Best Movie DVD Commentary: Rain Man. Really interesting and informative.
Best TV DVD Commentary: Survivor All Stars. Pure snark.
Worst: Sixth Sense. Because there is none.
Best: The “best,” most detailed, lucid, technically informative commentary I’ve ever heard is Kenneth Johnson’s for the debut two-hour movie and the Hulk marries Mariette Hartley two-part episode of his “The Incredible Hulk” series. The man obviously has the best memory of any human being ever, or, more likely, simply prepared himself, used notes, etc. He does not ramble, but rather recalls at what time of day, with what lens, with who doing the lens pulling, etc., a scene was shot. I’d say anyone who wants to direct for television should listen to those two commentaries.
Worst: The overrated director who did the atrocious “Wild Wild West” movie. Barry Something. He thinks it was a good film.
Unusual: Loved hearing Kurt Russell and John Carpenter smoke and hack out their lungs and guffaw as “The Thing” played. Bad commentary, but funny to count the times you would hear a lighter, hear Russell drag on a cig until he exploded in phlegmatic coughing.
Sir Rhosis
candidates for BEST: 1776, Godfather 1, Igby Goes Down
candidates for Worst: Godfather 3, Boogie Nights, any Tim Burton commentary
another Worst: Barbershop 2 featured the entire cast in frame. Cedric (the comic and dramatic heart of the movie) seemed somewhere between disinterested and stoned, most had no comments worth repeating, and Troy Garity spoke exactly the way his character Isaac speaks in the movie. (Troy, baby, your mom is Jane Fonda- you grew up in Beverly Hills and attended exclusive private schools and colleges- you.are.not.really.from.the.hood.so.knock.it.off., dawg.)
Another terrible one that I haven’t heard mentioned yet - John Hughes’ commentary on the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off DVD. The commentary is so dry that it would be considered lifeless and boring on a Bergman or Ozu DVD - on a hilarious movie, it’s a complete snooze.
On my favourites/best list:
Spinal Tap -as mentioned above
Man of the Century -It isn’t for the entire movie, but it is pretty funny
Men In Black 1 -I thought that was a pretty good one
Evolution (They spend most of the time cracking each other up)
Killer Klowns from Outer Space - Lots of joking around as well as some insight on making a low budget flick.
On my worse list:
Contact -What a yawner
Pee Wees Big Adventure -You’d think this would be pretty funny, but it sounds like Paul and Tim were on valium.
My least favorites:
Spaceballs- Mel Brooks just talked about “I worked with so and so, and he was really nice” throughout
Shadow of the Vampire- I turned it off after the first 20 or so minutes, but the director sounded kind of pretentious.
My favorite commentaries are by David Fincher and Brad Pitt. I thought Se7en’s commentary was awesome, but it pales in comparison to Fight Club.
Favorite Brad Pitt comment: “I was worried my family would be offended by the movie, because they live in the bible belt. The buckle, actually.”
I also am very fond of the True Romance commentaries. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette do an excellent one, and Tony Scott has a pretty good one as well. There’s a third track with all the bit players discussing their various scenes, which is solid.
Wes Craven does the worst. He sits there and asks what light filters were used in every shot, and whenever there’s dialoge, he’ll say something like “there’s a lot of talking heads in this scene. What filter did you use?” Gah!
Quentin Tarentino gives atrocious commentary. Chatty Cathy much? We get it, you’re manic. Take a valium before your next commentary.
I haven’t seen the Mallrats commentary, but what was said about Mallrats is just as true on Dogma. A few too many injokes, but otherwise a fine effort.
Then let me throw in The Elephant Man. I couldn’t believe there was no commentary track on this movie. There’s a short documentary, but no commentary.
There’s also no scene selection, which is really weird.
Best: I love the LOTR ones, especially the writers’ and actors’ tracks.
Odd: The Buckaroo Banzai, both spoken commentary and text comments (these are two different options on the DVD) treat the story as if it were an adaptation of real-life events, so you get discussions along the lines of how the “real” Buckaroo doesn’t look at all like Peter Weller, but he approved the casting, and how the “real” death of someone or other was really much more grisly, but they wanted to keep a PG rating.
