection Volume Six)
Touche and Go (1957; after a street-worker accidentally paints a stripe on her back, Penelope attracts Pepe, leading to a chase from the beach, throughout a series of boats, under the sea, and then onto a deserted island) NEW TO DVD
Really Scent (1959; Chuck Jones animator Abe Levitow directs this unique tale of Fabrette, a lonely New Orleans cat who can't find love due to her genetically abnormal white-striped tail...until tourist Pepe shows up and realizes for the first time that it's his natural odor that's keeping potential lovers away) NEW TO DVD
Who Scent You? (1960; Penelope sneaks onto a cruise liner and catches Pepe's eye from afar on dry land, causing him to speed across the ocean floor and onto the ship in pursuit) NEW TO DVD
A Scent of the Matterhorn (1961; after a charming musical number of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," Pepe chases Penelope across the snowy mountaintops of the French Alps) NEW TO DVD
Louvre Come Back to Me! (1962; in his theatrical swan song, Pepe follows Penelope to the Louvre, squares off against a jealous rival in an imaginary duel, and then causes several famous paintings to flee in terror) NEW TO DVD
Pepe le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best will be released on December 27 and will retail for $19.97. Pre-order it now on Amazon.
