shrugs
Dad always said that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
I loved the commentary in Braveheart. I really enjoyed the scenes where he was describing the landscape.
Having been/lived there, kinda made me homesick…and Mel is 100% right about Scottish rain. You can’t always see it, but you can feel it and it soaks you to the bone. = )
Since it seems okay to list worst ones as well, during his commentary, I kept waiting, and praying that what’s-his-name would tell us why “The Wild Wild West” SUCKED so $$^*%$#ing bad. He just went blithely along, I think he thought it was good.
Not bad comentary, per se, and I’m a smoker, but I got kind of annoyed hearing fellow smokers John Carpenter and Kurt Russell light up every five seconds whie doing the commentary for “The Thing.”
It went something like:
CARPENTER: In this scene (loud cigarette lighter wheel being turned noise) we shot with a (DEEP DRAG) special lens (COUGH).
RUSSELL (LIGHT UP NOISE): Yeah (HACK, SPIT, DRAG) HAAA-HAAA, yes.
BOTH: COUGH, DRAG, HACK, RELIGHT.
They seemed to be having a good time, and seemed to genuinely like each other, and there was lots of behind-the-scenes stuff, but jeez, even I don’t smoke 24/7.
Sir Rhosis
Almost every Commentary seems to have a nugget or two of extremely interesting information. I would agree with several mentioned here, notably, Dark City by Roger Ebert, Three Kings, and This is Spinal Tap. Another one I liked which hasn’t been mentioned that iliked was Out of Sight with a single Commentary by both the Director Steven Soderburgh and the screenwriter Scott Frank. I like because it is one of the very few that includes the writer and it is interesting to see the dynamic between the two main creative forces behind the movie (besides, of course, Elmore Leonard)
Is there more than one DVD of this film? My copy has a lot of features, but no commentary.
I just got the Red Green DVD. Steve Smith explains how they did some of the Handyman’s Corner projects: it actually takes a lot of effort to make these things fuck up properly, so to speak.
In response to the OP… I think that the purpose of many commentaries is to be a mini-education for people who are into film as more than just entertainment. I’m sure that film-school students probably listen obsessively to the commentaries of films they admire, just as I’m sure it’s film-school or wanna-be film-school weenies that devour storyboards and the like.
Myself, I’m looking for entertainment. Or, in rare cases where I just love a movie so much I need to know EVERYTHING about it (American Beauty) I wll listen, read, watch anything, just to be absorbing more about it. It’s an obsessive thing.