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Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens
Warner Bros. // Unrated // October 22, 2002
List Price: $14.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Animation isn't the illusion of life; it is life."
- Chuck Jones, 1912-2002
Even the most casual filmgoer can rattle off the names of at least a handful of directors, even if they're limited to the likes of Spielberg, Scorcese, and Hitchcock. Animation directors rarely achieve that level of prominence in the public consciousness. Chuck Jones is among the few to have become something approximating a household name, and deservedly so. With several hundred credits to his name over the course of an illustrious six decade-plus career, Jones' indelible impact on animation as an artform is and perhaps will forever remain unparalleled. Among innumerable other achievements, Jones condensed Wagner's epic The Ring of the Nibelung into the six-minute What's Opera, Doc?, created such characters as Pepe Le Pew, Wile E. Coyote, and the Road Runner, and played a significant role in shaping Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck into the pop culture icons they are today. An armful of awards have been bestowed upon Chuck Jones, including an Oscar for The Dot and the Line and a Lifetime Achievement Award, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas owes its status as an enduring classic due in large part to Jones' direction.
The feature-length Extremes and In-Betweens: A Life in Animation offers a detailed look at one of animation's greatest talents, featuring interviews with around twenty-five people. Its participants, Chuck Jones chief among them, are wide and varied. Alongside family members and collaborators are a bevy of directors, including Ken Burns, Rob Minkoff, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, and Joe Dante, the latter of whom featured Chuck as an actor in Gremlins and opened the sequel with his animation. Also providing comments are current names in the animation field like John Lasseter, Matt Groening, Glen Keane, and Eric Goldberg, along with actors Whoopie Goldberg and Robin Williams, composer André Previn, and Hollywood big-wigs Lorne Michaels, Roger Mayer, and John Schulman.
Originally produced for the PBS series Great Performances in 2000, Extremes and In-Betweens manages to be both entertaining and informative without leaning too far to either side, avoiding being dry or devolving into insubstantial fluff. As the "A Life in Animation" text in the title suggests, the focus is squarely on Jones' career and technique, steering largely clear of anything from his personal life after he's established himself at Warner Animation. Extremes and In-Betweens explores Jones' life from his $8 a week gig as a cel washer in 1932 to the closest thing to retirement that the director seemed capable of accepting. The documentary features a generous number of clips spanning the length of Jones' career, included as punctuation rather than filler.
Video: Extremes and In-Betweens is letterboxed to an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and though the disc's menus are in anamorphic widescreen, the feature itself is not. The interview segments in the documentary boast an attractive, razor-sharp appearance, and as they were was shot on video, the usual artifacts often associated with film-sourced material are obviously not present. The vintage animated sequences' Academy Standard ratio is properly maintained, windowboxed in the center of the widescreen frame.
Audio: As is to be expected from a documentary, the audio is firmly anchored front and center. Surrounds lie dormant for the duration, and only the occasional low-frequency murmur belches from the subwoofer during certain bits of music. The most important task the audio is given is to ensure that the participants' comments remain discernable throughout, and on that end, there are no concerns of note.
Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish are accessible through the "Languages" menu.
Supplements: "A Chuck Jones Tutorial: Tricks of the Cartoon Trade" is pieced together from footage left over from the production of Extremes and In-Betweens, and some comments from the documentary's participants managed to sneak into both. Topics covered include zip-outs, anticipation, primary and secondary action, overlapping action, cartoon exaggeration, natural animal movement, anthropomorphism, and animation of minutiae.
Two pencil tests are included. The first runs just a few seconds, taking a look at Bugs hoofin' it in Mississippi Hare. Of greater interest is an early version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, featuring several minutes of footage in various stages of completion.
A Chuck Jones retrospective wouldn't be complete without a least a couple of animated shorts. Featured here are Feed the Kitty (recently given a nod in the Pixar blockbuster Monsters Inc.) and Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century. Both cartoons look great, and though I don't have an immediate direct point of comparison, the quality of their presentations seems to be substantially improved over Saturday morning broadcasts. Hopefully Warner is sufficiently aware of interest in Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes collections that this pair won't be the last to hit DVD.
Rounding out the supplements are a couple of pages of Chuck Jones' career highlights.
Extremes and In-Betweens is divided into 22 chapter stops, and the disc's static menus include pencil sketches of Wile E. Coyote, Bugs Buffy, Pepe Le Pew, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, Porky Pig, Sylvester, and Michigan J. Frog.
Conclusion: Extremes and In-Betweens would warrant an enthusiastic recommendation even if the excellent documentary were all that's present on this DVD. The inclusion of a fair amount of strong supplemental material and its availability for less than ten dollars at several retailers makes Extremes and In-Betweens deserving of a spot on the shelf of any animation fan. Highly Recommended.
