Audio commentary

branie

anyone here like to listen to them as they are watching a film on DVD? I find them to bevery informative

krudler

Depends on the movie really, some of them are well worth a listen, Ridley Scott's ones are always good even if he's on his own he's a very engaging speaker, the Star Wars ones are ok, the prequels not so much, its mostly Lucas justifiying some awful characters and John Knoll telling us how much of the movie is cgi,ie 90% of it. The LOTR ones are great too but if theres one director to avoid its Tim Burton, loooooong pauses between talking, so much that you'll forget he's even there and just start listening to the movie. I did love Stallones ones for Rocky Balboa and Rambo, he's a lot smarter and more articulate than people give him credit for

Driver 8

I like Sam Mendes' commentaries, particularly on Road to Perdition

Meeja Ireland

My favourite is the commentary for Sideways. Thomas Haden Church, despite playing a bit of an oaf in the movie, is just brilliant. He's very funny all the way through. Paul Giamatti is good too, but he struggles to keep up with the co-star.

I'll check out Sam Mendes. Great topic, OP.

krudler

One of the best commentaries ever is The Thing, its just Kurt Russell and John Carpenter having a laugh for 2 hours, Russells reactions to the infamous heart attack scene are priceless, Big Trouble in Little China is the same. Also worth a listen is the one for Deep Blue Sea, purely because once his character dies, Samuel L Jackson ****s off to play golf!

Basq

Typically the only DVD special feature worth it's salt!

Don't have as much time to watch them as I once did unfortunately.

I loathe the ones where they're simply snippets of seperately recorded commentary spliced together (e.g 'Blade').. they just feel so boring, impersonal and suffer because of it.

Magic Eight Ball

basquille wrote: »

Typically the only DVD special feature worth it's salt!

Don't have as much time to watch them as I once did unfortunately.

I loathe the ones where they're simply snippets of seperately recorded commentary spliced together (e.g 'Blade').. they just feel so boring, impersonal and suffer because of it.

Totally! The Terminator 2 commentary was such a let down. It was basically sound bites from old documentaries. Such a waste!

Robert Rodriguez always dose great commentaries, especially if your a film maker or interested in film making.

niallon

basquille wrote: »

Typically the only DVD special feature worth it's salt!

Don't have as much time to watch them as I once did unfortunately.

I loathe the ones where they're simply snippets of seperately recorded commentary spliced together (e.g 'Blade').. they just feel so boring, impersonal and suffer because of it.

The Halloween Special Edition commentary suffers the same faith, it's awful.

The Evil Dead commentaries are great fun especially the...first I think...where Raimi and Tapert do one and Campbell does his seperately. The conflicting stories etc are just hilarious, Raimi laughing at torturing Bruce and Bruce cursing Raimi for the torture!

Dog Soldiers has a great full cast commentary too. I believe it even nearly raised the DVD rating due to the language out of the lads!

Also, as mentioned, The Thing and indeed all Carpenter commentaries excluding Halloween are excellent.

Meeja Ireland

basquille wrote: »

I loathe the ones where they're simply snippets of seperately recorded commentary spliced together (e.g 'Blade').. they just feel so boring, impersonal and suffer because of it.

Couldn't agree more. Sometimes it feels even worse than impersonal. De Niro and Billy Crystal on Analyse This sounded like they had serious problems with each other. You'd think they could either bury it for two hours, or make it the subject of the commentary. "Where I thought Bobby went wrong..."

krudler

One of the strangest commentaries are the ones on the Matrix Trilogy boxset, where the film critics bascially tear the movies apart for the duration, its either a ballsy or crazy move by the Wachowskis and Warner Bros to allow this on their own movie. they praise what deserves it on each movie but some of the stuff is pretty merciless, especially once they get to the climax of Revolutions

sweetie

love the spinal tap commentary. Fave bit is the reunion scene near the end and David says to Nigel 'you had me at hello!'

Sad Professor

Trevor Coulahan wrote: »

Totally! The Terminator 2 commentary was such a let down. It was basically sound bites from old documentaries. Such a waste!

