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HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge
- species9606 4y agoNot to worry, HBO Max has replaced all that with “Velma.”
- richwater 4y agoI was actually jaw-dropped at how terrible the first episode was. HBO is normally known for high-quality content (even if I don't like it, it's not for me).
- HideousKojima 4y ago[flagged]
- zeppelin101 4y ago[flagged]
- pictur 4y ago[flagged]
- djur 4y agoI have yet to encounter a single person defending the show on these grounds, and I know or follow a lot of progressive/feminist/queer/etc. type people.
- bitwize 4y agoSome of the critics are, but far fewer than normal for this kind of thing, I think Mindy Kaling overplayed her hand.
- goldenchrome 4y agoHave you met anyone defending the show?
- micromacrofoot 4y agoI think this is a case where both takes are wrong, it’s a bad show, but not because of how they make fred a stereotype
- rhino369 4y agoHBO Max isn’t HBO—it’s HBO plus other Warner bros stuff. Velma was made by the non-HBO side.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThere has not been an HBO side for a few years now. ATT fired the HBO executives that made HBO HBO when ATT bought it.
- anderber 4y agoVelma, I believe, is a holdover from the previous regime. The current one is more likely to replace it with some sort of trashy reality TV.
- cptnapalm 4y agoWhich would likely be a massive step up from Velma.
- willis936 4y agoI have a hard time shaking the feeling that this was unironically the pitch for the show.
- Eleison23 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cm2187 4y agoI had never heard of it, but with an imdb rating of 1.7 for 10k votes [1], it makes it to the top 20 worst shows/movies (with over 10k votes) in history. The worst movie in that category seems to be a biography of Erdogan [2]. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14153790/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14153790/ [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5988370/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5988370/
- thewebcount 4y agoI haven’t watched it yet, but it’s been out for less than a week, so I suspect that rating may change going forward. (Or maybe it really is awful? Feels like brigading to me, though.)
- cm2187 4y agoIn my experience, after 1000 votes, the rating has converged to its final value.
- nervousvarun 4y agoIt's a Scooby-Doo property...without Scooby-Doo (think the explanation for that is it's meant to be a "Velma origin story"). This is the kindof remake/re-imagining that gets made ostensibly for a different audience...but in the process alienates the traditional audience...which makes it end up with no audience. Mindy Kaling was a big part of the success of the American Office and has other successes in a relatively short career, so it's not hard to see why it was green-lit...but frankly it's rating is probably about what it should expected to be.
- astrange 4y agoIt seems like the kind of show where they wrote a script first and then turned it into Scooby Doo later.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoFrom what I've heard, it is unlikely to go up much. Absolute mess of a show that seems to go out of its way to insult any audience likely to watch it and who's only redeeming feature is that when the animators are trying they're doing a really good job.
- germinalphrase 4y agoI have no take on Velma, but “Be Cool, Scooby Doo” is perhaps the best of all the more recent iterations of the show. Good writing.
- anthomtb 4y agoI am getting a ton of adverts for "Velma" when watching YouTube. My YouTube habit is exclusively mountain biking, woodworking and home improvement. I am not sure how targeted YouTube's advertising is but have come up with three theories: 1) Data sharing with Netflix (I do love Big Mouth) 2) Using the content I watch as a correlation for my age, and therefore susceptibility to Scooby-Doo nostalgia. 3) Wide net, no targeting. YouTube is just blasting these ads to everyone. Nothing in the advertisements has piqued my interest in the show either. It looks uninspired.
- tgv 4y agoWhat part of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html is so hard to get? This isn't bloody reddit.
- yywwbbn 4y agoYou seem to breaking multiple of those rules with your comment.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoThere are over 500 episodes that Warner released on disc at some point… and over 500 they have not that probably haven’t been seen in… forever.
- tptacek 4y agoWarner Bros. takes its goods to market on publicly maintained roads, sells its sitcoms and movies to networks that broadcast on public airwaves, and distributes its movies to theaters and homes through fiber-optic cables that run over and under public land. The company is bound up in our shared history, and it has produced a great deal of art that is essential to that history. This argument suggests that anything you do partially belongs to the author, as well; airwaves aside, all of us are enabled in some way by public investments.
- djur 4y agoI think the stronger argument here is that Warner Bros. has profited from a legal regime that prohibits unlicensed distribution of their work. It's not unreasonable to suggest that they have some kind of reciprocal responsibility to the commons.
- radicaldreamer 4y agoThe way to really enforce this is to reduce the copyright protection period from essentially forever (thanks to Disney) to being more like patents, ~20 years.