Worst: Pirates of the Carribean. I was excited when I saw that Johnny Depp was commenting, but he doesn’t say anything beyond “yeah… um… that was great… great…” I waited until after Capt. Sparrow showed up on screen, hoping things would improve, and when they didn’t, turned the comments off.
I am not, generally speaking, a fan of commentary. I will have to check out the Kevin Smith movies and Spinal Tap, now, though.
My favorite that I have listened to is probably the Army of Darkness : Boomstick Edition commentary.
**Best:**Michael Jeck’s commentary on the Criterion Seven Samurai disc, Scholarly and informative. Actually, all the commentaries on the Criterion Kurosawa movies are excellent. I also like the commentaries on the Universal Monsters Collection discs, particularly Tom Weaver’s commentaries, which really add a lot of context and background info on the movies.
Runners-Up
J. Michael Straczynski on the Babylon 5 box sets. Very passionate and informative on the show’s themes and setting.
Randal Kleiser on It’s My Party, in which he reveals how much of the film is autobiographical and a tribute to his dead partner.
Worst: Brendan Fraser on The Mummy. He doesn’t seem to be very bright or insightful, and his comments are limited to describing what’s on the screen. “Whoa, here comes the airplane!”
Dishonorable Mention
Zack Snyder on the 2004 Dawn of the Dead, way too smug and self-congratulatory.
The self-consciously “wacky” commentaries on the Mr. Show. We love you, Bob and David, stop trying to win us over.
I
Bryan Singer and Chris McQuarrie’s commentary for The Usual Suspects is a lot of fun – very interesting, funny, and very fer periods of silence.
I also love the commentaries on the Futurama box sets, mostly for the presence of David X. Cohen who is hilarious and acts as ringmaster. If I were listening to a movie commentary and the people were eating chips or taking cell phone calls I’d find it annoying, but when it happens 50 episodes in, it’s spectacularly funny.
I also really enjoy most of the commentaries on the various Mutant Enemy sets, although I’d like it if there were more of them. There are one or two misfires, but most are quite enjoyable, and when Whedon discusses one of his own episodes he really gives a lot of insight into his goals and the directiong choices he made to achieve them.
The worst is the commentary for A Mighty Wind. Yawning gulfs of silence punctuated by occasional attempts by Eugene Levy to spark conversation to which Christopher Guest grunts noncomittally.
–Cliffy
You know, I never watched it when it was new and would otherwise have never considered renting the DVD but now my interest is piqued. A properly done commentary can be an education in the realities of film making and too often the opportunity is wasted.
That’s the case for Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, and probably other Lynch movies besides. Lynch wants you to watch the whole film in one sitting, not come back to it later or cherry-pick the scenes you want to see.
Best: I’ll second the Futurama and This Is Spinal Tap commentaries. Among the few I can listen to over and over.
Oddest: Hunter Thompson’s for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s … hard to describe.
Worst: Arnold Schwarzenegger for Conan the Barbarian. Director John Milius is somewhat interesting, but Arnold’s comments are along the lines of, “Ooh, look at da dog!” when a wolf appears onscreen. No joke.
People have already covered most of my favorites and not-so-favorites, so I’ll just throw in MST3K’s Mike Nelson’s commentary tracks for Reefer Madness and (the original) Night Of The Living Dead. Some brilliant stuff, and I understand he’s been tapped to do even more psuedo-MST3K commentary tracks for schlock classics such as this. Woohoo!
OK, thanks! Makes sense now (as much as David Lynch could make sense).
Another bad one I thought of: the first season set of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”. I only tried two episodes. One was incredibly boring and the other had some odd guitar solo for several minutes before I shut it off.
One of the oddest: Bubba Ho-Tep has a track of Bruce Campbell as Elvis.
I haven’t seen that many commented films, so my picks aren’t from a wide selection…
Best - There’s Something About Mary by the directors, little insights into the thought behind the film were fasciniating.
Worst - Charlie’s Angels 2, the director’s one wasn’t too bad, but the writer’s one was absolutley terrible. I seem to recall it started with ‘OK, what are we supposed to say? We’d better introduce ourselves, I’m…’ and there were about 5 instances of ‘they did that effect by doing ________’ ‘really? That’s a cool way to do it.’ I ghave up after 10 minutes of tedium.