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Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume Two

Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume Two

List Price: $64.92
Your Price: $48.69
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: GREAT !! BUT THERE IS ALWAYS A COMPLAIN
Review: As it was for the first volume, I am very glad to have my favorites cartoons in a support like DVD, but I have to say:
1.- How do I know if I will have them all, or wthat portion of it I will be able to collect?
2.- There was'n any spanish version in the first volume, and I bought the second expecting it to have it, it do have it but the translation is a new one that does'n match my memories, and it is very bad in my opinion.
Thanks
Antonio, Caracas, Venezuela

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Surpasses the original in every way
Review: Ever since "Fast and Furry-ous" appeared in the original Golden Collection, I have waited patiently for the Road Runner to get a disc devoted to him. Now we have one! 11 RR's are on the second disc. Bugs Bunny is obviously present here, too. Along with Tweety "I tawt I taw a putty tat!" Bird and Sylvester "Tshufferin' tshuccotash!" Cat, whose first cartoon together, the Academy Award-winning Tweetie Pie, is included in the collection. Even the non-Looneytics have been waiting for the all-time gems "One Froggy Evening" and "What's Opera, Doc?" to be included. Now they are.

To the digital transfers, now. The transfers must have been done by Criterion, because there are absolutely no speckles or dust particles to be seen anywhere in any one of the cartoons. Sound is again excellent, and Treg Brown, sound editor, now has a section devoted to him. I always felt Looney Tunes had a degree of cartoony realism to them, from crashes to explosions to a passing car or truck.

Again, special features are top-notch, with every featurette, audio commentary, music-and-sound only, music only, and-- surprise!-- voice only track imaginable. If you own the original, do NOT hesitate to buy this immediately. Can't wait for the third one to be released...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Gold! Gold!!! Gold!!!!!!
Review: Having been raised, with only a few exceptions, on the post-1948 cartoon packages on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour/Show et al. and the post-1948 syndie packages, I must say that I am not much of a fan of the pre-1948 cartoons. I respect them for their importance in the development of the Warner Brothers cartoon style so exquisitely realized in the Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson oeuvre of the 1948-1964 period. I even find a sizeable number of them to be viscerally funny. But aesthetically, they do little or nothing for me. In fact, the further back from 1948 the cartoons are, the cooler my reaction is to them. Only the Friz Freleng cartoons of the pre-1948 period have any substantial appeal to me- possibly because Freleng was the most stylistically consistent director in addition to being my favourite. As other reviewers on other Websites have noted, the pre-1948 cartoons were zany. They were abundant in animation. They were uninhibited in character expression and violence. In contrast, the post-1948 cartoons are economical and precise in their animation. They have a sophistication in their humor. A subtle wit. An incisive sensitivity to psychological issues, or even to profound, meaning-of-life issues. Indeed, character clashes were, paradoxically, more "fleshed out" in how they affected the inner psyches of the characters. There was now a cunning method to the madness, so to speak. The presentation pariodied itself by times, with inventive riffs on the Warner cartoon style. The method served a thematic purpose, as with "One Froggy Evening" for example, capturing so adroitly the timelessness and yet the fatalistic futility of greed. There were such sophisticated parables or symbolisms underscoring many other cartoon storylines of this latter period. My work on analyzing 1955 "Hyde and Hare" has fleshed out some such. Jones, Freleng, and McKimson had settled fully into the groove of their directing duties and knew their long-running characters intimately. They pushed the envelope with those characters, resulting in such masterpieces of parable as "Birds Anonymous" and the Road Runner series, and even such unsung cartoons as 1958's "A Waggily Tale" have something interesting to zing us with on their conclusion.

But all of this is a segue into my review of the line-up of cartoons for Volume 2. Obviously, I'm pleased to see "Hyde and Hare". However, will it be remastered or the same nice-looking but not fully remastered print on Warner's Jekyll & Hyde double-feature DVD? "One Froggy Evening" is welcome, of course. Nearly a dozen Road Runners brings a smile to my face. A pity they didn't go all out and include "Operation: Rabbit" and "Hopalong Cassualty", thereby making the RR/Wile E. laserdisc completely obsolete. There are quite a few cartoons in this listing that do present the post-1948 period in an excellent light, e.g. "The Three Little Bops", "Mouse Wreckers", "Cheese Chasers", "Show Biz Bugs", and several of the Tweety cartoons. And with "Hyde and Hare" together with "Broom-Stick Bunny" and "What's Opera, Doc?", maybe we can expect an extra feature on background design, in that these three cartoons are the suggestive, abstract UPA-inspired style at its best.

