I’ve never even seen the movie Sleepy Hollow, but I’m surprised the Burton commentary is good. I read an interview with him in which he said he hates doing things like that because he thinks the movie should speak for itself.
Musical lovers: 1776 has great commentary. They discuss the historical characters, the actors (Howard da Silva, who played [the hell outta] Ben Franklin, was evidently a major primadonna- but a total professional- he had a massive heart attack a week before the play opened but insisted on leaving the hospital and going onstage opening night [then back to the hospital]), the filming of the movie (especially the cutting of the now restored Cool Considerate Men number as a favor from Jack Warner to Richard Nixon), pointing out anachronisms (you can briefly see a skyscraper in the distance in one of the outdoor scenes) and other anecdotes.
Fiddler on the Roof has a cut song as an extra (“Any Day Now”, sung by Perchik about the socialist utopia he envisions) and commentary by Topol and Jewison. Some good anecdotes (Olympia Dukakis going into premature labor when her husband [the constable] was injured in a horseback accident [she and baby pulled through fine], why it was filmed in Yugoslavia [they wanted to film in Ukraine or in Russia but Brezhnev wouldn’t give permission, so Tito offered to bend over backwards to please them just to piss off Brezhnev), rivalries (Topol and the actor playing Lazar Wolf [a high school drama teacher with almost no film experience] did not get along [Topol’s not on this part of the commentary]), stories about the cast members and extras [some of the really old extras actually remembered the pogroms and exiles of the Jews], etc.), and little production tidbits [the gray hair in Tevye’s beard was Norman Jewison’s- Topol was in his 30s at the time while Jewison grayed prematurely and each day would pluck his gray hairs and have makeup put them on Topol). There’s also some totally skippable segments on restoring certain scenes and Topol reading some Sholem Aleichem stories.
Sordid Lives, a no budget cult classic, has some hysterical commentaries from the cast (particularly Leslie Jordan). Those who’ve seen the movie know of the scene in which Brother Boy (Jordan), who’s in the state hospital for his dream of being Tammy Wynette, has to fend off advances from the psychologist Dr. Eve who’s determined to “dehomosexualize” him (so that she can go on Oprah and get rich); in the commentary you learn that she really didn’t wear panties that day so when Brother Boy sees up her skirt and screams “DR. EVE YOU’RE NOT WEARIN’ PANTIES!” his double take was real. Leslie Jordan on the commentary: “Lord… I hadn’t even seen one of those damned things in twenty five years.”
Cold Mountain- I’m prejudiced because I didn’t like this movie. I thought it was unrealistic (a solitary Confederate soldier deserting and the mean evil Home Guard on his back- puh-lease- by winter 1864-65 when the movie takes place deserters considerably outnumbered and were better armed and a lot more battle hardened than the Home Guard, who knew the war was lost) and melodramatic and “yeah right” in some of the plot twists, but the extras are just cloyingly self righteous (including a “concert” in which the actors read aloud from the script for no apparent reason). The only really good thing to see on it is the documentary on the Sacred Harp music and the soundtrack (which was great).
I was suprised because I remember reading an interview where he said he had a hard time reading comic books because they confused him. I thought he would be a total space cadet but he was good.
Much of that movie, including the ‘outside’ scenes was shot in a studio. He gives a nice mix of tech details and stories from the set.
The Criterion Collection release of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil included a “Battle of Brazil” feature that dealt with the struggle between Gilliam and studio executives to over the editing of the film. The director eventually won and the version seen in theaters was true to his vision. But the DVD package includes another cut that was shown on TV. It was not simply cut for time or to meet broadcast standards, it really is a different movie. It’s fascinating to see what would have happened to the film if the director had lost control, and really makes you wonder about what has been lost when you see classic films that only exist in truncated versions.
The deluxe Monty Python and the Holy Grail set includes several bonuses that are unlikely to change your life but are good for a few laughs, such as Subtitles for People Who Don’t Like the Film (taken from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part II), the Lego version of “Knights of the Round Table,” English-subtitled Japanese-dubbed scenes, and more.
The bonus disk for The Incredibles. A new Pixar short, a “superhero database”, the “Incredibles Saturday Morning Cartoon”, and a bunch of “Making of…” features. The extras are almost more fun than the actual movie.
I can’t remember which movies, but there seem to be many that include an actual episode of the Charlie Rose Show as a DVD extra, in which Rose interviews the actors and director and writer of the movie. I like Rose, and the questions he asks usually delve deeper than the usual fluff promotional stuff.
In a twist, The Royal Tenenbaums DVD has an extra that is basically a parody of the Charlie Rose Show, though they call it something different. The host is interviewing some of the actors from the movie, and he does a dead-on impersonation of Charlie Rose–the mannerisms, the interviewing style, the set design, and so on. It is kinda weird. The actual dialogue isn’t very funny or interesting and it goes on too long, but the imitation is brilliant.
I just love the commentary tracks on the Futurama DVDs. If you’ve been putting off buying these DVDs because you’ve seen every episode of Futurama, delay no longer: the commentaries turn Futurama into a new and awesome experience (almost, but not quite, as good as snu-snu).
