Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

    The bad thing about streaming is all the bonus features on the Blu-ray/dvds that I've come to enjoy are being phased out.

    Can anyone name a Blu-ray or dvd commentary from a screenwriter, director, producer and/or actor that was enjoyable? Any genre. It's what you personally liked. If it helps you can even name the worst or one that disappointed.

    One of my faves was "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" with the commentary from Robert Downey and Val Kilmer. So funny. However, to be warned they don't talk indepth about the scenes from a filmmaking point of view.

    I found Ti West's commentary on both "House Of the Devil" and "Innkeepers" to be very informative from a filmmaker point of view. He patiently explained each shot and the thought process and whatnot. If you want to be a horror director whether you like the movie or not the commentary is a mini film school.

    "Blade 2" was not a favorite. Not even close but I found the commentary between Wesley Snipes (the lead) and the screenwriter David Goyer interesting. Interesting in that Snipes' tone was complete disinterest. He was not "game" anytime Goyer tried to include him in the conversation which was 80% of the time. The whole thing felt like it was beneath him.

    I'm a big fan of "Arrested Development" so when I got the DVDs I played the cast commentary of an episode. Very disappointing in that the entire cast spoke over each other and seemed to have a party. No tidbits or gossip. Just them partying with the episode in the background. If I were in their shoes I'd do the same thing, but sitting at home listening/watching it was like listening to a amateur podcast of 8 high schoolers riff on three different subjects.

    I have more but that's off the top of my head. I mentioned "The Cannonball Run" director commentary being fun but it was because I lived in the 80's and felt I knew the gossip he dropped about the cast intimately.

  • #2
    Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

    A few come to mind,
    -EL Mariachi
    -Underworld (believe it or not)
    -Don Coscarelli's and Elvis' in Bubba ho tep
    I heard the starting gun


    sigpic

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

      Robert Rodriguez ("El Mariachi") usually has good commentaries.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

        Many of these commentaries are curios for me that I myself enjoyed

        Monster's Ball

        Training Day

        Citizen Kane

        Casablanca

        Chinatown

        Butch Cassidy Sundance Kid [Special or Collector Edition]

        Beverly Hills Cop
        "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
        -Maya Angelou

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

          Paul Verhoeven - Spetters

          Hugely controversial during it's Dutch cinema run in 1980 - Spetters looked at the youth of Rotterdam, with tales of sex, motorbikes, religion & homophobia, and everyone in Holland over the age of 30 seemed to take a strong dislike to way it portrayed their youth, forming an "anti-Spetters league" they took to the streets to protest the film (15 years later, Verhoeven described the response to Showgirls as "Deja vu") and the whole experience left him shocked and depressed for months afterwards.

          And poor Verhoeven has to re-live all this in the MGM DVD commentary, at one point getting so worked-up at the injustice he faced, you can almost hear the foam coming out of his mouth. For the rest of us, top entertainment.


          Abel Ferrara - Driller Killer

          The first commentary I ever listened to, Ferrara holes up in the Chelsea hotel and gives us a commentary as sleazy as his debut movie. Every girl in the movie was hired so he could try and get in their pants, and the phrase "There's the money shot, homes!" is dished out at onscreen flesh.

          The best bit is the end, where someone has changed what is supposed to be a totally black screen. Ferrara gets frustrated, yells "f--k it", and walks out of his own commentary,

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

            Some of my favorite film-makers that are very free with their information on their commentaries are:

            John Carpenter (fav commentary was him and cinematographer Gary Gibbe
            on In The Mouth of Madness)

            James Cameron (fav commentary was him and Arnold Schwarzenegger on T2)

            Guillermo Del Toro (fav commentary was him on Devil's Backbone)

            I watched/listened to a commentary by John Carpenter on Ghost of Mars where he talks with Nastasha Henstridge about smoking the cron daily and they even questioned that they maybe should not have said anything about that on commentary.

