Best DVD commentaries?

I had a thread on tis a while back, but I think it got gobbled up in the move to the new servers.

Sideways is my personal favorite. I usually don't like actor commentaries, but Thomas Haden Church is fucking hysterical in it. I think my favorite part is the recurring joke about the crags in his face, and a one point he makes a comment that, if you look closely, you can see elves rappelling down the side of his chin.

http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104915


Kurt Russell, Arnold, Spinal Tap, etc...

The Day After Tomorrow
Conan the Barbarian

Fear and Loathing.

Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro are beyond boring, but Hunter Thompson's is classic. He just talks about how wrong they got it all and how it's all made up.

Lord of the Rings has some good commentary from the 20 min or so that I heard with Merry & Pippin, but I'm sure as hell not going to sit through 12 hours of that shit - even if Tolkein participated.

And Conan and Day After Tomorrow mos def.

Oh and Titanic. I especially like the one with the historian who helped the production getting all the details right. So much interesting info about the actual event. Like the baker who in the movie is the last to go down together with Kate and Leo. That guy was really standing there and was one of the 6 who survived the actual sinking. The details of that production are simply mind blowing. I mean they tracked down the company who made the original carpets of the Titanic and had them make 100% authentic replicas for all the interior.

Pretty much any commentary with Ben Affleck is guaranteed to be hysterical.

The Kurt Russel/John Carpenter commentaries are great if you want to hear about their kids playing hockey.

I just listened to the Rocky Balboa commentary last night. Really informative and fun. Stallone's just so smart and funny. One of the better commentaries with just one participant.

Stay away from any John McTiernan commentary though. That man's a cure for an insomnia.

Any Cronenberg commentary.

Also, I have much love for all the commentaries on the Hot Fuzz SE.

BTW, shouldn't this thread be in DVD General Discussion? Not that it matters, really.

For some reason I liked it when in the middle of it he tried calling del Toro, and if remember correctly he left an obscene message for him.

That Thompson commentary is great, but I remember the first time he screeched it scared the shit out of me.

Said it before. Will say it again:

Evil Dead II
Ebert's Commentary on Dark City

And after watching Rocky Balboa last night, Stallone does a pretty good commentary.

The Fight Club commentary with Pitt, Norton, Fincher, and Bonham-Carter is pretty great. Except that Bonham-Carter is seperate from the guys.

Kevin Smiths commentaries are usually really funny as well. Especially the Mallrats one where Affleck just keeps cracking on the movie left and right.

I also love the getting drunk commentary that Parker/Stone and their buddies do for Cannibal, The Musical.

What really sucks is someone fucked up the sound mixing on Orgazmo's commentary. You cannot hear shit.

Always liked Ridley Scott's stuff, mainly the Gladiator one, but I seem to remember there being a decent one for Kingdom of Heaven: DC? Maybe i'm making that up.

Spinal Tap's is brilliant, and I like the back and forth between Lem Dobbs and Soderbergh on The Limey's track. You get the impression that neither really thought much of each other's interpretation of the other's work.

What's great about the DAY AFTER TOMORROW track? (Never heard it before)

I love on PLANET TERROR they have an audience track. (Recorded from the live Austin premiere) It's kind of awesome. Crowd screams and laughs in all the right places. Adds to the fun, especially if you're viewing alone.

Wish they did this more often with offbeat titles.

That audience track also appears on Sin City. I agree, it's a great feature.

It's just completely R rated and funny. It took me by complete surprise when I heard it considering the contents of the movie. I think the first "motherfucker" was used 30 seconds in.

