DVD commentaries

[Aragorn]

You might want to give Bubba Ho-Tep a spin. Bruce Campbell does a commentary in-character as old Elvis.

 

[Angel4576]

Best commentaries I've heard, Kurt Russell/John Carpenter. The one on Big Trouble in Little China is great, Kurt's so obviously drunk as a monkey! From memory I think they also did commentaries for The Thing and Escape from New York.

On the TV side, the Babylon 5 cast commentaries are good as well, they just have a riot!

 

[ManOnTheWave]

I like them when the people have something to say. I watched Entourage season 4 over the weekend, and the commentaries were rather uneventful despite having the most of the cast present. They just seemed to struggle to say something.

The last release of Bladerunner had numerous commentaries and it was very interesting to have multiple points of view about this film, how it was put together and what it meant. You could spend whole weekend watching that movie (and I did).

One of my favorite DVDs is 24 Hour Party People. One commentary is by Tony Wilson, who the film is more or less about. He points out things in the film which are accurate, inaccurate, and tells why storyies or more or less ture or apocryphal. There is also a very funny commentary with Steve Coogan, the star. Both tracks are as enteraining as the film proper. Likewise, Coogan did a commentary for Tristram Shandy with Rob Brydon which they described as "watching the film with a couple of mates." Again, it was insightful, funny, and as entertaining as the film.

 

[MyCylon]

Airplane!

Just listened to that today - hilarious .

 

[Top41]

I like commentaries, but I don't find myself listening to them very often. I tend to prefer writers and actors' commentary to those of directors, probably because I'm more interested in the writing aspect, or what the characters were thinking/where they were coming from in a particular scene. I'm not really into the technical aspect of filmmaking, though it is kind of fun to hear some of that stuff.

 

[Aragorn]

I'm not a glutton for punishment (though I did watch Fantastic Four 2 and Jumper recently), but I would think the Uwe Boll commentaries for his movies would be hilariously awful.

 

[TEH BABA]

The best thing about Moore (Ron, not Roger), other than the general entertainment value, is that he's quick to fess up to things that he feels didn't work in the episode, always taking the blame himself because he's the guy in charge. No spin, no bullshit. I'll often appreciate a weak episode more after he's gone over what went wrong with it, and what they were trying to get across.

A pet peeve in commentaries is the occasional guy whom you just can't understand for one reason or another. I dutifully watched through all of the LOTR:EE extras, but I'll be damned if I could understand half of what Alun Lee was saying in his commentaries, the way he spoke in that accented whisper.

We know he didn't learn how to do press releases from Rick "Fuckhead" Berman.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^And we are very pleased. We'd like to see more honest commentaries, if they're done well.

 

[Aragorn]

I just listened to the Night at the Museum director's commentary. Half the time he mentions when something was improvised. And every tenth word that comes out of his mouth is "literally."

 

[Sephiroth]

theres a pretty funny Joke commentary in Harold and Kumar go to white castle dvd, it's the fuckhead "X-treme" guy doing commentary in charater

 

[Kirkman1987]

Depends who is doing them. some of my favorites that pop out to me right now

First Blood - the one with the writer, not stallone
Star Trek II, VII
Road House with Kevin smith
Evil Dead trilogy


there's more, but I've watched so many it's tough to remember

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Hudson Hawk... the first commentary track i ever heard. Honest, which is good for a flawed film. He keeps pace well.

Generations and First Contact (writers) I'd imagine it was one session, they did them both simultaneously. Good, honest and funny.

 

[Hermiod]

^Those were interesting just for the fact that it showed that Brannon Braga and Ron Moore had patched up their differences.

 

[Kirkman1987]

Tonight I'm thinking of watching The commentary for the 1978 Dawn of the dead. Is George Romero interesting to listen to?

BTW, Ghostbusters has a great track! It has Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis if I recall correctly.

And the Charlton Heston Track for Ben-Hur is awful. I ADORE Heston but he only talks for about 20 minutes......maybe less, of the whole 3 hours. They even put in a feature so you could skip to his next comment, it was that bare.