# great DVD commentary **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 22, 2004, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-dvd-commentary/230471 "2004-02-22T05:08:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2004, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-dvd-commentary/230471/41 "2004-02-23T20:33:52Z")
Oh, and does anyone mind sharing gems from the Family Guy commentary? I have a hard time believing anything could live up to the genius of the show itself. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2004, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-dvd-commentary/230471/42 "2004-02-24T03:45:21Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > My all time favorite commentary comes from the director’s cut of the Coen brother’s _Blood Simple_. It’s narrated by some British guy from a film institute that you’ve never heard of, and as the commentary progresses, it becomes clear that he’s completely insane, with some sort of paranoid persecution complex about the Coen brothers and the studio that released the film. Highlights include the ridiculously complex set-up for a relatively simply shot of a conversation in a darkened car on a rainy highway (such as having to bolt the car to the ceiling and acting the entire scene in reverse) and the revelation that it was originally supposed to be an epic set on the Russian front of WWI, with Emmet Walsh in the starring role, but was “ruined” when the Coens re-edited the footage into a contemporary film noir in set in Texas. Funniest faux-commentary I’ve ever heard: better even than the _Spinal Tap_ one. and let’s not forget the villainous Adrian Butts! The commentary is like its own little story with characters and everything. The animatronic dog … the painstakingly-animated fly … actors mouthing their lines silently while the background sounds are recorded, so that the dialog can be looped in later … great stuff. The commentary for _Big Trouble in Little China_ is terrible - it’s mostly Kurt Russel and John Carpenter having a private conversation that has nothing to do with the movie; stuff along the lines of “how’s the wife?” “I hear your boy plays hockey now?” etc. Just catching up on old times and occasionally remembering to say something about the movie. They should have made them do it over :mad: _The Simpsons_ commentary is brilliant - lot’s of cool inside info and off-the-cuff humour. ---
**Author:** ![RobuSensei](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/919ad9/32.png) [@RobuSensei](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobuSensei)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2004, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-dvd-commentary/230471/43 "2004-02-24T09:08:23Z")
The director’s commentary on **Apollo 13** is excellent. Ron Howard talks about all of the neat stuff he got to do while making this movie – like driving the crawler that takes spacecraft from the VAB to the launch pad (“I wanted to call Arnold Schwartzenegger, and say, ‘De Hummer? De Crawler will crush da hummer’”), and how they did a lot of filming in NASA’s KC135 “Vomit Comet.” It was fascinating to hear him describe how what looks like a seamless scene was in fact stitched together from many shots – “That’s on the ground, that’s on the KC 135, that’s on the ground again.” However, the other commentary on this disc is at least as good, if not better. It’s Jim Lovell and his wife Marion talking about how the filmmakers got a lot of stuff right, and reminiscing about what really happened. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-dvd-commentary/230471.md?page=2)