Steven Soderbergh's commentaries are among the best. He's a genius at choosing the right people. Sex, Lies, he gets Neil Labute (who was still respected at the time of the recording), The Limey he interviews the screenwriter, Lem Dobbs, who basically just bitches at him for fucking up his screenplay (they also do some strange editing techniques that mirror the film's), Mark Romanek on Bubble, and even interviewing himself seamlessly on the Schizopolis Criterion. It's great to have another filmmaker on there to ask actual interesting questions.
Also, the Richard Kelly/Kevin Smith commentary on the Donnie Darko director's cut is a riot. Smith just spends the whole time reacting to Kelly's explanations of his intentions for the film. There's a lot of, "Seriously? C'mon." and "Give me a break, man," type responses. Kind of rips Kelly a new one, actually and you can tell Kelly gets a little flustered and embarassed. Basically, Smith says whatever the audience would be thinking if it had just been a Kelly solo commentary.

Also love The Simpsons commentaries...and I love that they include one (and sometimes two) on every episode for every season.

Edit: to add David Gordon Green's movies...mostly just because he rattles off a bunch of obscure '70s and '80s movies that I can fill my Netflix queue with.

Listening to the tracks, you get the mind-set of each executive producer/showrunner and just how right (and sometimes wrong) they were for the show. They'll never be a better one than David Mirkin imo.

Among my favorite commentaries would be Evil Dead II, Mallrats, The Kentucky Fried Movie, Knightriders and Ebert's Casablanca track.

The Simpsons' commentaries are probably the best tv show commentaries I've come across. Even though they were a bit repetitive; at least for Season 5 (Basically I learned Schwartzwelder was a goddamn genius). But they were always lively and informative.

Yeah, I think I kind of wanted David Mirkin to be my dad after listening to the season where he was on nearly every episode. Seems like a good guy and is just great to listen to. Too bad his films haven't turned out very good.

Season 4 or so, there's an episode that Conan wrote and someone (Al Jean or Mike Reiss I think) just goes off on how great Conan was/is and it comes off as a little sycophantic, and I think someone even calls him out on it at some point. That said, Al Jean and Mike Reiss are quite good themselves...the ones with Josh Weinstein (season 7?) and his kids asking questions are kind of a pain to slog through...you can tell Matt Groening isn't thrilled to have them in there.

interesting thread. i never listened to an audio commentary on Blu-ray or DVD. i should try it some time.

Boogie Nights is the gold standard of commentaries.

It's worth noting it's far more interesting to hear the writers talk than the actors. The actors almost bring nothing to the table.

Although does Schwartzwelder do any commentaries?

From what I understand, he's pretty committed to never doing a commentary. I remember one commentary they were joking how happy Schwartzwelder was when he didn't have to be in the writers room anymore, probably season 7 or 8. Now he just pulls up in his car, drops the script off, and drives away,

deleted because of stupidity

Wow, the guy is the Stanley Kubrick of Cartoon comedy writers. I bet he doesn't care seeing how he made a mint off of his work.

Yeah, they talked about how they wanted to record Groening asking Swartzwelder to come on and do a commentary, with Swartzwelder saying simply, "No" but he refused to even do that. I think I read on Wikipedia that on one of the later DVD sets, they have a guy who claims to be Swartzwelder on the phone for a good chunk of time, and then the guy says "Too bad this isn't really John Swartzwelder" and hangs up. Pretty funny if that's the case.

I believe Swartzwelder has a few novels for purchase on Amazon...not sure if they're any good. He's apparently a staunch libertarian and anti-environmentalist, which comes through in some classic lines like "Aw, recycling's useless Lis. Once the Sun burns out, this planet is doomed. You're just making sure we spend our last days using inferior products."

'The Shield' commentaries are great, especially the ones with Jay Karnes, Shaw Ryan, or any combination of the Strike team.

The last 2 of season 5 are especially good.

The philosopher/critic commentaries on the Ultimate Matrix set were a stroke of genius.

Ghostbusters: one of the first, one of the best.

Generally, any time Guillermo Del Toro's on a track, fun is to be had. Especially on Blade II.

I quite liked Tommy Lee Jones and Barry Sonnenfeld gassing on the first Men In Black in Mystery Science Theatre-style silhouette.

Armageddon.