- Chuck Jones, 1912-2002
Even the most casual filmgoer can rattle off the names of at least a handful of directors, even if they're limited to the likes of Spielberg, Scorcese, and Hitchcock. Animation directors rarely achieve that level of prominence in the public consciousness. Chuck Jones is among the few to have become something approximating a household name, and deservedly so. With several hundred credits to his name over the course of an illustrious six decade-plus career, Jones' indelible impact on animation as an artform is and perhaps will forever remain unparalleled. Among innumerable other achievements, Jones condensed Wagner's epic The Ring of the Nibelung into the six-minute What's Opera, Doc?, created such characters as Pepe Le Pew, Wile E. Coyote, and the Road Runner, and played a significant role in shaping Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck into the pop culture icons they are today. An armful of awards have been bestowed upon Chuck Jones, including an Oscar for The Dot and the Line and a Lifetime Achievement Award, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas owes its status as an enduring classic due in large part to Jones' direction.
The feature-length Extremes and In-Betweens: A Life in Animation offers a detailed look at one of animation's greatest talents, featuring interviews with around twenty-five people. Its participants, Chuck Jones chief among them, are wide and varied. Alongside family members and collaborators are a bevy of directors, including Ken Burns, Rob Minkoff, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, and Joe Dante, the latter of whom featured Chuck as an actor in Gremlins and opened the sequel with his animation. Also providing comments are current names in the animation field like John Lasseter, Matt Groening, Glen Keane, and Eric Goldberg, along with actors Whoopie Goldberg and Robin Williams, composer André Previn, and Hollywood big-wigs Lorne Michaels, Roger Mayer, and John Schulman.
Originally produced for the PBS series Great Performances in 2000, Extremes and In-Betweens manages to be both entertaining and informative without leaning too far to either side, avoiding being dry or devolving into insubstantial fluff. As the "A Life in Animation" text in the title suggests, the focus is squarely on Jones' career and technique, steering largely clear of anything from his personal life after he's established himself at Warner Animation. Extremes and In-Betweens explores Jones' life from his $8 a week gig as a cel washer in 1932 to the closest thing to retirement that the director seemed capable of accepting. The documentary features a generous number of clips spanning the length of Jones' career, included as punctuation rather than filler.
Video: Extremes and In-Betweens is letterboxed to an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and though the disc's menus are in anamorphic widescreen, the feature itself is not. The interview segments in the documentary boast an attractive, razor-sharp appearance, and as they were was shot on video, the usual artifacts often associated with film-sourced material are obviously not present. The vintage animated sequences' Academy Standard ratio is properly maintained, windowboxed in the center of the widescreen frame.
Audio: As is to be expected from a documentary, the audio is firmly anchored front and center. Surrounds lie dormant for the duration, and only the occasional low-frequency murmur belches from the subwoofer during certain bits of music. The most important task the audio is given is to ensure that the participants' comments remain discernable throughout, and on that end, there are no concerns of note.
Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish are accessible through the "Languages" menu.
Supplements: "A Chuck Jones Tutorial: Tricks of the Cartoon Trade" is pieced together from footage left over from the production of Extremes and In-Betweens, and some comments from the documentary's participants managed to sneak into both. Topics covered include zip-outs, anticipation, primary and secondary action, overlapping action, cartoon exaggeration, natural animal movement, anthropomorphism, and animation of minutiae.
Two pencil tests are included. The first runs just a few seconds, taking a look at Bugs hoofin' it in Mississippi Hare. Of greater interest is an early version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, featuring several minutes of footage in various stages of completion.
A Chuck Jones retrospective wouldn't be complete without a least a couple of animated shorts. Featured here are Feed the Kitty (recently given a nod in the Pixar blockbuster Monsters Inc.) and Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century. Both cartoons look great, and though I don't have an immediate direct point of comparison, the quality of their presentations seems to be substantially improved over Saturday morning broadcasts. Hopefully Warner is sufficiently aware of interest in Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes collections that this pair won't be the last to hit DVD.
Rounding out the supplements are a couple of pages of Chuck Jones' career highlights.
Extremes and In-Betweens is divided into 22 chapter stops, and the disc's static menus include pencil sketches of Wile E. Coyote, Bugs Buffy, Pepe Le Pew, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, Porky Pig, Sylvester, and Michigan J. Frog.
Conclusion: Extremes and In-Betweens would warrant an enthusiastic recommendation even if the excellent documentary were all that's present on this DVD. The inclusion of a fair amount of strong supplemental material and its availability for less than ten dollars at several retailers makes Extremes and In-Betweens deserving of a spot on the shelf of any animation fan. Highly Recommended.
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