Due for release on August 28th is the Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: Chuck Jones Collection, a 2-disc DVD/Blu-Ray set. It appears all the cartoons featuring Sniffles the Mouse and Hubie & Bertie will be present, which may be a relief to completists, considering no Sniffles cartoons at all were featured in the past decade of Warner cartoon releases. While I optimistically view this as an opportunity to view Jones’s development as a filmmaker (from doing elegant, unfunny cartoons to achieving cinematic perfection), it does appear to be a product of the recent cynical campaign of Warners to build “Chuck Jones” as a brandname akin to “Walt Disney”. Oh well. If they want my House Hunting Mice to use, they know where to find me.
Mice is Nice
Filed under classic animation
Yeah, this kind of says that Warners is trying to milk every last penny out of any franchise in its grasp.
I’m debating whether or not I should buy this. If the DVD includes participation from Jerry Beck, along with commentaries by Beck, Michael Barrier, and yourself, then I might consider it. Then again, if it went that far, they might as well make a new Golden Collection.
I do love Hubie and Bertie though.
There was that gawdaful dubbed version of “Sniffles Takes A Trip” that showed up as a bonus cartoon on the final LTGC, so they did sneak one onto DVD. I’m assuming that the “We’re not restoring the ones we can’t crop for widescreen format” edict from three years ago is out, and WHV isn’t going to try and pawn that print off on Blu Ray buyers (or any of the other previously unrestored ones, since none of the shorts listed are post-’53 widescreen-compatible efforts).
I chuckle seeing Blu-Ray.com linking to a cartoon on YouTube, considering how Warners has taken great pains to have any cartoon it owns pulled from that site. Maybe WHV can have it pulled and lose free advertising in the process.
This set is also interesting because all of the mice characters here are Chuck Jones’ own creations, so I certainly agree that this set will give some of the more uninitiated fans of these cartoons an opportunity to see how his creativity and direction evolve over an pretty even spread of 19 shorts in roughly the period of 12 years.
Plus the Sniffles cartoons will look better than they ever have before.
I’m looking forward to this release. Not so much for Sniffles but for all those Hubie and Bertie cartoons. It’ll be great to have a restored copy of the hilarious “Roughly Squeaking” in my library.
You got to hand it to WB for going the extra mile for restoring these shorts for the Blu-ray release. I’m hoping some original titles are found (and if some are, it’ll be the first in a long time that original titles appeared on DVD since GC V6). For what it’s worth Thad, I think you should contact WB about you having the original titles to House Hunting Mice so the chances of that appearing on DVD will be good. Just saying.
They know I have it. WBHV is against using 16mm for their restorations, however, because it’s noticeably weaker than 35mm when mastered in HD.
I’m counting the days ’til August 28th (going to be a long summer)
I’m optimistic about this set. It borders on being (almost) worth it for the hilariously funny handful of Hubie and Bertie cartoons. I only hope Warner’s takes the opportunity to restore the prints with original titles, as the last I heard (2008) , they had 35mm originals of all these cartoons except for “Hush My Mouse”. Whether or not they care enough to use these prints or just dump whatever’s handy is yet to be determined.
If it’s the latter I might just pass on the set myself though…. they’d have to do better than that to get my money for a set full of Blue Ribbon Sniffles cartoons.