DVDs with Best/Worst commentaries

[bclouse]

I'm a sucker for commentaries on films and tv shows. It's one of the reasons I use to buy laserdiscs long, long ago. I'd even listen to a commentary for a film I didn't particularly like.

Now with DVDs and the ability to add a commentary to almost any show, you'd think I'd be in heaven. But that's not the case. Most of the time the director or actors or whoever just sit and bull-shucks around. Even worse, they don't say anything for long stretches.

Am I the only one that feels this way? Any commentaries that stick out as being overly good or bad?

The Lord of the Rings trilogy with Peter Jackson and gang are really well done. The Star Wars ones with Lucas are good but not as great as I was hoping, even though just about anything that Carrie Fisher had to say was great. She just didn't get enough talk time.

If I had to recommend just one to listen to, it would be The Limey with director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs. Very informative and interesting. And there are times Dobbs would come down on Soderbergh so hard about some of his decisions, he'd be speechless. Plus it's a great film to boot.

[JoeSki]

I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with all three comentary's; all of which were good, if not great. Hunter S Thompson's commentary was done with two girls in the recording booth with him, who asked him good questions and got some quality conversation with him going. The Good Doctor talked quite a bit about what bits of Fear and Loathing actually happened, what he thought of the movie, ranted about Nixon, and occasionaly deteriorated into the level of a dumb beast and started screaming and howling at the top of his lungs for a considerable amount of time.

Terry Gilliam's commentary was just as good, if not better than Hunter's. He dissected the story in ways I've never thought possible, and really made a lot of what was said in done in Fear and Loathing seem almost meaningfull. Gilliam's is also the funniest commentary, and was often laugh out loud funny. He really put his heart and soul into a story that he understood very well, and wanted to tell the viewer all about the adaptation. Good stuff.

The commentary with Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Torro, and a producer was a mixed bag, but worth keeping on at least once for background noise. Some of Depps commentary about living with Hunter for two months was very interesting, as was Benicio's account of all the little things he said and did to recapture Oscar Acosta's frightening demeanor, but a lot of it was annoying "I improvised in this scene. I'm so talented." drek.

[Harborwolf]

I haven't listened to a lot of commentary. Fight Club had a good commentary. Any Kevin Smith movie has great commentary. I'll second the LOTR.

IMHO, any commentary where they are all sitting in the same room and talking is good. The bad ones that I've heard are just quotes recorded and spliced in.

[Cliffy]

The Usual Suspects has a great commentary by director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Chris McQuarrie. The commentaries on the various Buffy and Angel sets are usually pretty good with a few excellent ones (most of Whedon's solo commentaries, Petrie's commentaries, some others). All the commentaries on the Firefly set (of which there are several) are good. The Futurama commentaries are always funny and many are very informative as well.

--Cliffy

[Max Torque]

The commentary track for Dungeons & Dragons stands out in my memory as a really bad one. The star and director chortle their way through it like a couple of stoned college kids.

[fishbicycle]

I have the Red Dwarf sets, and the commentary tracks on it are so boring, I had to turn them off. I didn't get much insight into anything, and there was a lot of "oh yeah, that was great!!" That said, I haven't heard all of the commentaries on all the discs, so some of it might be interesting. But I doubt it.

[Kaspar Hauser]

My favorites, and the only ones I can listen to over and over again, are the commentaries for This Is Spinal Tap and the Futurama sets. The Tap commentary is done in character and is hilarious. It's like watching a sequel. The Futurama ones are by funny, smart geeks who like each other and love their show. They get funnier as the sets progress, although by the fourth one they also get more bitter as they realize the show is getting shafted by Fox.

[Anonymous Coward]

The commentary for The Princess Bride was terrible. Boring as hell with a lot of "um.. I don't remember this part" and "I don't know what I was thinking here...".

[Kaspar Hauser]

Forgot the worst: It feels like half of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force commentaries are some guy dicking around on a guitar.