I suppose that as pre-1948s go, we're getting a good selection. I very much like "Rhapsody Rabbit", and "Old Glory" and "You Ought to Be in Pictures" are early masterpieces by Jones and Freleng. "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" is probably Clampett's best work. But still, there are so many more post-1948s that saw immediate release on VHS in the 24 Karat Collection that have yet to surface on DVD. "Knighty Knight Bugs", obviously. And "Beanstalk Bunny", "Ali Baba Bunny", "Bedevilled Rabbit", "Duck, Rabbit, "Duck!", "Hare Do", "Operation: Rabbit", "Hare Brush, and "Bugs Bonnets". And, for Daffy and Porky, "Robin Hood Daffy", "Curtain Razor", "Often an Orphan", and "Cracked Quack". And for Tweety & Sylvester, "Birds Anonymous", "Hyde and Go Tweet", "Tweety and the Beanstalk", "Tweet and Lovely", "The Last Hungry Cat", and "Tree For Two". And then, there are Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe Le Pew, and Speedy Gonzales; each of these characters had their own tapes in the 24 Karat Collection. I do wish that Warner would up the discs per collection to five. Put out more pre-1948s, certainly, but not by cutting back on the post-1948s. I felt indeed that the first collection achieved a very amenable balance. One that I was comfortable with. Some selective representation of the pre-1948s (and rightly so, as a large percentage of the pre-1948s are black-and-white oldies featuring none of the familiar characters or very crude and undefined initial appearances of those characters), with emphasis on the earlier cartoons of the post-1948 period, i.e. many of the cartoons that saw network television exposure for 40 years and which which the Warner Brothers cartoons are associated in the minds of Saturday morning and prime-time network television viewers; and many of the cartoons to feature the trademark character clashes in vastly different times and places with which Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are synonymous. Most characters had not come along until a bit before 1948 and had not reached their ultimate form and distinctive personality until about that time.

Again, there are so many more post-1948s that saw early release on VHS but have yet to surface on DVD. As I see it, it'll take 2 more DVD collections to cover the ground so excellently treaded by the VHS 24 Karat Collection in 1985-6. I guess most of the more famous pre-1948s have been recognized in this second DVD set, and that's justifiable. How about going back to the forumla of Set One when putting together Set Three, or if not, upping the number of discs to five? I just don't wish to be dead before I can get on DVD all of the cartoons that delighted and stimulated me on so many a Saturday morning or afternoon. How's about the as yet not scheduled for DVD cartoons mentioned above, plus such imaginative greats as "Bewitched Bunny", "Hare We Go", "Robot Rabbit", "Rebel Rabbit", "Transylvania 6-5000", "Bugsy and Mugsy", "The Hasty Hare", "Hare-Way to the Stars", "No Parking Hare", "Claws For Alarm", "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", "Hare Trimmed", "Sahara Hare", "Rabbit Every Monday", "Mississippi Hare", "Chow Hound", "Terrier Stricken", "A Fractured Leghorn", "The Leghorn Blows at Midnight", "Stupor Duck", "Fair Haired Hare". Heck, I could type out practically the whole episode guide to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.

This is admittedly a post-1948-biased review, but, hey, it is coming from one who was weaned on and most appreciates the post-1948 period. That is circumstantially how Warner Brothers cartoons were presented to me. And on that basis, I did admire the first Golden Collection's discretion in how it represented
each of the two distinct eras of the cartoons' history. Because of the inclusion of some excellent post-1948 cartoons, I'm inclined to admire this DVD set as well, but hope for a third set that significantly cuts into the long list of 24 Karat Collection titles yet to see release on shiny DVD.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Horrible Menu Design and Cropped Picture
Review: I can't quite understand why seemingly nobody even mentiones the menu design on these disks. They're horrible from both an artistic and technical point of view. It's bad enough when they try to tease you with excerpts from the actual films on the menu stage. But in this case they tried to actually "animate" character poses isolated from pixellated film stills... Looks like the executive's brother-in-law took joined a two-hour Macromedia Flash-workshop.

It's incredible that Warner Brothers goes with something like this. They're disgracing their old masterpieces! Amazingly enough they're still capable of awesome animated film making if you look at The Iron Giant for example. I guess it's just another huge company with great departments over here and retarded departments back there.

Another issue already mentioned is the heavily cropped picture. It's a mistery to me why it would be necessary to get a crop not just on the left and the right side of the picture but in some cases also on the top and the bottom! For this kind of collection I'd expect a "letterbox" handling of the picture i.e. the use of black bars to horizontally fit the somewhat wider film picture in the squarish tv screen in order not to lose any of the original image. What we got here is a truncation leading to misunderstandings (cropped off letters) and toned-down viewing pleasure (wild action gets unreadable or lost offscreen).

As a plus I would like to mention the numberous interesting commentaries that will provide you with quite an amount of deep insider information. It's just a shame you have to go back to the menu to switch them on for they're not listed as another audion track during playback.

The bottom line: I can recommend this collection... because there is no better alternative to watch and study these great cartoons.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Seems like it's going to be an even better DVD than the last
Review: I got the last set and it seemed all my dreams had come true ... unfortunately, I soon realised how mistaken I was, but this new volume comes even closer to perfection. I don't need to include the entire list of cartoons in this next box set, since a couple of people have already done it.

