> There’s a commentary track to La Jetee (sp?) where Terry Gilliam (who didn’t
> have anything to do with the film) talks about the movie. The commentary was
> recorded over the telephone so there was no connection between what was
> on screen and what Gilliam was saying.
Has Gilliam ever seen La Jetee? I saw 12 Monkeys at a preview where Gilliam spoke. He admitted that (as of that point) he had never seen La Jetee. The screenwriters for 12 Monkeys had, of course, but he didn’t bother seeing it. Has he since seen La Jetee?
The commentary track for Ryker’s Revenge is pretty bad. There’s only so many times you can hear “for all of those critics who say ‘Ken Ryker doesn’t get hard all the way,’ take a look at that!” before it starts to wear on your nerves.
Welcome to every single Farrelly brothers commentary. As much as I love their movies, their commentaries always consist of them reciting each of their friends’ names as they appear onscreen (usually in the background), and discussing useless information about the people involved in the movie (and never the movie itself). BORING!
Just what I came in here to say. On top of this, he really thinks he made a piece of great art. If it werent for the smacking sucking noises, this track would qualify as high unintentional comedy.
I also for whatever reason listened to the commentary track for the Patriot, and the guy (director? I think?) for whom english was a second language used the filler phrase “kind of, like” approximately one hundred thousand times, often three or four times in the same sentence. I am not kidding.
I don’t begrudge the guy, because he’s not communicating in his native tongue, but man that is annoying to have to listen to.
My fault, I shouldn’t ever watch these movies at all, let alone again with alternate audio.
Actually, the Back to the Future trilogy has two audio commentary tracks, one being the Robert Zemeckis Q&A, and the other a “regular” commentary by some of the other folks who worked on the movie. Definitely check it out again, it’s worth a listen.
Yup. A choppy, poorly-animated, unfunny, low-rate MST3K, to boot.
Ah, I’ll have to do that when I get back to the States. I only have the Japan (region 2) release, and it’s got only the one commentary track with Zemeckis and the writer.
Dogma also has two commentary tracks; one with the cast which I guess you could call the anecdotal commentary and one that focuses on the more technical aspects of the filmmaking.
I couldn’t get through more than 15-20 minutes of The Thomas Crown Affair commentary for the exact same reason. Lifeless, devoid of insight, and incredibly dull. Absolutely unbearable.
As for Crouching Tiger, I have to disagree–when Lee goes off-topic from what’s on-screen, what he has to say is still relevant and interesting (although James Schamus’ presence is the major distraction).
Also gotta disagree with the OP on Excalibur–what Boorman has to say is quite interesting, and he’s got a dry wit that makes some of the memories particularly funny.
The commentary for An Officer and a Gentleman was so bad that I still haven’t been able to watch the movie again. Taylor Hackford, the director, had a condescending tone as he described how he got good performances from Debra Winger and Richard Gere. Yeah, those two inexperienced pups came to full maturity under your guidance and owe their careers to you, you … (okay; this isn’t the pit).
BTW: DVD Commentaries that were better than the actual movies: [ul]
[li]Just Married[/li][li]Euro Trip[/li][/ul]
(I have real high standards for movies, don’t I?)
For one of Smith’s later movies - I think it was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - Mewes is pretty normal for the first 1/3 of the movie, then he leaves to go use the bathroom, is gone for the next 1/3 of the movie, and when he comes back he’s obviously stoned/nodding off - very quiet, slurring his words, not making any sense when he does pipe up. Kinda wierd.
Not the director’s commentary (which I thought was excellent), but the design team commentary for the LOTR:TTT Extended Edition was so boring that I had to turn it off about halfway through the first disc.
I suspect that the great secret of DVD commentaries is that most of them suck. Dull, off-topic, badly edited, take your pick.
On “Big Trouble in Little China,” I turned it off when Carpenter and Kurt Russell went on and on about their kids.
The few “Simpsons” episodes features vast stretches of silence and little else to remember. I didn’t listen to them all, but I was batting a thousand with the first season and decided not to press the point.
There’s this awful zombie flick called The Dead Hate the Living that had a pretty entertaining commentary with the director and cast. It was sad, too, because you could tell the film meant a lot to them.
Bubba Ho-Tep has a pretty decent and interesting commentary track by the director. (Great movie, BTW. Go rent!)
It also has a commentary track by Bruce Campbell as Elvis. Totally unwatchable, and I really like Bruce Campbell. I turned it off immediately. “Concept” commentaries tend to not work so well.