Shaun of the Dead has two commentary tracks; the one with the main cast members is the funniest–at one point, they all take tuns imitating Bill Nighy, and thinking up rude-sounding British village names that sound like bowel diseases.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl is interesting in that it had one boring commentary and one really interesting one.
In one, Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp ramble on and on about stuff completely unrelated to the movie. I turned it off after 15 minutes because I wasn’t listening any more.
The other, though, was the four principal screenwriters for the movie (according to IMDb, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie, and Jay Wolpert), and they provided quite a lot of fascinating insights into the development of the movie, pointing out homages to the Disney ride, and explaining why things happened as they did. I find that sort of commentary really engaging, and it sticks in my head because these guys were more interesting than the big names.
There’s also the Keira Knightley/Jack Davenport one, which is pretty funny.
The Tomorrow People was a fairly dire low-budget children’s SF show of the early Seventies … the DVD releases feature the (now middle-aged and cynical) stars of the show giving commentaries which are, well, fairly informative, but also thoroughly and scurrilously funny. (Much better than listening to the actual sound track, in fact.)
How could I forget these? Al and pals have a lot of fun both commenting on how hard it was to make a show that was funny and met FCC-approved educational standards and poking fun at same.
I’ve always liked the Bull Durham commentaries. The film isn’t noted for being particularly “cinematic” so Ron Shelton’s commentary breaks down the very basic (and often more seamless and invisible) ABC’s of filmmaking in a very informative way. The other track has Costner & Robbins talking about the shoot, playing ball, their work dynamics, and the love scenes between Costner & Susan Sarandon (Robbins’ “wife”). Great fun on both counts.
“Oceans 11” has a pretty decent commentary as well.
You could just tell that everybody had the time of their life making that movie. Then they made “Oceans 12”…
They really owe us on “Oceans 13”!
MtM
George Clooney and Robert Downey Jr.'s commentary track on Good Night and Good Luck is excellent. George Clooney has this hilarious schtick where he insists that they stop talking to appreciate all his moments on screen.
Also good is the commentary on Cruel Intentions. The director had never directed anything and the producer had never produced anything and neither one had any idea what they were doing. The director admits that he’d heard that directors “give notes.” So he tried to do that for a while, until he realized that he didn’t have any kind of clue what should be on them. He handed the costume designer a post-it that said “make them look cool.” The track also features the DP and a couple of other people, and you can tell that they had all had a great time making the movie, and were having a lot of fun doing the commentary. (I’m pretty sure they recorded it after the final cut but before the general release, but I could be wrong.) It’s one of the few ensemble commentaries I really enjoyed.
Ridley Scott’s commentary on the Duellists is quite good, as well. He tells this great anecdote about his cinematographer and the sun. I won’t spoil it for you.
The commentary for Bubba Ho-Tep is really funny. Bruce Campbell does the commentary as Elvis Presley critiquing Bruce Campbell’s portrayal of him in the movie. He refers to him as a handsome guy but he thinks he cusses to much.
I have to go watch the Shaun of the Dead commentary now, I had no idea it was worth watching. Sounds good.
A couple surprising ones - *Scream * with Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven was a lot of fun. Also, Not Another Teen Movie, of all things, had just about the entire cast having a blast. And to add to what someone said about drunk/stoned commentaries, the early Kevin Smith ones are severely marred by Jason Mewes - I think he even passed out in one of them…
Oh, Dark City.
That’s a great one. I’m pretty sure Arnold and John are both stoned out of their minds before they even start the track. About forty minutes in, Arnold forgets that he made a sequel to the movie! Classic. And now he’s running my state!
Second vote for Oceans 11. I really enjoyed listening to that commentary. Cannot say about Oceans 12 , refused to buy that turd. At least Oceans 13 looks promising.
Se7en had a very well-organized track. Instead of one person or group of people trying to find things to talk about for two hours, the track was “hosted” by a film historian, who would introduce clips from the director, writer, FX guy, etc. talking about specific things. Not a lot of dead air on that one.
Allow me to hijack my own thread here to raise another question:
What about DVD’s that don’t have commentary tracks? I’d love to hear one on “Adaptation”, and “The Big Lebowski” would be a real hoot.
Dark City has a track by Ebert. It was very fastinating.
Man… several of these mentioned are in my collection and now I want to watch them… BUT I ALREADY PACKED ALL MY DVDs!!! ARRRG!
(I hate moving)
One of the most intersting commentery tracks I have is on a piece of trash sci-fi skinflick called Space-Thing. The director, David Friedman, spends most of the time explaining what it was like to be involved in the grindhouse movie business in the sixties.
He also sounds genuinely perplexed that someone dug up his lost films and found a way to market and sell them decades after they had been given up as lost forever.
Damn you! That’s what I was coming in here to say!
Just about any commentary that involves Bruce Campbell is a good one. Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness are both excellent.
Concert films, music videos, and stand-up comedy performances usually aren’t known for their commentary tracks. But the DVD of comedic ventriloquist Jeff Dunham in performance has a commentary track that’s well worth listening to: he talks about the performance itself, about how he created his characters, and about comedy and ventriloquism in general.
The Truman Show. Peter Weir is AMAZING. What an interesting, insightful commentary to such a fantastic movie.
What? There is no commentary track for the one movie I need a commentary on?
DAMN.