- tptacek 4y agoThat's less than half the copyright term we had before Disney even existed.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoSounds good to me!
- benj111 4y agoAnd....?
- tptacek 4y ago
- rhino369 4y agoThey will probably resurface somewhere. While HBOmax was shelving some content for good for tax write offs—this is probably about selling rights to the highest bidder.
- techsupporter 4y agoI've read a couple of commentators speculating that the cartoons will go to one of those "free ad-supported streaming television" (FAST) platforms like Tubi or Pluto. The ad model is supposedly more profitable for stuff where people will put it on and let it run for hours.
- DanAtC 4y agomagnet:?xt=urn:btih:2606A5830780074B089FAB96904009DA412C1C3D&dn=Complete%20Looney%20Tunes%20Golden%20Collection%20%5BDVDrip%5D
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoThis one has the complete 1000 episode collection as well as movies and specials. Magnet link when you click “Open”. It’s got about a dozen seeders and I’m getting about 8 MB/sec download rate: https://downloadtorrentfile.com/hash/0d0a5a005906babfbfa6a30de1794c3b56099481?name=Looney https://downloadtorrentfile.com/hash/0d0a5a005906babfbfa6a30... Tunes and Merrie Melodies HQ Project v2022
- madars 4y agoNotably, this project combines the best possible video and audio to obtain a single best version of each episode (things combining foreign DVD video and English LaserDisc audio for some). So, as is often the case with piracy, it likely has strictly better technical characteristics than any streaming offering.
- rado 4y agoThe only reason I subscribed was the “Paw Patrol” series. They removed them, so I unsubscribed. Streaming is weird.
- Lammy 4y agoSearch "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies HQ Project v2022" and then fire up your favorite BitTorrent client :)
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI searched 1337x and TPB. I see something like this but without “project v2022” and the torrent is from 2015. It’s 159.5 GB. How do in find the more recent one you mention? EDIT: I found a link to it on Reddit r/looney tunes pointing to bt4g.org. 411.93 GB so much larger than the 2015 version. Comments say it has and more and more blu-ray and restored content over older versions.
- Lammy 4y agoEven the old version will be a fine watching experience if you don't want to burn that much HDD space.
- chiph 4y agoIt's v2020: Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies HQ Project v2020
- Lammy 4y agoThat's an older version, yeah. There's also a v2021.
- JamesAdir 4y agoIt's so sad that in this day and age of broadband we have to resort to pirating instead of streaming.
- n3storm 4y agoThere is a torrent of emotions coming to my mind. Call me a mule but I'm still think those are some of the best entertaining cartoons ever.
- bsilvereagle 4y agoIf you’re interested in purchasing the shorts that have been released on physical home media (nearly half of episodes have not been) I made this outline of the differences between the various sets and recommended purchasing order: https://frdmtoplay.com/maximizing-bugs-bunny/ https://frdmtoplay.com/maximizing-bugs-bunny/
- WalterBright 4y agoThank you. Ordered some of them!
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoIncredible work. THANK YOU! Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes trying to share a specific Bugs episode with a son, daughter, niece, nephew, or even grandchild… knows how infuriating it can be. “I wanna Easta egg! I wanna Easta egg!”
- Finnucane 4y agoBought the Golden Collection during its original release. In retrospect it seems to have been a worthwhile purchase.
- Khaine 4y agoThank You. Such an invaluable resource. It sucks that Warner Brothers use these releases to milk as much money from customers, and worse they haven't released all of the shorts.
- bsimpson 4y agoI just moved out of my apartment. I have a DVD collection I haven't touched in years, but the capriciousness of online streaming makes me reluctant to downsize it. Amongst my collection are a bunch of old cartoons including the Looney Tunes Golden Collections. This post makes me glad they didn't get tossed.
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoDVDs rot after a while, you may want to check those discs and maybe back them up or something.
- chiph 4y agoSchoolhouse Rock is probably next to vanish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVKvqTItto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVKvqTItto
- crooked-v 4y ago"Elbow Room" and its casual glossing over of extractive colonialism and genocide would really be a better example here.
- shp0ngle 4y agoI still don’t understand the accounting logic, under which it makes sense for Warner Bross to stop putting shows they own on a service they own. It’s not like it’s costing them any money!