[Ferret Herder]

The special edition (20th anniversary) DVD of This Is Spinal Tap has a commentary track done in character by the band members. The conceit is that the band members got back together 20 years later to watch the movie again and provide commentary, and so you hear stuff about their current lives and what they're up to, their observations on how the filmmakers exaggerated parts or edited scenes to make them seem different than what "really" happened, and so forth. Very funny, it adds another level to an already great "mockumentary."

[Ethilrist]

Firefly. They have commentary for about half the episodes, and only two people per episode, but they keep switching them around so you get different perspectives without a mass jumble of voices with six different people all trying to say something.

[Ferret Herder]

*Looks up at Kaspar Hauser's post* Dammit, beaten to the punch!

Um... need to add more signal amidst my noise...

El Mariachi was a rapid-fire "how to make a film on the cheap" workshop by Robert Rodriguez. Still interesting if you like the nuts-and-bolts info but don't have a lot of technical film knowledge. Comments like how to get a particular shot, they put one of the major actors (the guy who played Azul) in a borrowed wheelchair and had him hold the camera, then rolled the chair around as needed.

[bclouse]

I have the Red Dwarf sets, and the commentary tracks on it are so boring, I had to turn them off. I didn't get much insight into anything, and there was a lot of "oh yeah, that was great!!" That said, I haven't heard all of the commentaries on all the discs, so some of it might be interesting. But I doubt it.

Forgot the worst: It feels like half of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force commentaries are some guy dicking around on a guitar.

These are the worse. You have a box set of a really great show and you think that the commentary is going to be great and funny, but all they end up doing is either sitting around with nothing to say or just doing something obnoxious. Or slapping each other on the back saying how great they are. I feel that Curb Your Enthusiasm does all three. Too bad, it's such a great show.

[Cliffy]

After Spinal Tap, one might assume that the mockumentaries Christopher Guest has done with Eugene Levy would have good commentaries, especially since they're all excellent movies.

Nope. Suck. They're almost totally silent; it's basically just Guest and Levy watching the movie. Every 20 minutes or so Levy tries to make some observation or ask Guest a directing question to liven it up, and Guest invariably responds in a few monosyllables and then it's all quiet again.

--Cliffy

[markdiscordia]

The commentaries on the Simpsons DVDs are fantastic. Just as funny as the show sometimes.

[ArrMatey!]

The first Conan movie. Oh lord, my friend and I actually take it as a testament to our endurance that we lasted through 15 minutes of the commentary. It's the director actually giving out a few interresting tidbits about the story or the filming, and Arnie giving such gems as, "This was funny! It was a scene with a horse!" :smack:

[Reloy3]

I think I've said this before in a similar thread, but I love the in-character commentary from Jonah: A Veggietale Movie. My older kids and I would rather watch that than the original - animated characters riffing on making the movie - where the locations were, running into other animated characters in the laundromat, talking about their acting and directorial inspirations. Very funny.

[carterba]

I enjoy commentaries by film critics on classic films. The critics often go into a lot of detail about how shots were composed and framed, how the script was put together, etc. Roger Ebert has a great commentary on Citizen Kane. Michael Jeck's commentary on Seven Samurai is very interesting, as are some of the commentaries on other Kurosawa films. The commentary on Once Upon a Time in the West is one of those spliced-together things with a couple of critics, some of the actors, and some other directors (John Carpenter is on it for some reason, and all he does is narrate the action). One of the critics is interesting; the rest I could do without.

[well he's back]

I loved, let me repeat, loved "Pirates of the Caribbean", but all the commentaries were awful, boring, dull...even Johnny Depp's.
Robert Rodriguez is amazing in his commentaries. Is he on speed always? How does he get all that energy?
I truly enjoyed the LOTR commentaries, esp. when the actors were a little sarcastic, or when the Director/Writers crack themselves up, or when any of these guys gets real sincere with a compliment for the others. Heck, I guess I just enjoy these.

I haven't listened to a lot of DVD commentaries so threads like this are helpful.

[badomen]

I really like the Futurama and Simpsons commentaries too.

