New Looneys are Coming!

The new Looney Tunes collection is coming October 30, and once again it promises to be a good one. Among the announced extras is the PBS documentary "Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens."

For me, it has always been the Warner cartoons. Well, I also liked The Pink Panther, but those were just one character, sort of like my affection for Droopy Dog or my dislike of Woody Woodpecker. But when I was kid, the real competition was Warner
and Disney. Some people liked Mickey and Donald and Goofy. Some people liked Bugs and Daffy and Porky.

I was a Warner guy. Disney was just too sweet for me. Donald Duck was my father's favorite character, but I didn't like his voice. I liked Mickey in Fantasia, but he never did anything for me in the shorts. I even liked the secondary characters better. Pluto and Minnie and Goofy were just not as interesting to me as Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn and Sylvester.

However, the Warner and Disney argument sort of overshadows animation. I've never cared for Tom and Jerry, for example, but they won seven Oscars. On the other hand, I enjoyed just about everything Hanna Barbera did apart from the Tom and Jerry stuff. I don't know why I didn't like the cat and mouse, but something about their conflicts just made it seem too real and less funny. In the Sylvester and Tweety/Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner conflict, I never thought the birds were in danger or that the predators were trying. Tom really seemed to want to kill Jerry, and Gene Kelly wasn't around to help!

Anyway, the Mouse is being weird with its animated shorts and its animated features. Warner is releasing stuff once a year, but the other stuff from other studios is coming out regularly. A significant amount of Hanna Barbera stuff is available on home video from Tom and Jerry to Scooby Doo, including stuff like Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley. Droopy and The Pink Panther are available as well. Woody Woodpecker arrives on DVD by the end of the month.

Finally, let me put in my pitch for Felix the Cat. He is the oldest of the cinema stars, and if you go to You Tube, you will see some truly bizarre Felix stuff from before Mickey Mouse was a glimmer in Uncle Walt's eye (back when Uncle Walt used to
work for the guy who made Felix.) If Paramount had gone with sound earlier, Felix might be remembered as the greatest animated movie star ever.