DVD commentaries

[Sephiroth]

do you like them? do you hate them? quite personally i perfer cast commentaries over director commentaries, because you get more insight to what filming was like and point-outs to to neat little thing i may have missed,
where the typical director commentary is focused more on the mechanics of shooting, and the composition of a scene, which i find quite droll

 

[Nardpuncher]

I just get sick of when the actors talk about "How great it was to work with _______ ." Ugh...I know there's not a lot to talk about sometimes....but that line gets real old.

 

[Sephiroth]

true dat

 

[Rii]

I don't often listen to DVD commentaries in any case, I think the last tracks I listened to were those for the Alien Quadrilogy and the LOTR EEs, but I prefer director commentaries to those from actors. I'm not particularly interested in acting as a distinct craft.

 

[Sephiroth]

i see, i find myself listening to commentaries late at night when nothing is on, and i find a number of them interesting

 

[JonathonWally]

Even if I don't feel like watching the movie, I'll put on any Kevin Smith movie just to listen to the commentary. Always awesome.

 

[ITL]

For me, it depends on how it's done.

For example - the commentary by Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg on Hot Fuzz was great - funny, informative and relevant to what was onscreen. Whereas the "older actors" commentary with Edward Woodward/Timothy Dalton and others was awful. It was full of excessively long-winded anecdotes about their acting careers that had no relevance to the movie.

In a different context those anecdotes might be interesting - but on a DVD commentary? Not so much.

 

[Sephiroth]

For me, it depends on how it's done.

For example - the commentary by Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg on Hot Fuzz was great - funny, informative and relevant to what was onscreen. Whereas the "older actors" commentary with Edward Woodward/Timothy Dalton and others was awful. It was full of excessively long-winded anecdotes about their acting careers that had no relevance to the movie.

In a different context those anecdotes might be interesting - but on a DVD commentary? Not so much.

yes, but even then there were a good number of bits left undiscussed because of them talking about how good it was to work with this actor or that

 

[ITL]

True, but it's impossible to comment on everything in a movie as snappily edited as Hot Fuzz - Edgar Wright even mentioned at one point that the scenes were changing faster than the commentary could keep up with.

And if an effort was made to comment on every scene as it happened, it would be a bit of a dry, technical exercise. I find that Wright and Pegg strike a good balance between informative and anecdotal. Too much of either can be a bad thing, IMO.

 

[Lonemagpie]

I haven't listened to enough of the commentaries yet

Best I've heard were Kurt Russell and John Carpenter on their movies, any Peter Davison commentary on the Dr Who discs.

Worst was Tim Burton on Sleepy Hollow - he was so slow and boring...

 

[Broccoli]

It depends on the commentary, who is talking, and how it is edited. For example, the Generations and First Contact commentaries are great, because BB and RDM don't hold back and are pretty easy going about it. Same thing with X-Men: The Last Stand. You can tell those guys had a good time on the movie and are generally excited to do the commentary.

Then you have the boring ass ones where you can tell the actor/whomever doesn't like to be there, like Pierce Bronson's Die Another Day one. It seemed like he went in there totally unprepared and didn't really care. "Oh, that's me running. There I am again. Hey, random story about my kid."

I also dislike the pieced together commentaries, where various members of the crew pop-in at certain parts and then leave. I like it when everyone is there from beginning to end (also, I find it a bit of a cheat when they take audio samples from other interviews and place them in the commentaries). Star Trek: The Motion Picture is like that, as are the Star Wars movies, but for some reason, the OT commentaries
are pretty good and seem to be an exception to my dislike.

