smurrlock

Blowitoutahere on ebay has the blu ray set for $55 and change which seems to be the lowest as most vendors around $70 for it for anyone interested. Had to order one.

laidbacklarkin

Darn, less than 1/2 the price for each set that was purchased separately. Man, never gonna do this again

Proglodite

Trying to figure this one out - there were six original releases, so six discs. But this collection is listed as 6 discs, but all the descriptions mention a bonus disc with extra features. So if this actually a 7-disc set? --Peter

cinefan

No, it is a 6 disc set including the bonus disc. The blu-rays for the shorts are reconfigured so there are a few more shorts on each disc; they are not just the discs from the original 6 volumes repackaged. I bought the first few of the individual volumes but then sold them and bought the Centennial Collection.

The only thing missing that the original volumes had are the nice little printed synopses and production notes that were inside the individual volume covers. Because there's not the space, this cover lists only the titles of the shorts and their production years. On the other hand, the bonus disc is fantastic, with lots of interesting stuff including 3 of the silent shorts, foreign language shorts and fragments (where the cast speaks lines phonetically in completely different takes in Spanish or French for foreign markets), reunions, promotional shorts, screen tests, all kinds of stuff.

Proglodite

Thanks for clearing that up! I had the first volume from the Kickstarter campaign, and loved what they did, but just never could justify the expense to keep up on the series. --Peter

BobO'Link

The absolutely worst part about the Centennial Collection is the case. It has 2 stacking hubs (with 2 discs on each) that overlap a single hub. The case is twice as thick as needed for just 6 discs. I ordered the "Bonus Disc" release separately and, if ordered directly from ClassicFlix, it comes with a Centennial Collection case as a bonus for those of us who purchased the series when originally released and were wanting more compact storage (it's label is for the new release so is also inaccurate if you have the original releases - and there's no place inside for those original, more informational, sleeve inserts). I dislike it so much that I tossed it and will continue to use the individual release cases (and they're only twice as thick in total). I'm looking at purchasing a proper 7 disc case to house the series.

I'd be annoyed about the vastly reduced price were it not for the simple fact that I really, really, wanted these on blu-ray and didn't want to take the chance they'd go OOP quickly. I'd partially fault ClassicFlix for not saying up front they were planning this release but they worked on and funded following discs from sales of the volumes as they were released. There was never any kind of guarantee the series would be completed until it came to the last couple of volumes. As it turned out, sales exceeded expectations which allowed for the re-authoring and release of the complete series.

Whichever way you get these it's a class product and the end results are simply incredible. I *never* thought I'd see these shorts looking and sounding so good. IMHO, this is the release of the year.

cinefan

Yes, I agree with you on the case, it's pretty bad -- seems crazy to have discs stacked directly like that. I plan to replace it with a better 6 disc case but haven't done so yet. Even though I had Volumes 1-5, I sold them and bought the full Centennial Collection. So now I have a total of 6 discs. Before I sold the individual volumes I scanned the synopses/production notes (which are brief but quite good). I didn't *know* those notes were going to be missing from the collection but was worried they might be.

At some point I plan to take the OCRed text from my scans and massage it to create my own little booklet that maps the notes to the new disc configuration. However I never got around to buying Volume 6 so unfortunately I don't have those notes for that final set of shorts. I might create my own notes for those adapting info from the Maltin/Bann Our Gang book. It's a pain -- but I'm retired so can afford to waste my time on projects like that .