Roger Ebert on Dark City surprised me - I didn't think it was that great of a film but he had a lot of great things to say about the movie.

My biggest disappointment was Tim Burton on Sleepy Hollow - there were so many instances where he could have given some insight into the tricks they used in filming or whatever, but he always seemed to skip those parts and comment on the most dull things.

[Biggirl]

Ghostbusters 20th anniversary (I think it's the 20th-- I can't be sure) with Harold Ramis, Ivan Reitman, a mystery 3rd I believe and, this is important, no crazy-assed Dan Ackroyd.

Also Shaun of the Dead with Shaun and the director. I'm sure someone will come along and show me to be the fool that I am with the correct names for this post.

[rjung]

I'll nominate Brad Bird's director commentary from the just-released The Incredibles DVD. He's got enough anecdotes and comments and pent-up energy to hold your attention for the full length of the film, and you wish he could have gone on even longer just to soak up all the goodness in his head.

[Tracy Lord]

Pirates of the Caribbean has a bit of both: although Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio (writers) are full of fascinating thoughts about the mythological background, character parallels, thematic points, and the craft of storytelling, Johnny Depp's commentary is only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry.

[Kizarvexius]

For worst commentary I nominate Top Secret!. Jim Abrams and the Zucker brothers sounded as if they had written off the entire movie as a failure and couldn't believe anyone would be interested in watching it, let alone hearing what they had to say. It's as if they were doing their best to talk you out of liking the movie.

Another nominee is A Mighty Wind. I grew up on my dad's Kingston Trio albums and loved the movie's satire. Knowing that the actors were all actually performing songs that they had written (and such enjoyable songs) really raised the movie to a higher level. But listening to the commentary, Christopher Guest left me with the impression that his film was not so much intended as a playful jab at "folkies", rather as a deliberate portrayal of the music (and by extension the people) as bland and worthless.

[Sampiro]

The DVD for 1776 has some fascinating commentary about the movie (especially the deleted/restored number), the actors (man, DaSilva was a primadonna!) and the history of the times even.

The DVD commentary for Boogie Nights was a state-the-obvious total yawner.

[Tangent]

I loved, let me repeat, loved "Pirates of the Caribbean", but all the commentaries were awful, boring, dull...

Gods yes! The one with Keira Knightley and the other guy (the naval officer guy) was just awful.

I love the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, but the commentary on it was unbelievably dull.

After listening to the director's commentary on Donnie Darko, it made me think the director didn't even really understand his own movie and that it was kind of an accident that the movie turned out to be good.

Now a GOOD recommendation: If any of you are--like me--rabid fans of the new Battlestar Galactica series, I highly recommend the downloadable 'podcast' commentaries by Ron Moore available from the official website each week. I watch and record the show when it airs, then I download the commentary and watch the show again a day or two later with the commentary playing. He gives some good insight into the reasons they portray certain aspects of the show the way that they do.

[ZebraShaSha]

When these types of discussions come up, UHF always gets nominated for the best. I would tend to agree, but I am easily entertained.

[BabaBooey]

In contrast to the the Top Secret commentary, Zucker/Abrams are hilarious in all of the Naked Gun commentaries.

[PunditLisa]

I enjoyed Cameron Crowe's commentary on the "Almost Famous" extended DVD. He brought his mother in for it.

The dullest commentary I've ever heard was David Fury's commentary in S3 of Buffy. He apparently was criticized for giving "commentary for the blind" on his first attempt in S2 ("And now Buffy is walking into the trap.") so he is painfully self-conscious about NOT doing that again. So we are treated to info about how he set up this and that camera angle.

[Cliffy]

Fury's Buffy commentaries are generally pretty poor, which is unexpected because he's such an excellent writer.

--Cliffy

[Voyager]

In contrast to the the Top Secret commentary, Zucker/Abrams are hilarious in all of the Naked Gun commentaries.

But they were dreadful in the Airplane commentary. It was all about the actors they didn't get, a very boring story about getting money, and how the pacing was bad. By the end of it I was about convinced that the movie, one of my favorites, actually sucked.