- shp0ngle 4y agoThe linked article says this > Long story short, there are legal rules and regulations allowing a company like WBD to write down costs incurred as part of a post-merger restructuring — but only for a short amount of time. Taking shows such as Minx or Westworld out of the HBO Max and, more importantly, WBD library will apparently help the megacorporation make its future balance sheets look a lot better. This isn’t just about saving a few thousand dollars on residual checks or licensing costs; it’s about writing down millions in amortization costs these titles would have incurred in coming years. It still doesn’t make sense to me. What do they write down? They already paid for those shows! Several decades ago, in some cases. Can someone that understand accounting more explain?
- Jasper_ 4y agoResiduals and royalties are still ongoing payments.
- astrange 4y agoThe people watching the shows are ongoing income.
- vanderZwan 4y agoIs this related to the Batgirl situation, where they shelved a practically finished movie for accounting reasons?
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoThey are basically doing a clean up of their balance sheet. Those old WB shows still had value. So they were an asset in the balance sheet. Long lived assets /intangible assets usually have a long life, something like 40 years, and the clock would have started from the moment that remastered show was created. These costs would have been hitting the income line as amorrization costs for many many years. Making their EPS look worse than it should. Still, I question the logic, because you can write down an impaired asset without actually retiring it from service. Some beancounter somewhere had the bright idea to write down the asset to improve the balance sheet and P&L... But that should not mean you pull the shows out of circulation, andbecause they are barely driving any traffic, they have a solid accountinh argument for saying that their economic value is zero. If a car has fully amortized but it still works, you probably dont stop driving it!
- CSMastermind 4y agoMost looney tunes content seems to still be available through Boomerang at least in the United States: https://watch.boomerang.com/ https://watch.boomerang.com/
- jghn 4y agoI found their app to be terrible and wound up cancelling. Then I found the HBO Max content. Alas. In a recent reddit thread on this topic someone pointed out that archive.org has a bunch of old episodes for easy download: https://archive.org/details/20200303_20200303_0324 https://archive.org/details/20200303_20200303_0324
- blacklion 4y agoOne more link to show to friends, who ask me, why I'm not using streaming platforms for music and buy all my music in downloadable or material format (or, yes, pirate it if buying in such formats is impossible). And own huge NAS. And pay hefty price (more than typical streaming subscription) for (encrypted) cloud backup.
- WalterBright 4y ago> LOCKSS, for Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe I've opined here many times that a lot of stuff is not digitized because it is too expensive to do a professional job, so just use your phone camera to take a snap of each page. (I've done this, it works great.) That's about 15 seconds a page, and requires no expertise and no equipment other than a phone. I'm always surprised at the horrified reaction people have to this. In my not-so-humble-opinion, a less than perfect photo is far superior to the museum burned it all up in a fire. Like the Hewlett Packard museum.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI’m surprised the article didn’t mention the 2008 Universal Studios fire, instead deciding to mention much older fires: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire It was mostly audio masters that were lost, but also some video. List of what was burned is in the Wikipedia page. I can almost guarantee you’ll recognize some of the names.
- falcolas 4y agoTo set expectations, I'm a proponent of copyright. Making a copy for yourself via a camera is fine IMO (and by the law). Distributing it while still under copyright is not. Distributing it after copyright expires (or even once it's no longer available for purchase), again perfectly fine.
- Spooky23 4y agoNone of this stuff makes any sense to me. New kids are born every day. My 9 year old watched Tom & Jerry for the first time a few months ago and loved it. It’s an evergreen market. I cannot fathom how these companies aren’t making money showing cartoons that were made 60 years ago. Everyone’s dead who made them, presumably they own the rights. If they don’t want them on their platforms, put them on YouTube and promote them.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoMore and more of these are getting censored. Save them while you can. The Black maid in many of the Tom & Jerry cartoons is going to be a reason to cancel these. Funny, we don’t cancel books from the 19th century (eg Tom Sawyer), but we cancel cartoons from mid-20th.
- marcos100 4y agoCrazy parents don't read books.
- Jtsummers 4y agoYou might be able to make a better case that "we don't cancel books from the 19th century" if you'd used something other than Tom Sawyer as an example, which has been banned/censored at various times in the US.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoTrue. But in 2022, no one bans books like Tom Sawyer et. al. even though they are inarguably more offensive to minorities than Tom & Jerry. Such books are considered art and in the American Parthenon of literature. Perhaps in 50 more years, Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes will reach similar artful status.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago> no one bans books like Tom Sawyer et. al. even though they are inarguably more offensive to minorities than Tom & Jerry. Not in the traditional sense of the word. The strategy used today is more of a soft damnatio memoriae. For example, the estate of Dr.Seuss has decided not to publish or sell certain titles over supposedly racist content. https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/exclusive-dr-seuss-stepdaughter-speaks-out-about-books-removed-from-print/amp https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/exclusive-dr-seuss-st... Even the author of Captain Underpants (Dan Pilkey) and his publisher withdrew from sale an entire decade-old issue of a series spinoff due the use of a stock kung-fu master character in a few scenes. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-race-captain-underpants/captain-underpants-author-pulls-book-due-to-racist-imagery-apologizes-to-asian-readers-idUSKBN2BL2QM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-race-captain-underpan... The last one is rather surprising because the Captain Underpants series has been one of the most challenged and censored books. In an article penned by the author himself, he had this to say: "To set the record straight, I should point out that my books contain no sex, no profanity, no nudity, no drugs, and no graphic violence (at least nothing you wouldn't see in a 1950's Superman comic book). So what's the big deal? Well, most of it boils down to the fact that not every book is right for every person. There are some adults out there who are not amused by the things that make most children laugh, and so they try to stomp these things out. We've all met people like that, haven't we?" Rather ironic.
- jurassic 4y agoEvery time this happens I get angry. Whatever accounting rules are causing this to happen need to be changed pronto.
- mortenjorck 4y ago> There are vile ethnic caricatures and slurs in those patriotic cartoons from the Second World War, and to its immense credit, Warner Bros. has often worked to contextualize and preserve those shorts. In several cases, it has included those works in separate subsections on home-video releases, so that they won’t autoplay with the rest of the cartoons. If only more shared this view that we should thoughtfully and critically engage with problematic elements of classic works rather than summarily banishing them.
- ksniwmidjd 4y ago[dead]
- CharlesW 4y agoDo you have a list of these classic, summarily-banished works? In a world where Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is available on mainstream streaming services, it's hard to imagine what atrocities you're thinking of.
- parker_mountain 4y agoThey worst of them are referred to as the Censored Eleven, although you can easily find them intact (albeit, with a warning). It's not a complete list - others have been added to the list since, such as WWII cartoons with highly racist anti-Japanese charactures. An example of one illustrates why the content might be considered problematic: "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs". A contemporary review said, "A satire on Snow White done in blackface, set in modern swing, this is the best in a long time. It's very funny." The "atrocities" include rampant racism, sexism, and other needless offenses with the intent of comedy. Other media of the time, such as Theodore Geisel/Dr Suess' wartime cartoons, often show up on these lists as well. In my opinion, it's good that these cartoons are accessible, with content warnings, yet kept out of normal playback rotation. They're relics of an age gone, thankfully, past.
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoMy avatar for the longest time was the Minah Bird in the short Inki and the Minah Bird. For those who are unaware, the Inki character in this short was a small tribal African child in a grass skirt who spent his days attempting to hunt various animals with a spear. And by African, I mean the blackface depiction with the white lips that is reminiscent of old Al Jolson films. Now, I didn't remember ANYTHING about this part of the video. I had last watched it when I was a small child. But I enjoyed the part I did remember, namely the Minah bird, because the bird was methodical, walked in step with Mendelssohn's "The Hebrides," and could whup the crap out of anything. So when it came time to choose an avatar during a period of time when people were not using their faces as screen shots, I used this character. It wasn't until years later that my girlfriend, who happened to be black, asked me why the cartoon bird was my avatar. So I looked it up and... let's just say I discontinued use of the avatar before the topic was broached again.
- babyshake 4y agoWhatever happened to the supposed future where information wanted to be free, and we would have these video libraries of the future that would contain virtually infinite selection? It did seem for a few years at least that we were headed in that direction. It would be interesting if there was a Popcorn Time style app that only streamed content older than 20-30 years and required you to do oAuth login for paid services that support independent artists. It might not be any less illegal, but it might seem reasonable to a lot of people that wouldn't support a less targeted form of piracy.
- JakeAl 4y agoThe pirates will always be free, and control freaks who can't control their own feelings will always impose their will on the rest of the world in the name of decorum, or civility or whatever word they want to attach to their elitism so they can see themselves as "better" even when it is less sophisticated and nuanced (ham-fisted).
- vjulian 4y agoI find the article content infuriating and thus only skimmed. I don’t know if copyright is a factor somewhere here, but to me personally it is irrelevant. I shall look for a complete collection online with the best possible restoration / transfer. Surely someone has compiled such a set. I appreciate the archive link shared here in another comment.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoHere’s a link to an active torrent magnet that has the complete Looney Tunes collection. Click “open” for the magnet link: https://downloadtorrentfile.com/hash/0d0a5a005906babfbfa6a30de1794c3b56099481?name=Looney https://downloadtorrentfile.com/hash/0d0a5a005906babfbfa6a30... Tunes and Merrie Melodies HQ Project v2022
- vjulian 4y agoBrilliant- thank you!