            Then not long after the very next dvd (new release) I got I noticed the disclaimer "the views expressed in commentary do not necessarily reflect the views of the motion picture company". (sorry not a completely accurate quote but you know what I'm talking about)

            I thought it was coincidental that after he talked about that they then started putting that disclaimer on dvd's. lol

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

              Tropic Thunder. Robert Downey Jr. does the DVD commentary *in character*.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                Originally posted by Darthclaw13 View Post
                John Carpenter (fav commentary was him and cinematographer Gary Gibbe
                on In The Mouth of Madness)
                the original thing has a great commentary between Carpenter and Russel too actually
                I heard the starting gun


                sigpic

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                  Originally posted by purplenurple View Post
                  I found Ti West's commentary on both "House Of the Devil" and "Innkeepers" to be very informative from a filmmaker point of view. He patiently explained each shot and the thought process and whatnot. If you want to be a horror director whether you like the movie or not the commentary is a mini film school.
                  I haven't seen/heard Ti's commentary but I did watch The Innkeepers today on Hulu. I gotta say I was sadly not impressed. I don't think I have seen any of his other films, but if they are in line with Innkeepers I think I shall pass.

                  (sorry for giving out any spoilers here to those who have not watched it).

                  The first thing I noticed was the lack of interesting shots. All of his shots were either cowboy shots or close ups with a few Dutch angles thrown in. Everyone/everything was center focused. It was like he did not know what the Golden Mean is.

                  He only used a tripod (still camera set up) or a steady cam (motion shots). but perhaps with such a low budget (750k) he thought he could only do the two types. But really you can do so much more even with no budget. Get that camera low/high/peeking from behind something/looking through something/overshot/above someone's head, anything besides right in the middle all the time throughout the entire film!!

                  Actor choices were not great. The only "name" was Kelly McGillis (from top gun). The young blonde girl is not a strong enough actress to carry a whole film as the lead. Everyone's performance seemed stilted like they were just waiting to do their lines.

                  The "scares" were not good and very predictable old hat. Nothing happens really in the first 2/3 of the film. The jokes were very bad. Jokes in horror are supposed to be there for a bit of stress relief during tense moments, but the jokes in this film seemed just thrown in at the weirdest moments.

                  The pregnant pauses at the end of scenes were too long, kinda like soap opera pauses just before commercial. I wondered if this was a tv movie so I looked it up.... it's not.

                  Too much "filler". I have noticed in many films that do not have much story will use filler shots to stretch out the length. The filler in this film was soooo recognizable that I actually felt sorry for the film-makers.

                  Prop: Ok when your actor uses a prop, which most of the time is lightweight, they have to act like it has weight otherwise it just looks stupid. The beer cans...when the guy and girl were drinking them they were supposed to have beer in them. You can so tell when they pick them up they are empty. They could have at least put water in them so they had some weight and looked normal.

                  For a "horror" film it was too brightly lit, except for the basement. The rest of the place was so lit up it was crazy. They could have saved some of that budget by reducing the lighting.

                  The story itself was weak. No arc for any of the characters. (when they got to the basement and the girl says, "this is where they buried her" my spouse said, "Is it also where they buried the plot because it certainly wasn't in the rest of the film.")

                  Positives: I enjoyed the score in the beginning credits. Also I liked the historical photos during the opening credits of the real hotel. I also like that they filmed it in the real hotel, I always like a real location.

                  Sorry to bash it this much, I usually can find many things I like even in a bad film. I seriously tried with this one because I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't.

                  Sorry purplenurple, but if anyone wants to be a horror director I would recommend studying Sam Raimi, John Carpenter, or Guillermo Del Toro instead of Ti West.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                    Not a big fan of The Innkeepers myself and you bring up good points but watching with the commentary you learn how/why auditioning of the lead actress/actor, what went into getting some of the locations (filmed mostly in one location the hotel), dealing with sound issues, explanations on why he did certain shots or what he wanted the scene to be. What was improv' and what it was like to edit. Stuff like that. I've heard Sam Raimi and others do commentary and aside from Robert Rodgriguez I've found few go into as much explanations as Ti West. His commentary was not funny (heard funnier) and not so much gossipy (heard more gossip on other commentaries). Basically what I'm saying I enjoyed the commentary more then the film on both the movies I saw because he made it seem do-able to make a horror movie. On "House Of the Devil" there's a scene where the female protagonist is walking on the college campus and West explains how he was able to shoot on the campus, what strings he had to pull and how hard it was to get a payphone as a prop because there are no more pay phones. I like that. When you watch it you don't think about it but when someone explains they only had a 300K or so budget...

