Review: ‘Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection’ on DVD
I have to laugh when I watch old [[[Tom and Jerry]]] cartoons. First, of course, because they’re funny. The original series of 114 theatrical cartoons by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Hollywood cartoon studio were produced between 1940 and 1957, seven of them winning the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons)…a tie for most awards, one should note for the animation snobs out there, with Walt Disney’s [[[Silly Symphonies]]] animated series. A series of perfectly dreadful and too-often released cartoons followed, produced in Eastern Europe (cheap labor, I would imagine, and worth what they paid for it), produced by Gene Deitch at Rembrandt Films in 1960 before, thank the animation heavens, there came Chuck Jones in 1963.
Which brings us to Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection
The second reason I find to laugh at these, or any classic animated shorts is because of how the reality of these characters clashes with the perception that has grown up around them since the 1950s when they began appearing as Saturday morning children’s programming. These cartoons were not created, originally, as children’s fare. They were, instead, part of a program of entertainment shown to adult movie audiences in a day and age when theaters routinely ran double features and the bill changed twice a week. Before, between and after the movies, however, came a variety of subjects: a newsreel, a short feature (usually humorous), a cartoon, and coming attractions, at the minimum. Look at a World War II era Bugs Bunny cartoon; that was not kid’s stuff!
Because as I watch these cartoons—and they are a lot of fun, have no doubt of that—I’m struck at how mercilessly violent they are. Heavy objects routinely fall and crush their victims (Tom), explosives blow in hand or in the victim’s (Tom’s) mouth, an axe used to chop open a mouse hole chops a victim’s (Tom’s) tail like a chef chops a carrot. The network censors chopped a lot of that material out of the cartoons when they went to TV in the 1960s, and, by the 1980s, the original essence of these little seven minute masterpieces was corrupted beyond redemption, to the point that as the writer of the Tom and Jerry syndicated newspaper strip for Editor’s Syndicate around 1990, I was told Tom could chase Jerry, but if he caught him, he could do him no harm. No hitting, no smashing, no slamming, certainly no chopping of tails. These guys were pals they just chased one another for fun.
Bugs Bunny has suffered a similar fate in the modern world: A friend working on a Bugs Bunny promotional comic book project was told by WB to change a gag because “Bugs would never produce a mallet out of nowhere and whack someone like that!”
But thanks to home video and DVD and the demand of the marketplace for original and uncut material, the truth is coming out. Tom and Jerry is funny and it’s funny because it’s violent. Take away the psychedelic randomness and well-constructed but mean-spirited violence of a situation like Tom and Jerry or the Road Runner and Wiley E. Coyote and all you’re left with is the existential angst of the eternal loser pursuing that well-known definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again in expectation of a different result.
From 1941 through 1942, Max and Dave Fleischer rewrote the rules for animation and people have been trying to match those results ever since. When no one had previously tried adventure in animated form, the Fleischers took their lessons from [[[Popeye]]] and applied them to [[[Superman]]] with astounding results.
, which was released this week. Technically, one wishes they cleaned the prints a bit better before transfer but these are better than most of the public domain dubs that have been circulating since the 1980s.
MyToons.com, the first and only online animation community to offer HD animation, announced on December 18 the launch of MyToons Live; MyToons.com’s latest collaboration with Google, utilizing the power of Google Earth technology. MyToons.com has built its reputation on connecting animators and fans around the world, and MyToons Live graphically represents their activity on a real-time global map.
Sparx, the animation studio that produced this fall’s disappointing Igor, is closing its Paris office according to 
3-D is all the rage and Disney is jumping on the fad with both mouse-sized feet. Yesterday, they announced that their classic Beauty and the Beast will receive the three-dimensional treatment. The existing film will be put through Disney Digital 3-D technology according to 
By 1935, [[[Popeye the Sailor Man] was considered more popular than Mickey Mouse and his animated exploits thrilled theater goers year after year as the Fleischer Studios continued to churn them out almost monthly. When they began running on television, the animated exploits delighted a new generation of viewers and keeping the character viable long after his comic strip passed its peak.
Walt Disney Studios’ [[[Sleeping Beauty]]] holds up as a spectacular work of animation and it looks even better now that the studio has cleaned it up. The classic fairy tale has stood the test of time quite nicely and the Platinum Edition 50th Anniversary 2-disc set, released today, is a worthwhile addition to your home video library. It’s a great artifafct, and the end of an era of amazing animated fare from Disney Studios. Every anuimated feature that has followed, through today, somehow pales in comparison to this effort.