[Tracy Lord]

Aw, apparently I am the only one who likes the writers' commentary on Pirates of the Caribbean. Or is it just that everyone else gave up after the dead-boring actors'? :)

[Morbo]

Depending on your point of view, the commentary for the Clerks 10th Anniversary Edition is either the Best or Worst.

Jason Mewes starts out sounding "kinda drunk" and finishes sounding "completely blotto" by the end. Every time he speaks it's like watching a car accident. Especially since everyone else on the soundtrack is sober.

[congodwarf]

The LOTR commentaries are great with a few exceptions. I couldn't stand to listen to Orlando Bloom talk. Great voice but he spent every comment babbling on and on about how wonderful a time he had and how great the cast members were. Frodo (can't remember his name) sounds like a twit. But, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan totally made up for the lame bits. They're very funny and it's obvious what great friends they became.


I second the Red Dwarf commentaries mostly sucked. This is the second time in less than 24 hours that I posted that comment.

[Steve Wright]

The Tomorrow People is a Seventies low-budget British SF show of, frankly, questionable merit at best ... the commentary tracks, which reunite several of the "stars" of the show, are indescribably brilliant. The sets are worth it just for those tracks alone ...

[Unauthorized Cinnamon]

The director's commentary for The Mummy is pretty good. Or maybe I just love that the director points out the unintentional full frontal male nudity shot.

Dawn of the Dead (2004) was pretty interesting, though I got to the point of wanting to strangle them when they used "rockstar" as their generic complimentary adjective.

I made the mistake of turning on the director's commentary for Series 1 of Fawlty Towers. I think the dead air to speech ratio was about 3:1.

[rjung]

Oh, we're doing worst commentaries as well?

Then let me make sure to mention the commentary track for Men In Black. Dull, dull, dull, dull, and stupid don't even begin to describe how useless this commentary was -- which was disappointing, given that the movie should have given lots of opportunities for interesting stories to come out. Instead, getting anything interesting from Barry Sonnenfeld was worse than squeezing blood from a turnip, and Tommy Lee Jones was reduced to making "uh huh" comments all over the place. The MST3K-style sillhouette "animation" didn't help matters any. This is the only DVD commentary that I have voluntarily aborted, just to preserve my sanity.

(This was from the "Collector's Series" DVD, by the way -- I hear the Deluxe Edition has a different commentary track, but I refuse to buy the same movie again just for that)

[Roadfood]

Don't laugh, but the commentary on My Cousin Vinny, by the director, I found almost as interesting as the movie (which, I suppose, isn't saying much if you didn't like the movie...). One of the few times that I've listened, attentively, to a commentary all the way through.

The commentaries on the Stargate SG-1 TV series DVDs are usually interesting, especially when Peter DeLuise is there. He is, frankly, a heckuva lot funnier off-the-cuff than his dad is with a script. James Tichenor, the special effects supervisor, is also good at commentating. The thing I like is that they actually tell you things that you probably don't know. They talk about how a shot was done, they point out how great the matt painting is in the background, or how "Rick" (Richard Dean Anderson to us) is again playing with the props in the background of the shot, how beautiful Amanda Tapping is (ok, so sometimes they do state the obvious :)) etc. etc.

I recently watched Die Hard 3 and then listened to about half the commentary (stopping only because it was getting very late at night). It was pretty interesting to hear how the script was originally written as a standalone, not related to Die Hard in any way, then got picked up for use in Die Hard 3, what got changed, what didn't, etc.

For the bottom of the barrel, my nomination is the Dick Van Dyke TV series. It has a few episodes with commentary by Dick and Carl Reiner. They had zero preparation, even saying early on that they hadn't seen the episode in 30 years. Dick also comments at one point that since they are only watching, not listening (the sound is turned off for them since they're recording the commentary), he's not quite sure what's going on. There are long, long gaps of silence, puctuated with such gems as, "Oh, I remember this episode . . . I wonder what happens next? . . . Oh, I remember what happens next . . ." It's just blather, there's no interesting behind the scenes info or anything. After ten minutes, I just had to turn it off. I've tried about three of the episodes with commentary, and they're all just as bad.

