DVD Extras

adonis

i think dvd extras are crap...
i have about 20 dvds, all pretty good, and i think the extras are terrible for all of them, barring requiem for a dream, which an interesting interview with darren aronofsky..
but seriously, are there any really worthwhile extras?

aidan_walsh

It really depends on how interested you are on the creation of the films...

Sometimes you might get a good interview with a director or an actor, but most of the time they just bung in the made-for-tv stuff that was used primarily to hype people up to the film in the first going down. LOTR is one of the few dvd sets that I have seen that have some original, interesting content. "The Two Towers" even had a short film made by Sean Austin!

But, yeah, a lot of the current stuff is tripe...

lodgepole

A lot of them are just electronic press kit stuff that has little or nothing to do with the making of the film and everything to do with people complimenting each other and advertisement.

There are brilliant DVDs out there though, if the extras on a disc mean something to you, do a google search with the title of the disc and "r2 dvd review" in it. There's a lot of really in depth review sites that go into a lot more detail than any of the standard film magazines do.

callmescratch

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is packed with good extras, they even have a scene of the film acted out in lego.
that requiem interview is with hubert selby junior (on the R1 anyway) the author of the book, and is very good, especially if you're a fan of his beforehand.
some commentaries can offer good insights into the filming process (if you can sit through all the boring chit-chat).

Buck Owens

The Spinal Tap DVD extras are really cool, great commentary from Spinal tap themselves,you know the whole thing about the film being real and that? The fight club, Pulp fiction and the recent Res dogs special edition. 28 Days later has a whole Storyboard alternate ending. The memento DVD is pretty cool considering it's not a big 2 disc special edition type thing.

steveland?

The commentaries on the Evil Dead trilogy are very funny, especially on evil dead 1 where theres a track of just bruce campbell talkin about all the little anecdotes that went into filming the movie.

The commentary on all the Futurama DVDs are good too. Usually its mainly that David X Cohen guy talking about all the funny scenes that were thrown away etc.

The extras on any of the three Die Hard special editions are good. It was interesting to see how dreadfully awful the alternate ending to Die Hard with a vengance was.

Se7en has some really good extras, and the documentaries on the superman dvd are deadly.

And the extras for A Mighty Wind are looking promising

I could go on...

lodgepole

Originally posted by Buck Owens
The memento DVD is pretty cool considering it's not a big 2 disc special edition type thing.

You should see the American 2 disc edition... it's really ****ed up...

aidan_walsh

Unfortunatly, The West Wing has bugger all in the way of extras... The first set had a few interviews and TV spots, but the second and third PAL editions have nothing!

Its a real pity, 'cos I love the show and it would be great if they added the US extras to the ROW editions...

chewy

i love dvd extras )))

usual suspects special edition is probably the best has loads on it...

lord of rings obviously, ....

worst i ever got was die hard as john mctiernan on it and he must bethe most boring man ever....

Jim

Black Hawk Down veterans commentary is pretty good.

Its all like "Now, I don't know why they put this in here, that never happened. Oh and this scene, completly unrealistic, I don't know what the director was thinking".

echomadman

I'm a features addict especially audio commentaries I've bought second copies of movies on dvd just because the newer one has a commentary.
Ridley scott does great ones, so does Paul Verhoeven.
Bey Logan does great commentaries on a lot of the hong kong legends dvds, the amount of information he can impart in a few sentences is staggering.

It really depends on the type of director/film making team, anything Stan Winston worked on usually has a good "making of" documentary (Predator/Terminator/T2).
John McTiernan Does excellent commantaries aswell.
See also Robert Rodriguez movies for excellent featuresand informative documentaries.

A lot of features are just crap space-fillers though, esp in mainstream "Hit summer movie" type films, usually a few bland interviews or some horrible fox tv "behind the scenes" crap.

Creature

The commentary on The Thing DVD is great. Its basically just John Carpenter and Kurt Russell having a laugh reminiscing about the making of the film. Its very funny at times but also gives a good insight into the films amazing special effects.

chewy

rocky has great ones too

thing was great to watch again really good dvd

i thought john mctieran sounded bored

are there any video shops with good the more recent dvd, i occasionally go to bayside or sutton xtra vision, i don't re watch films that often so its a bit much to buy a dvd, was looking for predator dvd which has loads of extras but i never seen it to rent is chartbuster any better ?

steveland?

well usually video shops just stock rental copies (vanilla discs, ie no extras) of films... means you have an incentive to buy the dvd

Kain

I'm a big fan of out-takes, so they're usually the only thing that i'll watch in the dvd extra's, unfirtunatly a lot of movies don't bother putting them in.
I also sometimes listen to the audio commentry cause you'll end up finding out things that where never put in.