Sunday, August 05, 2007

POPEYE! (The Sailor!)

The long awaited, remastered collection of the early and best Popeye cartoons is finally out, and it's pretty amazing. As someone who has bought the color "Ali Baba" featurette at least ten times on video, laser disc and public domain DVD, this set is a revelation. The color bursts out of the screen with a vibrancy I suspect no one's seen since the very first release, and maybe not even then!

The black and white cartoons have also been cleaned up and remastered, and they're equally awesome. These are some of the wildest, funniest cartoons ever made, with a fluid animation style that reminds us just how much we've lost as the cheaper Saturday morning animation style has taken over.

I believe a Vol. 2 is due out in November... plenty of time to get through these dozens of cartoons AND the five hours (!) of commentary and extra features.

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