Just for Ben Affleck ripping the piss out of the movie, its hilarious

The Singer/McQuarrie track for The Usual Suspects, which was included on both the first edition and the double-dip. They're constantly cracking wise, and they seem to relish getting the chance to recount every detail of the filming.

I can remember when commentaries first popped up, and you'd hear participants say things like 'Well, I watched the movie last night for the first time in ages to prepare for this commentary track ...'. Those were good times, back when the people involved seemed to take the stuff seriously enough to actually commit to a worthwhile feature. Now you get people who stay dead silent for 6 minutes at a time because they haven't bothered to watch the movie or even prepare to say anything beforehand. Its so irritating sometimes I just turn the thing off.

Boogie Nights


Conan The Barbarian is a stroke of fucking genius!!!! If you haven't watched this commentary, you have no idea what you're missing.

"I remember her!" "Exactly (x500000000000000)"

So true.

John Milius: "This is Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Arnold: "And this is John Miilius.... and if you believe that you also believe there are little Richard Simmons Jr's running around someplace hahaha!"

I love how he reacts to everything.. like when the guy gets kicked in the nuts.

"Hahaha... he was laughing... but he wasn't laughing for long."

I just heard that in my head, and now I must own this disc.

Paul Thomas Anderson's solo Boogie Nights track is just plain wonderful. I also always dig John Waters' tracks, but more so on his own films than when he does a "Fan Commentary" on others. The first commentary i ever listened to was Chuck Russel on The Mask, so it holds a special place in my heart. Tobe Hooper, Gunner Hansen and Robert Burns do a solid Texas Chainsaw Massacre track, as i recall. I wish Roger Ebert was able to record at least a dozen more commentaries before his lost his voice. Guy's engaging and a class act.

I'm a huge commentary nerd.

First commentary track I ever heard was...I believe Deep Blue Sea.

Boogie Nights

Anybody listen to the track with PTA and Whalberg. Is it just me or does Whalberg come off as a dick in that commentary?

I've only listened to the Anderson/Cast commentary once, but my main memory from it is of Mark Whalberg talking about how he "broke" his penis once.

I may be misremembering. I just seem to remember Whalberg being very grumpy which is funny considering its still one of his best roles. Anyway it was probably just me.

Pretty much any Joss Whedon track. He's very good at staying screen-specific while balancing production details, writing strategies, and on-set anecdotes. His constant self-deprecation may be a matter of taste, but it's refreshing that he owns up to stuff that didn't work, or stuff the fans were particularly vocal about.

I really like John Amiel's track on Entrapment. Again, a good balance of topics without too much meandering.

On The Last Starfighter, I find it kind of adorable that Ron Cobb knows the movie so well he can quote half the dialogue.

On the Superman discs, Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler don't really have anything to say but they're fascinating to listen to because they're so old-school. They never stop pitching and hustling.

Agreed. Leonor Varela has just given a particularly cringe-worthy line delivery: (Del Toro) "I'd like to thank the academy..."

Referring to the splatter created when a Reaper bites into a vampire as his "Pollock" shot made me laugh pretty hard.

The commentary on Fight Club with Pitt, Norton and Fincher is a great one. Particularly Norton's comment when the shot of the condoms in the toilet comes up, "Fincher's version of a sex scene."

I really enjoyed the Tim Burton/Paul Reubens commentary on Pee wee's Big Adventure DVD. They totally sound stoned.

Matched by Pitt on the final 'porn splice' frame: "David makes a cameo appearance in all of his films..."

William Lustig, Tom Savini and a couple other folks do an awesome commentary for Maniac. Larry Cohen solo tracks can be a little dry, but when he teams with Lustig (usually acting as interviewer) they turn out a quality commentary.

Shit, that was mine too. Also my first ever DVD. Samuel Jackson gets up and leaves when he's killed on screen, which I thought was weird.

This is true across the board-- actors tend to talk only about themselves and their own work. Brad Pitt is a surprising exception.