Elmo
The Musical Volume Two: Learn & Imagine
(Sesame Street)/Looney
Tunes Musical Masterpieces
(theatrical shorts)/Scooby
Doo!: 13 Spooky Tales - Surf's Up Scooby Doo!
(2015 Warner DVD Compilations)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+/B-/D Main Programs: C+/B/B-
Warner
has issued three different, expansive titles for children you should
know about...
Elmo
The Musical Volume Two: Learn & Imagine
runs over two hours with extras and is the latest Sesame
Street-affiliated
DVD release is a mixed bag with some good humor, good fun, but none
of the songs particularly stuck with me. This is not to say that
they are bad or weak, just that they are serviceable and at least
have a sense of joy if nothing else. The Muppet cast is a plus and
it is worth a look for a young audience, but it is not the best DVD
single of Elmo of from Sesame Street we've seen. It is fine for what
we get, but just don't expect anything stunning or extraordinary.
The
classic program Play
With Me Sesame: Imagine With Me
is the only extra.
Looney
Tunes Musical Masterpieces
is a solid compilation of theatrical shorts from the Looney Tunes
animated catalog that are all pretty much classics. Released on
previous DVD and even Blu-ray sets, most are very familiar and some
(pre-1949 shorts in particular) look great restored and rightly take
their place along with the later works. These include...
Corny
Concerto
Page
Miss Glory
Rabbit
of Seville
Katnip
Kollege
One
Froggy Evening
High
Note
Rhapsody
Rabbit
Pigs
in a Polka
What's
Opera, Doc?
Three
Little Bops
Hillbilly
Hare
Rhapsody
in Rivets
Pizzicato
Pussycat
Back
Alley Oproar
Nelly's
Folly
Holiday
Shoestrings
I
Love to Singa
Lights
Fantastic
These
18 gems show how early on Warner understood (as much as Disney or the
Fleischers) how to bring music and image together. These are all
must-see works and make for a nice intro collection as well.
Isolated
Music Scores, Audio Commentaries and four featurettes on the shorts
are the extras.
Finally
we have Scooby
Doo!: 13 Spooky Tales - Surf's Up Scooby Doo!
bringing together episodes of several incarnations of the
show, plus a brand-new 22-minute cartoon in Scooby-Doo!
and the Beach Beastie.
We get too much Scrappy Doo, but the real surprise is seeing
episodes of the underrated What's
New Scooby Doo?;
one of the only later shows to work. You can see for yourself with
this double set, but I would rather have separate season sets.
There
are no extras.
The
1.33 X 1 image on all three releases look good for the format, but
all have their soft shots and limits. Elmo
is all from analog and digital standard and high Definition video, so
you can still get aliasing errors and halos here and there. Most of
the animated shorts on the Looney
set come from restored prints,
but not always and the color shorts are all dye-transfer, three-strip
Technicolor in appearance (often from such great prints), even when
they look older and too comparatively soft. This is more so if you
have seen any of them on Blu-ray. Scooby
also originates on 35mm with good color at times (What's
New Scooby Doo?
Is anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1), but no match for the Looney
art and quality.
Elmo
has lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, Looney
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono and Scooby
a combination of both including some with Pro Logic surrounds, yet
they all even out sonically as well since Elmo
never gets carried away, Looney
is often very well restored and Scooby
has various quality depending on the age of the program.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