 

[Bishbot]

The best commentaries I've listened to are the Futurama ones. There is one for every single episode/movie and they really pack the people in. The actors are very funny, so are the writers most of the time and David X Cohen keeps everything moving along brilliantly. I've actually listened to all of them more than once - which for a commentary is pretty high praise.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I prefer Director/Writer commentaries for the insight into the thought processes behind what got put on screen; followed by actor commentaries for sheer entertainment value. Entire commentaries by technical people who handled a specific aspect of the production, like illustration or costume design, can get pretty boring. It's in cases like these where edited-together commentaries work well, because you can highlight what the technical person has to say at a relevant point in the film, without having to listen to just them for the entire film. Most of the Bond DVDs have such commentaries, and they work pretty well. (The more recent DVD releases also include all-new, made-for-DVD commentaries by Roger Moore for each of his films. They can be a little dry, but they have a nice, friendly atmosphere about them, like you're watching the movie with Roger in his home.)

My reward for commentary work goes to Ronald D. Moore--I haven't explored the TNG films on DVD yet, but I can believe that the commentaries are as entertaining as everyone says based on Moore's podcasts-turned-commentaries for BSG. They're highly insightful and entertaining even when you're not watching the episode with them. As the series goes on, all too often the podcasts are more entertaining than the episodes....

 

[ITL]

The best commentaries I've listened to are the Futurama ones. There is one for every single episode/movie and they really pack the people in. The actors are very funny, so are the writers most of the time and David X Cohen keeps everything moving along brilliantly. I've actually listened to all of them more than once - which for a commentary is pretty high praise.

I just wish Cohen wouldn't waffle as much as he does. He's a funny, informative guy - but sometimes he'll dominate the commentary for what seems like an ice-age just to explain one little thing.

West, DiMaggio and Groening are always great, though. Cohen just needs to cut back on the waffling.

But overall, I love the Futurama commentaries.

 

[Kail]

My favorite director commentary track on a movie is The Mummy. Very funny. I also make a point of listening to the commentaries on The Simpsons. I need to listen to Futurama, one of my favorite shows.

But I agree, most commentary tracks are pretty dry. Some, the worst, the people don't even talk half the time.

 

[The Evil Dead]

I used to listen to them a lot more than I do now back when DVDs started to get popular, however if I hear one is particularly good I'll give it a listen. I tend to really like the modest ones, for example I'm not a big fan of Star Trek: Generations but I love the commentary track with Ron Moore and Brannon Braga basically looking back and going "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, BUT..."

 

[Harvey]

I love listening to writer/director commentaries, as well as commentaries by technical people. Commentaries by actors far less so. Joe Straczynski's commentaries on Babylon 5 are very informative. The actor's commentaries are hardly listenable. They're clearly having a great time doing them, but that doesn't mean there's much worth me listening to in them.

That said, director's commentaries can be equally boring, especially if the commentator is uninformed. David Simon has a fantastic commentary on the pilot of The Wire. The following episode has a commentary by director Clark Johnson is pretty abysmal. His comments are few and far between, and are mostly without depth. It's no surprise when he admits its the first time he's seen the episode in years. No wonder he has nothing to say.

Ronald D. Moore's podcast commentaries (and straight up DVD commentaries) are by far the most informative recording I've ever heard. He even keeps them on track when other people are involved with them.

 

[Turbo]

The classic range of Doctor Who has at least one commentary track on every single release, with a mix of actors, writers, directors, and producers. Some stories (especially the 60s material where most of the people involved are now dead or otherwise unreachable), even include Doctor Who notables who have nothing to do with that particular production. The 25th Anniversary release of The Five Doctors even has a 'fan commentary' with Phil Collinson (nuWho producer), Helen Raynor (nuWho script editor), and David Tennant (Tenth Doctor). I have yet to hear a commentary that wasn't either informative or entertaining. The commentary for Arc of Infinity is particularly good (especially since the serial is so horribly bad, and the actors spend over half the commentary mocking it).

 

[HappyDayRiot]

Red Dwarf has excellent commentaries, mostly because with half the episodes there's at least one member of the cast who can't remember a single thing about that episode so they're basically watching it for the first time and are amazed at how good they are and how bad their co-stars are at acting

 

[ITL]

Robert Llewellyn and Craig Charles in particular are very funny on those commentaries - I've listened to them so many times.