[midget]

The LOTR commentaries are great with a few exceptions. I couldn't stand to listen to Orlando Bloom talk. Great voice but he spent every comment babbling on and on about how wonderful a time he had and how great the cast members were.

I'll second that. I dreaded hearing his voice every time he started talking, because I knew he would spend five minutes stuttering out praises for other cast members. There was always a few seconds of silence after he spoke because he just killed whatever thread of commentary everyone else was following.

On second thought, I think he may have done his commentary separately (and alone), which would provide some explanation. He praises other people on the commentary track, but they don't even acknowledge it or thank him.

[bclouse]

The LOTR commentaries are great with a few exceptions. I couldn't stand to listen to Orlando Bloom talk. Great voice but he spent every comment babbling on and on about how wonderful a time he had and how great the cast members were. Frodo (can't remember his name) sounds like a twit. But, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan totally made up for the lame bits. They're very funny and it's obvious what great friends they became.

Speaking of the way people spoke - did you listen to the design team's commentary? Richard Taylor, the guy in charge of Weta, has the strangest way of talking. His voice has constant inflections as if he's always making a point about something. He reminds me of Robin Leach on downers. His work is incredible but I had a hard time listening to him talk.

[bclouse]

Another disappointing commentary (mostly because I love the movie so much) was for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The commentary is with Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus. I didn't know much about Schamus other than he collaborates with Ang Lee on most of his films as a screenwriter. I have much respect for that. But he seemed to dominate the commentary and was constantly making fun of Ang Lee and his directing choices. I think he was just giving his buddy a hard time but it seemed mean-spirited and left a bad taste in my mouth. Plus they didn't talk nearly enough about the making of the film and the history of the story. And this film aches for that kind of treatment.

[HeadNinja]

Cannibal: The Musical featured Try Parker, Matt Stone, and a number of the other cast members drinking whiskey throughout the commentary.

Trey covers his ex-girlfriend (She left me for a Waffle House Manager. Now I'm worth 2.6 million dollars), the key grip ("She had enormous..."), and the actual history of Albert Packer.

At the end everyone is drunk and leaves the recording studio for a strip club.

Depending on your preferences this is either ungodly funny or rather tasteless. I laughed more from the commentary than the actual film.

[Ellis Dee]

David Fincher + Brad Pitt = great commentary. Fincher just releases high quality DVD extras, that's all there is to it.

I originally thought Se7en had the best commentary, until I heard Fight Club. Let me tell you, Morgan Freeman will put you to sleep faster than you can hit FFWD, but Helena Bonham Carter is pretty good.

The extras on both Fincher movies I listed are excellent as well. The behind the scenes stuff was fascinating, to me at least. I could watch that color correction sequence all day and night like a mental patient. Even the alternate commentaries are good; Chuck Pahluniak (sp?) and the screenwriter do a solid one as well on Fight Club.

True Romance, probably my alltime favorite movie, (so forgive my rose colored glasses) has a sweet and fun commentary with Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette. The Tony Scoot commentary is pretty solid. Possibly my favorite, though, is the "extras" commentary. All the tangental characters commented on their scenes, so it jumps from actor to actor doing the commentary through the whole movie. Excellent idea with excellent execution.

And finally, Kevin Smith does pretty good commentary. I'm fond of the Dogma commentary.

[Tomcat]

Depending on your point of view, the commentary for the Clerks 10th Anniversary Edition is either the Best or Worst.

Jason Mewes starts out sounding "kinda drunk" and finishes sounding "completely blotto" by the end. Every time he speaks it's like watching a car accident. Especially since everyone else on the soundtrack is sober.

The commentary on the Clerks cartoon series is pretty good. They got shafted by the producers and have little, if any, legal recourse. So they bitched about what was going on and gave some insight into the making of the series.

-Tcat