Afaik there's a proper Cameron commentary on one of the more recent dvds. The old commentary is still good though and has loads of info in it. Most of it was actually newly recorded, Cameron just wasn't interested in doing a live commentary at the time.

I love the idea of commentary tracks but most of them are crap tbh. Directors usually don't prepare properly for them or are too inarticulate. Oliver Stone has done a few good ones though. LOTR ones were great as well.

Basq

Did anyone listen to the Dodgeball commentary? One of the more memorable ones I've heard recently..

# There is a fake DVD commentary on the DVD of Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story with Rawson Marshall Thurber, Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller arguing. 40 minutes into it, all three exit and the commentary is replaced with the audio commentary from There's Something About Mary. The real audio commentary can be found as an easter egg on the DVD.

Found that description when I was looking at the notable DVD audio commentaries on Wikipedia here!

Meeja Ireland

basquille wrote: »

Did anyone listen to the Dodgeball commentary? One of the more memorable ones I've heard recently..

Yes! That was very funny. I completely didn't know that there was a proper, serious commentary. The mock one was great, though. They all came across as horrible, horrible people.

bnt

On Miss Congeniality, the commentary by Sandra Bullock is well worth the price. "I did all my own eating ... no Stunt Mouth was employed in the making of this movie."

Jackass The Movie has two commentaries, which are both pretty good too.

HalloweenJack

I have only ever listened to one: the French Connection which was by the director. It was awful and put me off commentaries forever.

krudler

HalloweenJack wrote: »

I have only ever listened to one: the French Connection which was by the director. It was awful and put me off commentaries forever.

Friedkin? I havent listened to his French Connection one but the one on the original release of The Exorcist was great

Sad Professor

Yeah, all of Friedkin's early commentaries were terrible. He just described exactly what was happening on screen. Sample: "In this scene Chris MacNeil is walking down the street. She stops at a house and is walking up to the door. Now she is turning the key," etc, etc, etc. Very handy if you're blind but not much use otherwise.

He probably improved on later films but after sitting through the French Connection commentary and most of The Exorcist, I'll never give him the benefit of doubt again. It's hard to believe the dvd producer, or whoever was recording those tracks, just sat there and let him ramble off like that.

johnny_ultimate

I have watched very few commentaries in the past. I may have watched the Donnie Darko one in the past, and I do enjoy watching commentaries on deleted scenes as it gives an interesting insight into the directorial process. Full feature commentaries I just find hard to follow and pay full attention for - would much rather something like film notes by a critic if the film needs in depth analysis.

However, rewatching Freaks and Geeks at the moment I am very tempted to go back and revisit the absurd amount of commentaries on the DVDs - ones featuring pretty much every member of the production crew, fan commentaries, in character commentaries. Very impressive.

irisheddie85

the spinal tap commentary is hilarious. First time i saw the movie was with the commentary on and laughed the whole way through it

TheIrishGrover

Loved the LOTR Jackson, Boylan, Walsh commentary as well as the cast one. Loved the way they recorded the groups as they were in the film. Moghanahan and Boyd's commentary where they're having a right laugh spliced with the overzealous Sean Astin:

Astin: And Frodo's eyes are thrown up to heaven but he's literally staring straight into hell
M&B: And frodo's thinking "Wow, haven't seen that in my birdfinder's book: Half bat/half elephant"

Astin: Oh I hated all the weight I had to put on it was very depressing for me
M&B: Tell ya what, Sean wasn't half fat, was he? He's like a Greek God now...... Yeah, Spheros

Cameron Crowe commentary (complete with his mam) on the "Untitled" edition of Almost Famous is PURE GOLD!!! Probably my favourite commentary. Amazing to see where all the scenes came from and who they related to in real life.

Cactus Col

There's a great commentary on the Sum Of All Fears (a film I think is great fun) dvd with the director (Phil Alden Robinson) and Tom Clancy. Clancy spends most of his time criticising the film. He opens the commentary with: "I'm Tom Clancy, the guy who wrote the book they ignored."

A sample:
"Clancy: Is that supposed to be a bomb or a torpedo?
Robinson: It's a bomb.
Clancy: Huh. You've got all the dimensions completely wrong.
Robinson: Wait…actually, no, it's a torpedo.
Clancy: The dimensions are still way off."

humanji

krudler wrote: »

One of the best commentaries ever is The Thing, its just Kurt Russell and John Carpenter having a laugh for 2 hours, Russells reactions to the infamous heart attack scene are priceless, Big Trouble in Little China is the same.

I love The Thing commentary.You'd almost think it was two die hard fans talking about it as opposed to the actor and director. You can really tell they loved working together.

niallon wrote: »

The Evil Dead commentaries are great fun especially the...first I think...where Raimi and Tapert do one and Campbell does his seperately. The conflicting stories etc are just hilarious, Raimi laughing at torturing Bruce and Bruce cursing Raimi for the torture!

I love those commentaries. You'd almost wonder if they had written them before hand because they literally go back and forth making fun of each other and telling different versions of all the stories.

basquille wrote: »

Did anyone listen to the Dodgeball commentary? One of the more memorable ones I've heard recently..

This is the funniest commentary I've ever heard. Oddly enough, I thought Stiller was hilarious in the skit commentary, but when he does real ones, he's really boring.

One commentary that I assumed would be great but turned out terrible was for Tropic Thunder. In the film Robert Downey Jr's character says he stays in character until after the DVD commentary, so he does this commentary in character too. But it's all so boring. Jack Black just makes purile jokes and Ben Stiller doesn't seem to want to have any fun at all. It was just so boring.

faceman

I have to agree with some of the above posters, the commentary on This is Spinal Tap is possibly the best commentary I have ever heard. for those who havent experienced it, it is the 3 lead actors in character, commentating on the film, looking back on the events of the time as well as what has happened since then.

After that I would consider the Evil Dead commentaries to be awesome too.

Most other commentaries, especially those technically orientated tend to be boring. Especially the Star Wars movies.

TheIrishGrover

faceman wrote: »

I have to agree with some of the above posters, the commentary on This is Spinal Tap is possibly the best commentary I have ever heard. for those who havent experienced it, it is the 3 lead actors in character, commentating on the film, looking back on the events of the time as well as what has happened since then.

After that I would consider the Evil Dead commentaries to be awesome too.

Most other commentaries, especially those technically orientated tend to be boring. Especially the Star Wars movies.

Years ago I got Spinal Tap in the US when it was just a vanilla disc in R2 (It may even have been a flipper. Remember when R2 always received much poorer discs compared to R1. It's still the same with some but, as Peter Griffin would say, I digest). I remember getting it 'cos it had all the extras: The cheese short, deleted footage etc. It had a commentary too but it was the cast NOT in character. About 6 months later the R2 one came out with commentary IN character. Man, I'm sooooo tempted to by this version.... I'll wait a few months though.


BTW: Tap ROCKED Glasto. Was in the pit for it. Mental: We're still here Earth. Screw you Pluto!

tman

niallon wrote: »

Also, as mentioned, The Thing and indeed all Carpenter commentaries excluding Halloween are excellent.

Will have to give The Thing another viewing this weekend with that in mind...

Paul Verhoeven's commentary on Starship Troopers was quite interesting, it proves that there's so much more going on with that movie than just the dumb action movie that most people see it as...

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

BTW: Tap ROCKED Glasto. Was in the pit for it. Mental: We're still here Earth. Screw you Pluto!

OT, but they did indeed rock the shop!

CliffHuxtabel

I like Francis Ford Coppollas commentaries for 'The Conversation', 'Rumble Fish', etc...insightful and informative from a genuinely great director.

The Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams commentaries for 'Airplane' and 'Top Secret' are pretty hilarious.

Michael Manns commentaries are strangely relaxing to listen to because hes so forensic in providing information e.g. "this scene was shot at 3.23am on january 24 2004" etc.

Also Andrew Niccols commentary for 'Lord of War' is like a sleeping pill his voice is so relaxing. I cant make it to the end without nodding off

BopNiblets

sweetie wrote: »

love the spinal tap commentary. Fave bit is the reunion scene near the end and David says to Nigel 'you had me at hello!'

Yep, great stuff
"you see that guy in the background?"
"yeah"
"he died"