Looney Tunes Golden Collection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008)

The Looney Tunes Golden Collection is a yearly series of four-disc DVD box sets from Warner Bros.' home video unit Warner Home Video, each containing about 60 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts. The series began in October 2003, with Warners following the lead established by Disney's Walt Disney Treasures DVD box sets by releasing their own animation for the collector's market.

The cartoons included on the set are uncut, unedited, and digitally restored and remastered from the original successive Technicolor film negatives (or, in the case of the black and white shorts, the original black and white negatives). However, some of the cartoons in these collections are derived from the "blue ribbon" reissues (altered from their original versions with their revised front-and-end credit sequences), as the original titles for these cartoons are presumably lost.

A handful of cartoons in the first two collections have digital video noise reduction (or DVNR) artifacting. The noise reduction process sometimes unintentionally erases or blurs some of the picture on certain scenes of the cartoons, which has caused controversy among some Looney Tunes fans. The most recent collections, however, lack such artifacting. (Since August 2007, Warner Bros. Home Video has been quietly reissuing copies of the fourth disc of Volume 2 that lacks artifacing and interlacing, the reason apparently because of numerous protests by animation buffs and consumers.)

Beginning with Volume 3, a warning was printed on the packaging explaining that the collection is intended for adults and the content may not be suitable for children. That presumably goes along with Whoopi Goldberg's filmed introduction in Volume 3 that explains the history of ethnic imagery that frequently appears in cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s. Beginning with Volume 4, a singular disclaimer text card similar to Goldberg's spoken disclaimer precedes each disc's main menu.

The DVDs also feature several special features including interviews/documentaries of the people behind the cartoons such as Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Carl Stalling, and Mel Blanc, pencil tests, and audio commentaries by animation historians Jerry Beck, Michael Barrier, and Greg Ford.

In some regions, such as Region 2 & 4, each disc in each volume is packaged (or re-packaged) separately.^[1]

Volume 1 (released on October 28, 2003) contains cartoons mostly from the 1950s with a smaller selection of shorts from the 1940s. Popular shorts include Rabbit of Seville, Duck Amuck, Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, Rabbit Seasoning, Baseball Bugs, Drip-Along Daffy, and Hair-Raising Hare. It also contains the cartoon where Elmer Fudd is introduced: Elmer's Candid Camera. Disc One is all about Bugs Bunny, Disc Two is about Daffy Duck and/or Porky Pig, and Discs Three and Four are of random shorts featuring the more popular, relevant characters. Volume 1 contains 56 cartoons, all in color.

Volume 2 (released on November 2, 2004) contains a broader selection of cartoons from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s including What's Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening, A Bear for Punishment, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, Show Biz Bugs and I Love to Singa. Volume 2 contains 60 cartoons: 58 in color and 2 in black & white.

Volume 3 (released on October 25, 2005) contains an even broader selection of cartoons, mostly from the 30s and 40s, but with some from the 50s and 60s including such popular shorts as Robin Hood Daffy, Hillbilly Hare, and the Academy Award winner Birds Anonymous. Additional features include three Private Snafu cartoons, a 1963 television show pilot entitled Philbert, and two Harman-Ising era shorts: Sinkin' in the Bathtub (the first Looney Tunes short ever) and It's Got Me Again, the first WB cartoon nominated for an Academy Award (originally going to be Lady, Play Your Mandolin!, the first Merrie Melodie). Volume 3 contains 60 cartoons: 52 in color and 8 in black & white.

Volume 4 (released on November 14, 2006) continues the broad range of cartoons, with selections ranging from 1936 to 1966 (the latest Looney Tunes cartoon yet). The set focuses not only on Bugs Bunny (including the rabbit's only short to win the Academy Award, Knighty Knight Bugs), but also on Speedy Gonzales and on obscure cats. There is also an entire disc dedicated to director Frank Tashlin. Volume 4 contains 60 cartoons: 51 in color and 9 in black & white.

Volume 5 (released on October 30, 2007) continues the broad range of cartoons yet again. Disc one features Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Disc two contains fairy tale stories, Disc three honors the work of director Bob Clampett, and Disc four features Porky Pig and other early classics. Special features includes the 2000 PBS documentary Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens, a Life in Animation, and the director's cut ending from Hare Ribbin'. Volume 5 contains 60 cartoons: 41 in color and 19 in black & white.

All sets have had a few bonus cartoons.

A Looney Tunes Golden Collection will be released once a year into the foreseeable future. Given the Warner cartoon studio output, at the rate of 60 cartoons per set the series could run ten years or more. If the collections continue as is, there could be 17 releases total, at the most.

Along with the release of the Golden Collections, WB also released Looney Tunes Spotlight Collections which packaged only half of the cartoons of the Golden Collection on two DVDs. The exception to this practice was in 2005, with Warners Home Video instead releasing the somewhat-misnomered Looney Tunes Movie Collection, which featured DVDs containing edited versions of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie and Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales.