Looney Tunes Showcase (Volume 1)

Didn't see another thread for this, so...

Yoicks! And A-way!...  So goes the refrain from one of my favorite sequences in this set featuring Daffy Duck as a rather accident-prone "master-of-thieves".

This "spotlight" sampler of vintage WB toons, which is identical to the first disc in the more comprehensive and costly Platinum Collection Vol. 1, was nicely discounted for BF, so I figured why not give it a try... and wasn't disappointed.

The disc contains a mix of 25 older and later toons, many directed by Chuck Jones, from Warner's "golden age" of animation. Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Sylvester, Tweety, Pepe, Road-runner and others all bring the funny in a number of well-known and lesser-known classics, including Rabbit of Seville, What's Opera, Doc? (now required viewing before any LOTR screening imo), Duck Amuck, and some good Robin Hood/Scarlet Pimpernel spoofs, as well as the first appearance of Tweety Bird in A Tale of Two Kitties with "Babbit & Catstello" (an Abbott & Costello spoof). No Marvin the Martian though.

All of the toons are hard-matted (ie pillarboxed) to their original ~4:3 ratio, which has upsides and downsides, depending on how you prefer to handle such content on your 16:9 screen,... though it was really the only choice to preserve the entire image in HD. Audio is monophonic, and sometimes a bit tinny-sounding. Video featurettes are in SD.

A number of the films contain commentaries. The best ones include audio clips from the animators and other artists that worked on the shorts, as opposed to simply comments by an expert. What's Opera, Doc? in particular contains a series of different break-downs, including the original audio sessions (sans music) with voice artists Mel Blanc (Bugs) and Arthur Q. Bryan (Elmer Fudd), and Chuck in the background giving direction.

Detail is a bit lacking in many of these, and the "inferiority" of the source material (grain, dust on the cels, etc.) is often preserved intact. But the contrast and color is pretty decent on many of the shorts, especially the later films.

If you already own the re-mastered Looney Tunes compilations on DVD, you may not notice a vast improvement on some of these toons. In some cases the HD may only bring out more "dirty-laundry" in the source material. If you're not a fan of 4:3 pillarboxing, that may also be harder to manage-away with these hard-matted transfers than with the Fullscreen DVDs (depending on how advanced the scaling and stretching options are on your TV/player).

For potential collectors though, who want the absolute best editions of these classics, this set should give a decent idea what to expect in terms of image and sound quality before you drop the dough on the larger more expensive collections. Many of these are unedited btw, and contain more violence and un-PC references than the broadcast versions, so be advised.

Very enjoyable watch overall. Not really a weak link in the set... Th-Th-Th-That's All Folks!

List of Shorts

Appreciate your input wuther.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuther 

I do not know how you missed it, but there is a Looney Tunes thread.

Me neither.  It looks like the other Looney Tunes thread is dedicated mostly to the Platinum Collection though, which I have not seen yet. If the mods want to merge the two together into one "Looney Tunes on Blu-ray" thread, I'm ok with that, but it might be better to keep them separate for the sake of clarity at this point. Maybe some folks weren't aware that there was a more affordable, trimmed-down "sampler collection" like this available as well.

(Edit: I've also added a link to the Platinum Collection thread in the first post above.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuther 

I have three of the four collections and although I have watched only one so far, I overall like what I see. The characters are no longer blurred and backgrounds have impressive detail.

Good to know. I am a big C. Jones fan, but I've been sort of biding my time waiting for the best editions of these classic cartoons to be released. And I haven't really gotten much of a look at the other collections on DVD or Blu-ray, and am still debating whether to get the Fullscreen DVDs or Blu-rays. (Amazon has some fairly decent pricing on the Platinum BD sets right now btw.)

I like all of the toons in this Showcase sampler set. (As I said above, there really isn't a weak one in the bunch.) But I'm finding the quality of the HD transfers a bit lacking in some ways. I don't mind the dust (e.g. Scaredy Cat) and grain (e.g. Baseball Bugs) so much. But I think the detail, color and contrast could still be better on some of these.

With the exception of Scaredy Cat and a couple others, most of the xfers seem rather bright on my displays, and there's clipping (or near-clipping) visible on many of them. Leaving a little more head-room (and maybe also deepening gamma a bit) might have been more pleasing, and a bit easier on the eyes IMO.

Many toons in the set also have detail-related issues. The detail in Scarlet Pumpernickel looks noticeably smoothed-over for example, and also edge-enhanced. And there's also color fringing evident in some of the shorts. This is especially noticeable in For Scent-imental Reasons with Pepe Le Pew.

Some of these issues could be limitations of the source material. But some may not. I'm sure you're correct that they are noticeably better than the DVD editions though. I'm not a huge fan of the hard-matting on these HD xfers either though. So that may factor into my choices as well.

IMO, the short with the best color in this set (and possibly best PQ overall) is probably Rabbit Hood. What's Opera, Doc?, Duck Amuck, Fast & Furry-ous and Baseball Bugs are also pretty decent (color-wise), though the last one has aggressive grain and some bad clipping.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuther 

I am quite sensitive to over blighting and clipping, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre had quite bad clipping, daytime shots look overexposed and nighttime shots had high strong highlights. The Wallace & Gromit shorts were brightened a lot and sometimes clipping, just looking at the much darker supplements on the BD shows that. All I can say is that Tom Jerry, while not perfect, did not have such a problems nor when I went over the screenshots of Platinum Volume 1 could I spot it, could you point me to some examples?