                    Sometimes commentaries with both the screenwriter and the director are weird because there's a tension. It seems better to hear the screenwriters version then later hear the director's version or in reverse. I forgot which film commentary - it might have been "Zero Dark Thirty" - where the director (Bigelow) and the writer were together for the commentary and it seemed like they barely tolerated each other (perhaps I'm reading too much into it ).

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                      Oh and Darthclaw you want to talk pregnant pauses? "The Innkeeper" is "Citizen Kane" compared to a film I just saw the last 10 minutes of on cable called "Kirk Cameron Saves Christmas." I never heard of it though I've heard of him. I used to watch "Growing Pains." So I was turning channels and saw his face and the title the other day. I did not know it was the worst film of 2014. I seriously never ever heard of it. I caught the last 10 or so minutes - 8 of them were some sort of dance routine. But prior to the dance routine there was this scene that invented the term "pregnant pause." It made me laugh out loud in it's awfulness more then any recent viewing of "Growing Pains." I had to go on IMDB to find out more about the movie and that's when I found out just what insanity I had caught the tail end of. I do not recommend anyone seeing it BUT if you do I think it'll redefine your tolerance for the "pregnant pause."

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                        One other thing (obviously I've time on my hands ) boy did Kelly Mcgillis age badly. Darthclaw, we talked about this on another post with Burt Reynolds as an example of aging sucks. I remember thinking how beautiful she was in "Top Gun" when I saw it in the theater (probably was about fifteen). I had seen the movie "Stake Land" (made around the time of "The Innkeepers") and didn't even know that was Kelly McGillis until someone told me so on that I recognized her in the Ti West film. Drinking, drugs, genetics? We could do a whole post on people who time has not been kind to in the movie business.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                          Originally posted by purplenurple View Post
                          One other thing (obviously I've time on my hands ) boy did Kelly Mcgillis age badly. Darthclaw, we talked about this on another post with Burt Reynolds as an example of aging sucks. I remember thinking how beautiful she was in "Top Gun" when I saw it in the theater (probably was about fifteen). I had seen the movie "Stake Land" (made around the time of "The Innkeepers") and didn't even know that was Kelly McGillis until someone told me so on that I recognized her in the Ti West film. Drinking, drugs, genetics? We could do a whole post on people who time has not been kind to in the movie business.
                          Yes bless her heart, but at least her face is real. She hasn't done all the surgeries, injections, and implants many now do to stay "young". (which none of that stuff works anyway, they don't look young, they just look "worked on".) I have seen so many older actresses who have had their faces pulled back so much they look almost like Donofrio who played Edgar in Men In Black, the first film, where he pulls his skin back on his head and asks "is this better?"

                          But yes, it took me awhile to recognize Kellly McGillis in Innkeepers. She let her hair go full grey and put on a lot of weight, which does happen later in life so that's ok. But it seemed like she was bigger and then lost the weight fast because of her neck. It had that hang-y thing that happens when you lose weight too fast.

                          I haven't seen her since Witness with Harrison Ford. I'm sure she has been doing things I just haven't seen them. Innkeepers is the first I have seen of her in years so it was a shock to see the physical change.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                            YES, "Witness!" I was trying to remember another movie I saw her in during her prime besides "Top Gun." I was too lazy to go on IMDB ( yet oddly enough I felt compelled for Kirk Cameron and the worst film of 2014). "Witness" still holds up by the way although it's a little boring now and we're light years in terms of technology then the 80's where Harrison Ford's character got Kelly McGillis' character in trouble due to listening to an old song on a car radio.

                            "Fight Club" had a good audio commentary with the director and lead actors.

                            I'm a big fan of "Young Frankenstein" and though I own the dvd (and have watched the movie twice with it) I've never seen it with the commentary from Mel Brooks. I have to get around to doing that. Why I haven't already is unexplainable since I've seen the commentaries from "Expendables 1 & 2." I even watched the commentary from the wolf action film "The Grey" with the screenwriter (not a stand out one way or another).

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Best Blu-ray/DVD Commentary

                              Originally posted by purplenurple View Post
                              I'm a big fan of "Young Frankenstein" and though I own the dvd (and have watched the movie twice with it) I've never seen it with the commentary from Mel Brooks. I have to get around to doing that.
                              Being Halloween weekend you should watch it with commentary. I have never heard any of Mel Brooks commentary, but he is very cool so it might be good. or at least funny.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X