I've noticed that a lot of the old cartoons (pre-1948) have been included this time around, and the way it's going, I think we're going to have a Bugs Bunny disc, some Daffy/Porky shorts, and the other characters they restricted to the All Stars section in the first one. About the Road Runner cartoons, they're in chronological order, which isn't a bad idea, but I think the best Coyote shorts were in the 60's (don't swear at me: I mean the Jones shorts, like "Beep Prepared", "Hopalong Casualty" and "Zip 'n' Snort", not Seven Arts rubbish.) Because of this, I'm going to have to wait another bloody year for the best of the series. The same goes for the Tweety and Sylvester shorts. They don't have the opportunity to get to "Birds Anonymous"!

I'm glad some of the great cartoons they missed out have appeared on this set, but I have a complaint: Daffy/Porky shouldn't have a disc to themselves, but giving them only seven or eight toons is overdoing it. And one of those shorts--"Porky in Wackyland"--is simply the black-and-white version of the first set's "Dough for the Dodo"! I mean, what the hell?

For the next set, I recommend some cartoons:
"Robin Hood Daffy"
"Beep Prepared"
"Zip 'n' Snort"
"Hopalong Casualty"
"Birds Anonymous"
"Greedy for Tweety" (am I sure this isn't included?)
"Ali Baba Bunny"

Also, some new shorts out to be featured, maybe like bonuses, as "Blooper Bunny" was in volume one. Even now I hope that a Chuck Jones Film Production may be found. They're really good! They deserve to be on DVD!

All in all, I can't wait for November!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Collection- - - But Be Sure You Get A First Printing!
Review: I'm not going to go into detail about the quality of these cartoons, everything has been said by those more knowledgeable than me.

I gave the set 5 stars, but I was disappointed in the packaging. I had gotten Volume 1 when it came out and was expecting the same packaging for Volume 2. My order wasn't coming and wasn't coming so I emailed Amazon who told me that I had to wait for the second printing because the demand for this set was so great. Fair enough. But when I received Volume 2 there was no cardboard wrap around inserted in a plastic sleave like Volume 1. It looked like a boxed set but closer inspection revealed 5 individual keep cases held together with plastic tape. I like my box sets to be boxed.

I eventually went to a Wal-Mart and picked up a copy of the first printing. If the packaging is important to you my advice would be to hold off buying this set from the internet and get to a store before all of the first printings are sold out.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Perfect except for one thing...
Review: Love this DVD & was waiting for it a long time. The voice only tracks that include Mel Blanc outtakes are especially great. FINALLY has What's Opera Doc on it + like 4 tracks & a featurette!
I also love seeing the Bugs bunny & Tweety show openings & how it morphed over the years. Boy, that brought me back to being a kid watching ABC on Saturday mornings b/f Disney bought it!

My only complaint is that it says the 1st Looney Tune "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" is on Disc 4 & I can't find it on ANY of the disc. I've seen this elsewhere on-line so I don't think I'm the only one who can't find it... If it's an easter egg, it's a DARN GOOD ONE!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Just have to get over my Laserdisc nostalgia...
Review: OK, let me quicky just echo what other former laserdisc owners have said across the web...oh how great it would be if Warners replicated the format of the old MGM/UA "Golden Age of Looney Tunes" boxed sets, now fetching top dollar on eBay. Those sets had no extras, but they did have more sensible collections, with lots of rarely seen (and non-PC) shorts from the 30s and 40s.

Granted Warners now has access to all the shorts, not just the pre-1948 ones. But c'mon...almost a whole disc of Road Runner? A little of that goes a very long way. I dunno--does anyone listen to audio commentaries of cartoons? Or sound-effect only tracks? Or documentaries with Cher talking about Bugs Bunny? If you love extras, you'll love what Warners has done. I, myself, would rather have had another 10 cartoons.

Alright, I'm done being a grouch. This is what they have given us, and it is obviously a loving and professional package. Most of the shorts look simply fantastic--especially "Little Red Riding Rabbit" ("....TO HAVE"). It is also exciting to have "Book Revue" and "Porky In Wacky Land" and "Have You Got Any Castles" and "You Ought To Be in Pictures." If you're like me and are craving the hard-to-find 1930s stuff--you'll be grateful for the ones that are on here (bless Warners for releasing them at all!), and will just wait patiently and hope the future volumes will have even more.

Just a heads-up: the fantastic Bugs Bunny cartoon "Thugs With Dirty Mugs" is being included as an extra on the upcoming DVD of "The Roaring Twenties." Worth buying that disc for!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: NO HILLBILLY HARE!!
Review: THE ONLY COMPLAINT I HAVE WITH THIS AND THE ORIGIANL LOONEY TOONS GOLDEN COLLECTION IS A SHORTAGE OF "FOGHORN LEGHORN" AND THE GREATEST OF ALL BUGS BUNNY EPISODES "HILLBILLY HARE" WHERE BUGS TAKES OVER A SQUARE DANCE CALLER'S JOB AND LEADS TWO HILLBILLIES INTO BEATING EACH OTHER SENSELESS. ITS THE BEST BUGS EVER AND TWICE IT HAS BEEN SNUBBED!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I CAN"T WAIT!!!!
Review: The wait is KILLING ME!!!! I LOVED the first collection box set and i wish we could atleast know a release date!!!! but all i know is that as soon as this dvd is released i am going to be the first one to buy it!!


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