Most of the shorts in this set look a bit over-corrected/over-brightened to me in terms of gamma and white point. Details in the highlights near white are routinely crushed/clipped on the transfers. Baseball Bugs is good example, due to it's more pronounced grain and detail (which makes the clipping easier to see). The skies in the background, which should be yellow with white and gray clouds, are badly blown-out in many scenes, as are some of the other highlights (e.g. home-plate when Bugs is at bat).

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuther 

Not sure what you mean, the OAR is 1:33 (4:3), only the last of the WB shorts were widescreen. Considering I get annoyed when WB changes a 1:85 film to fill the screen I am quite happy WB put out the OAR for Looney Tunes. Not even revisionist Disney scaled the early films to fill the screen.

Since there's only one ratio for HD Blu-ray media (16:9) versus the two ratios for DVD (4:3 or 16:9), hard-matting the image to 4:3 was really the only option to preserve the whole frame in HD on a set like this. We agree on that.

I'm not a huge fan of pillarboxing though (even though I've advocated it for some other titles). And I have a pretty good system for scaling 4:3 DVDs so they fill the screen on my 16:9 HD CRT with minimal distortion and cropping of the image.

Since my BD player doesn't really have any zoom/stretch options for Blu-rays, the only way for me to eliminate the black bars on a Blu-ray disc is by stretching the video raster on my CRT, which would sacrifice alot of the TV's horizontal detail/resolution. Simply scaling the 4:3 DVDs to the TV's full horizontal HD resolution may actually work better in my case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sworth 

I think you're crazy. I've seen these cartoons for over 40 years on TV, laserdisc, DVD and in pristine 35mm prints at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art screenings. I've never seen them look better than these blurays. Warner Bros does a MUCH better job of restoring their cartoons than any other studio, even Disney. You're looking at the best these cartoons will ever look.

Maybe. I've seen some really nice transfers of older animated films on BD though, including Sleeping Beauty, Wizards and Heavy Metal. And I still think some of these older toons could look a bit better with a little more attention.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phantom Stranger 

I think Warner Bros. did a fair job of bringing their animated shorts to HD. I wouldn't call them reference by any means and it's obvious that some cartoons have been treated better than others, but by and large the transfers for the Looney Tunes' shorts should please most people. I'm amazed they got released to Blu-ray at all.

^ Good point.

^ Thanks, DrDon.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuther 

The one I bought in-store, had gray and black discs. It also had a inner booklet, it's hard to know what you got cause as far as I can tell you put up no picture of it.

Do you have the Showcase or Platinum collection, wuther?

I sold my copy of the Showcase collection awhile back, and don't really remember what the disc art looked like, though it's probably similar or the same as the Platinum collection. AFAIK, the disc in the Showcase collection is basically identical to Disc #1 in the Platinum collection.

I don't think the Showcase collection includes a booklet either (and possibly also no insert). My recollection is that it was pretty no-frills.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LDBetaGuy 

Some pictures I've seen on the internet also make it look like the the Blu-ray case itself came packaged inside a cardboard cover.

Just going by memory here again, but I believe I saw them both ways in stores... some with cardboard jackets, and some without. I doubt there's a difference though. And some folks probably just throw the cardboard jackets out.

If you're still concerned, you could try contacting a 2nd-hand movie/music store in your area to see if they have a copy they'd let you compare. If the sleeve art looks home-made (or home-printed), that would be a fairly obvious sign that it's probably bootleg.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuther 

...The Treasure of the Sierra Madre had quite bad clipping...

Haven't seen TTOTSM on BD yet, but 8 Ball Bunny might be a good cartoon/short-feature to run with that.

^ Thanks for clarifying.

If you own, or plan to own the Platinum (Vol. 1) collection, then getting the Showcase (Vol. 1) would be redundant and a waste of money as you say (esp. at $24.98 list), because it's identical to the first disc in the Platinum set. If you're not an avid Looney Tunes collector or want to preview what's in the Platinum set, then I think the Showcase disc is worth considering, if you can find it for a reasonable price. I paid $8 on BF, and enjoyed revisiting many of these old toons in HD (even though I think some of the transfers could be better) and watching the extras, so I feel I got my money's worth. YMMV though.

Doubt this'll happen any time soon, but what I'd really like to see is a collection of some of the most popular WB shorts remastered and re-corrected (sans clipping) from fresh 4k or 8k scans.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sworth 

Sleeping Beauty on bluray looks nothing like the film. It's been sliced and diced and composited and scrubbed and recolored until it's a completely new, different movie.

I understand why some film buffs aren't as jazzed about the Beauty transfer, but I think Disney made a concerted effort to be faithful to the intended look of that film in their restoration. (And the end result is pretty spectacular, even though it's not especially film-like.)

I'm not sayin WB needs to go to the same lengths, but it might be interesting to see what could be done with fresh 4k/8k scans and maybe some more careful correction on some of the more popular shorts. I'm no expert on the subject, but it sounds like there's a fair amount of reference material, including original artwork and ink/paint instructions, which could potentially be used in restorations of some of the WB toons as well.