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STUDIO:
Warner Brothers
MSRP: $44.98
RATED: Not
Rated
RUNNING TIME:
323 min
SPECIAL FEATURES:
New Documentary Drawn For Glory: Animations Triumph at the
Oscars
Expert Commentary and/or Music Only Audio Tracks on Select Cartoons
Bonus Short: “Whats Cookin’ Doc”
The Pitch
Let’s put all the Oscar winning and nominated Warner
Brothers and
release.
The Humans
Mel Blanc, June Foray, Hans Conried, Bill Thompson and
Arthur Q. Bryan
Somehow, this won an Oscar. It stills beats Crash.
The Nutshell
Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation
Collection is an amazing package that was released in time to cash in on the
80th Annual Academy Awards buzz. Take a look below at the included
cartoons.
1. The Milky Way
2. Yankee Doodle Mouse
3. Mouse Trouble
4. Quiet Please
5. The Cat Concerto
6. Tweetie Pie
7. The Little Orphan
8. For Scent-Imental Reasons
9. So Much for So Little
10. Two Mouseketeers
11. Johann Mouse
12. Speedy Gonzales
13. Birds Anonymous
14. Knighty-Knight Bugs
15. The Dot and the Line
16. Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor
17. Peace on Earth
18. A Wild Hare
19. Puss Gets the Boot
20. Superman
21. Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt
22. Rhapsody In Rivets
23. The Night Before Christmas
24. Blitz Wolf
25. Pigs in a Polka
26. Swooner Crooner
27. Walky Talky Hawky
28. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Mouse
29. Mouse Wreckers
30. Hatch Up Your Troubles
31. Jerry’s Cousin
32. Little Johnny Jet
33. Touché, Pussy Cat!
34. From A to Z-Z-Z-Z
35.
36. Good Will To Men
38. One Droopy Knight
39. High Note
40. Nelly’s Folly
41. Now Hear This
42. “Drawn for Glory: Animation’s Triumph At The
Oscars®,”
43. What’s Cookin’ Doc?
The Lowdown
Warner Brothers Animation used to be this fantastical
factory of comical ideas. I’m a huge fan of the Classic WB Animation style, but
quite a few of their animated shorts had slipped past me. Recently, Harry
Knowles posted a piece over at Ain’t It Cool News about classic cartoons that
he had grown to love over the years. In his article, he included a YouTube clip
of a classic cartoon Peace on Earth. This particular short is a
post-apocalyptic tale about an old squirrel telling his grandchildren about the
world in which they live.
Take that, malaria.
Peace on Earth got me thinking about the high quality of
animation during the Golden Age of Hollywood. This
release takes you through the time when Walt Disney dominated the Awards to
heyday and to the Baby Boom era Warner Brothers’ domination of the animated
short. The one thing that you’ll come to note as you peruse the included shorts
is the lack of the accepted classics. There’s no Duck Amuck or One Froggy
Evening. There’s a ton of Tom & Jerry shorts with only The Cat Concerto
standing out as truly inspired.
The hidden gem of the first disc full of Oscar winners has
to be Chuck Jones work on The Dot and the Line. It’s a cartoon that tends to
be ignored by everyone outside of Academia. Jones inked his drawn work on rice
paper to allow for a sense of fluid movement that was unseen in 1965. While it
played with mathematic properties, it also marked the end of Warner Brothers’
heyday. It wouldn’t be long afterwards that Warner Brothers/Seven Arts would
shut down their animation department.
Somewhere, Lou Dobbs just shat himself.
The sense of finality towards the end of these discs only
makes the greater work stand out. Freleng, Jones, Fleischer, Hanna, Barbara and
all of the others worked together to create perfectly timed stories that just
happened to be animated. This collection is the definitive package of Warner
Brothers’ animated shorts. It’s a Greatest Hits compilation of one of the most
decorated animation houses in
If you know anyone that’s seeking to learn more about the history of American
Animation, then this is a great jumping off point. That’s why I recommend it as
a blind buy.
The Package
Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation
Collection comes to
three-disc release. The first disc is dedicated to the actual Oscar winners and
most of their transfers look amazing. But, the real winner is the sheer amount
of supplements included on the DVDs. You get fourteen commentaries for the
shorts that offer up a world of information from such people as Jerry Beck and
Paul Dini. The music-only tracks that appeared on the Looney Tunes Golden
Collections also make an appearance in this release.
Raymond Chandler’s “The Last Birdcage” never really set the Animation World on fire.
If that wasn’t enough, Warner Brothers included What’s
Cookin’ Doc as a special feature. The short was originally produced for the 17th
Annual Academy Awards to show off the previously nominated Hiawatha’s Rabbit
Hunt. It’s a fun cartoon that plays with the celebrity caricatures which were
a staple of the Looney Tunes at the time. Drawn for Glory: Animation’s
Triumph at the Oscars is the pinnacle of the supplemental material. This
hour-long documentary narrated by Bonnie Hunt points out the origins of the
included cartoons. The documentary ends rather quickly for my tastes, but the
insight gained from it is amazing.
Sir Loin of Beef. It was funny when I was five and it’s funny now.
The A/V Quality on the
ranges greatly. The transfers are ports from previous animation collections
released by Warner Brothers. You run into some trouble on the older transfers
for the Droopy and Tom & Jerry shorts. For some reason, Warner Brothers
didn’t seem fit to make the scope transfers anamorphic. It’s a rare miss for
the Warner Brothers Home Entertainment folks, but it’s not enough to ruin the
entire release.
9.6 out of 10