Looney Tunes Golden Collection
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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 also had digital video noise reduction (or DVNR) applied to them, which 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 collection, however, has largely abandoned such noise reduction.
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 that explains the history of ethnic imagery that frequently appears in cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s.
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, Greg Ford.
- 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 The Rabbit of Seville, Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century and Drip-Along Daffy. 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, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, and I Love to Singa. Volume 2 contains 60 cartoons: 58 color and 2 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 contain 60 cartoons: 52 color and 8 black & white.
- Volume 4 (released on November 14, 2006). Disc 1 contains a selection of Bugs Bunny cartoons; Disc 2 spotlights the distinctive work of Frank Tashlin, who animated for Warner Bros. in the 1930s; Disc 3 contains a selection of Speedy Gonzales cartoons, and Disc 4 focuses on cats.
- Volume 5 will be released some time in 2007.[citation needed]
While each Golden Collection provides a healthy dose of Bugs Bunny cartoons, additional focal points have varied in each year's release. Volume 1 primarily focused on cartoons by directors Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng from the 1950s. Volume 2 paid tribute with Bob Clampett and Tex Avery shorts from the 1940s. Volume 3 paid a small tribute to often-overlooked animation director Frank Tashlin and cartoons featuring Hollywood caricatures. Volume 4 continues to honour to Frank Tashlin and Friz Freleng and features several Speedy Gonzales 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. For a list of which shorts have yet-to-be released, see Looney Tunes Golden Collection Unreleased Shorts.
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 of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie and Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales.