My Animated Movie (and Shows) Collection... In A Nutshell

It's that time again to talk a bit about one of the genres in my personal home video collection. Today it's going to be the world of animation. Since I don't have very many animated films, I will bend my own rule here and include animated TV shows, of which I have a fair number (though still not a lot).

The Disney classic, Pinocchio (all rights belong to Disney... so don't sue me!)

My interest in the art of animation goes way back. I mean, like every other kid, I was glued to Saturday morning television... everything from Mighty Mouse (the original show) to Scooby Doo, then as a young man working in the animation industry I watched Inspector Gadget and crap like the Star Wars: Droids show, then later came Rocko's Modern Life, Animaniacs, and on and on. When I grew up... way up... and began collecting home video first through Columbia House Club, I grabbed the obvious stuff like The Flintstones (which is actually long gone now - a VHS tape I didn't want to upgrade). But I was pretty discerning about what I wanted in my little collection in the early days, so such purchases were few and far between. Still...

I wouldn't describe myself as an animation fanatic, but I would say I really enjoy great animation, and will buy my favourites for my personal collection. I'm no completist in this category, but when something really knocks my socks off, I'll do my best to fill in the gaps. For instance, when I learned that the Samurai Jack TV series was available on DVD, it became my mission to locate all the seasons. And I am complete on that front. Same with Ren and Stimpy... I loved watching that back in the 90's, going so far as to record nearly every single episode onto videotape. When those tapes aged and failed me, it was time to upgrade. It took years to find proper, uncut episodes, but not long ago, I found the complete series for a song (no, I didn't sing for it, but the price couldn't have been better).

My appreciation for the artform includes all forms of animation, including traditional (hand-drawn and painted), stop-motion (physical figures that are moved bit by bit, and photographed frame by frame), and computer animation.

There are a lot of real gems out there, and though I have enjoyed many of them, it just never seemed necessary to add very many of them to my shelves. The obvious ones would be the Toy Story movies, Monsters Inc., Despicable Me, The Shaun the Sheep movie, and so on. All great, but they're also readily available online should I ever want to re-watch them. But in my list below, you'll see some representation of what I like the best.

The kings of stop-motion, Aardman Animations, created the 

lovable and amusing British characters Wallace and Gromit

So here we go... my small animation home video collection, a mix of DVDs and Blu-rays:

Avatar (continues to blow my mind... visuals from out of this world)
Bambi (one of the first Disney movies I ever saw as a child... still amazing to watch today)
Hugo (super impressive tour-de-force of story and artform, and by master director Scorsese)
The Incredibles (a personal fave of the genre - more fun than any friggin' Marvel movie, I say)
Pinocchio (original Disney film... a classic... need I say more?)
Rio (a very fun modern computer animated comedy... beautiful technique and art)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (original Disney film... one of the best, of course)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (TV episodes spliced together for a feature-length film... not great)
TinTin (a rollicking adventure tale that features seamless and hilarious animation)
Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (as stop-motion goes, this duo is my fave of all)
Wall-E (among my favourite movies of all time, regardless of genre... such warm, clever humour)


And the shows and animated shorts I've got are:

Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Volume One (only because I actually worked on this silly show)
A Charlie Brown Christmas (duh... a holiday classic for generations)
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Looney Tunes Gold Collection, Volume Two (loads of legendary cartoon characters)
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection, Volume One (even more Bugs, Daffy, and Sylvester)
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection, Volumes One, Two, and Three
The Original Christmas Classics (the Rankin Bass TV specials: Rudolph, Frosty, & Santa... you know 'em)
Ren and Stimpy, all five seasons (absurd fantastical art and ideas... one of my faves of all time)
Samurai Jack, all five seasons (excellent cinematic treatment, the music, the art... love it all)
Star Wars: Clone Wars TV micro-series of shorts (SamJack creator Tartakovsky worked his magic here)
Wallace and Gromit: The Complete Collection (all of the short films of this hilarious pair, ingeniously stop-motion animated... one of my prized possessions)