The Saturday morning cartoon has its own commentary track, by Mr. Incredible and Fro-Zone. Listening to Mr. Incredible gradually lose it while trying to defend the horrible cartoon to Fro-Zone is hilarious.
Generally speaking, I prefer commentaries by people with no direct connection to the film. I recently saw the Criterion edition of Yojimbo, which had a fascinating commentary track by a film professor (whose name completely escapes me) discussing how the film fit into Kurosawa’s career, and the historical context of the story itself. Great stuff, and a lot more interesting than listening to the director blather on about himself.
However, I have to recommend the commentary track to Conan: the Barbarian, which features the director, John Milius, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, because Arnold is clearly stoned out of his goddamned mind. He’s so high, at one point he forgets that he made a sequel to the movie.
The commentary for Blood Simple is great. It is done as a parody of scholarly film archivist-type comedy and is absolutlely hilarious.
An example of a bad commentary track is Big Trouble In Little China, which is just John Carpenter and Kurt Russell having a boring personal conversation about their everyday lives and ignoring the film almost entirely. I guess they hadn’t seen each other in a long time and had some catching up to do, but for chrissakes, don’t put that on the commentary track!
Speaking of stoned commentaries, the Firefly commentaries are generally pretty good (I bet Joss Whedon is annoying in person, but he’s funny in small doses) but Joss just sounds totally stoned out of his mind on Objects in Space. It’s just so loopy and goofy, I turned it off after just a short while. Stoned people always think they’re more interesting than they actually are.
This one is my own personal favorite, mainly because Arnold disses my uncle (Terry Leonard, who was stunt coordinator on Conan) by name, albeit good-naturedly.
Tied for that is the commentary track for Aliens on the Quadrilogy boxed set. Michael Biehn, Jeannete Goldstein, Lance Henriksen, and Bill Paxton together, joking and reminiscing about the film. It’s massively entertaining and a hell of a lot of fun.
The track also features, though recorded separately, James Cameron, Carrie Henn (and her brother), and Gale Ann Hurd. Good stuff all around.
I really liked the commentary track on Evolution. Very informative discussion about making the movie and making movies in general. Not a great movie, but the commentary track was great.
Follow the White Rabbit in the Matrix. That was technically excellent.
Anyone else got some weird things? Like the reskinning cars in Blu-Ray Fast and Furious? (HD-DVD? Whichever)
The director’s commentary on Walk the Line was superb and added to my appreciation of both the director’s technique and the music history it depicted (which I know very little about).
I used to be quite obsessive about watching extras but I seem to spend less time watching them these days. Among DVD’s I have been watching recently I rather liked the omitted scenes from Eternal Sunshine which reveal quite a lot about the characters.
The commentary track on the original Criterion Collection edition of Seven Samurai gave great insight into the cultural details that a Westerner might miss, as well as Kurosawa’s technique. It was so fascinating that I watched the entire film again right after finishing it the first time. It’s 207 minutes long.
Screenwriter Julian Fellowes’ commentary on Gosford Park single-handedly turned the movie into something I loathed into something I loved. He grew up in a household very similar to the one featured and gave great insight into the history and etiquette of the period.
The director’s commentary for Three Kings was fascinating to me when I first saw it. I think it made me like the movie a million times better.
The commentary on the Futurama series DVDs was awesome. The movies. . .not quite so much.
I’ve almost never liked the commentary on any of Joss Whedon’s stuff–which is surprising, since I love Buffy and Angel and Firefly. The only one that struck me as entertaining and/or insightful was the one on the Angel episode “A Hole in the World,” which is the episode that Fred dies and turns into Illyria. It was interesting simply because he talked about the characters–and it was really interesting to see Alexis Denisof’s take on the whole thing. In contrast, the commentary for the Firefly episode “Objects in Space” was. . .underwhelming. Look, I understand that Joss Whedon knows a lot about philosophy. I do not, however, want to hear about how a particular school of thought changed his life. Really. I don’t. And, as I’m not particularly fond of that particular school of thought, I really don’t want to hear about how its philosophy ties into this, cause it just ruins it for me. Which I understand is my own issue.
But fuck. . .I can’t imagine how boring that would’ve been for someone unfamiliar with philosophy. Bleh. This tends to be the case with a lot of his commentaries, actually. . .
I found the Director’s commentary on A Night at the Museum to be enjoyable though hardly profound. The making off tracks were likewise enjoyable.
The Writers’ commemtary pissed me off–one self-deprecating joke about the only people watching your commentary must be too stupid to figure out how to turn it off is ok. Ten is way beyond excessive. When they talked about their craft, they were ok, but they spent way too much time on self-deprecating “humor”. Also, I like commentaries where there is a near constant stream of chatter–not commentaries with long pauses while the commentator watches the movie.
Miracle–the story of the US hockey team which beat Russia and saved the world had good making of stuff, and the director’s commentary included a fair bit of stuff which helped place the events depicted in their proper place and time as well as sausage making stuff. I was fascinated by the degree of effort they went to in order to find enough kids would could play hockey, look like the real players, and act (in that order).
Looking through the deleted scenes from Spy Game, it appears that originally they had intended to make it so that Robert Redford had dated the Irish chick some time before. Cheesewhiz. That sort of unnecessary implausibility would have pissed me off. Minus it though, it’s one of my favorite movies.