- jdkee 4y agoCultural erasure.
- zacharynewton 4y agoDid anyone else find that Blippi video deeply disturbing? I was warned, but still recovering...
- LocalH 4y agoPreservation is piracy, piracy is preservation. Always has been. Anything less risks not fulfilling the “preservation” end of it (such as hoarding rare media because it’s illegal to redistribute).
- julian_sark 4y agoContent vanishing is the reason I archive e.g. favorite podcasts and some YouTube videos. For example, the whole cracked.com podcast's back catalogue seems to have effectively vanished from (useful) streaming now, for monetary reasons. Though even here, backup copies gets increasingly harder to create. Another podcast I listen to has now stopped having an RSS/xml feed and while it seemingly is available still, it's available only in a proprietary player on ne web site. Warehouse fires are one thing. But increasingly, change of distribution model is ruining the availability of stuff that was free to access when created, for purely profit reasons.
- deanCommie 4y agoThe cracked.com podcast, specifically the episodes with Jason Pargin were God-tier. I can't see a world in which I would re-listen to the archive, but they were foundational to so much of my thinking. And to this day I follow Pargin on whatever podcast episode he goes on, and on any subject, knowing it'll be incredible. If you somehow haven't heard, the Secretly Incredibly Fascinating Podcast has him as a regular guest: https://sifpod.podbean.com/ https://sifpod.podbean.com/ As does 1-900-HOTDOG - https://soundcloud.com/1900hotdog https://soundcloud.com/1900hotdog Each of these are by former Cracked employees, so when Jason Pargin is on, the conversation gravitates to a lot of the same big subjects - society, art, culture, science, and all the ways in which we take it for granted, or don't understand nearly the way we should.
- julian_sark 4y agoExactly! Jason Pargin, aka David Wong, is the main reason I listen to (and yes, re-listen) the Cracked podcast. I have recommended some of his articles to many folks over the years for it's insightful content, and occasionally revisit them myself. It's literally a case of "come for the jokes, stay for the insightfulness". Sadly I never really got into his comedy horror books (even though I own one or two). But Pargin has said so many insightful things that are meaningful to me and my psyche, I have once asked him to compile these things into a genuine self-help book. But the man's to humble, I recall he essentially said that there are likely people better suited to do this. I knew of his new ventures, glad he's still going strong, and yes, of course I do listen to 1-900 with him (as guest) and the incredibly funny Seanbaby. But thanks so much for mentioning it!
- crooked-v 4y agoI find it weird that the article takes turn into portraying this as some kind of "woke"-driven decision by Warner Bros Discovery, when (as noted in a linked article) it's actually just part of the nonsense service-worsening clear-cutting that the company is doing to try and make its short-term financials look better.
- Animats 4y agoIt's time for the Copyright Term Reduction Act. 50 years from first publication. That's it. Incidentally, all the Private Snafu cartoons have been uploaded to YouTube in high quality by the Library of Congress. Most of them are also on the Internet Archive.
- ReptileMan 4y agoArrgh mateys time to sail the high seas again. I hope there is a complete torrent somewhere ...
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoThis is why people datahoard and why piracy is still popular.
- dudeinjapan 4y agoSay what you will about Looney Tunes, Elmer Fudd is a very progressive character. He is open not only to transgender but also transspecies love.
- roel_v 4y agoIn a similar vein, is there someplace where my kids can watch He-Man, The Gummi Bears and GI Joe today?
- darepublic 4y agoInsightful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srTqxL_6Ysg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srTqxL_6Ysg
- bogomipz 4y ago>"I don’t relish explaining to my son why he can occasionally catch me absent-mindedly whistling Stephen Foster’s “Shortnin" Bread” but will never, ever hear me sing the lyrics." This really seems like an odd comment. "Shortnin Bread" is not a Stephen Foster song. It seems that someone who would take the time to point something like this out would actually know this. Further, the original plantation lyrics were no longer in use in the popular recorded versions of this song at the time Looney Tunes was producing cartoons. Perhaps the author was thinking of Camp Town Races? But again by this time the minstrel show lyric stylings had long been removed in recorded versions and the words in the lyrics themselves are just as silly as they are obscure but not racist in themselves. Both of these songs are basically part of the traditional American folk canon. I mean the Beach Boys recorded a well-known version of "Shortnin Bread."