Best/Worst Commentaries - Page 2

I made it through almost this entire thread hoping I'd be the first to bring it up, but I wasn't. Everyone should reconsider the 1966 Batman commentary with Adam West. It is equal parts good and equal parts "Woah, Adam West, you're kind of crazy."

The best ones have already been mentioned, but 2 pretty bad ones are...

The 'Lemony Snicket' commentary, featuring the 'real' Lemony Snicket and the director. It's really really awful, and Brad Siberling seemed more pissed off as it went along. It's essentially one note, and it's a really fucking bad note.

Another is Carpenters 'Prince Of Darkness'. It's fucking terrible for the most part. Carpenters co-speaker tries his best to get ole John to talk about something worthwhile, but John isn't having any of it.

"So whats the thinking behind the green liquid?"
"Nothing. It looks cool"

"So why have her coming out of the building at the end John, what was the thinking behind that?"
"It looks cool"

Yeah thanks John.

Maybe I need to listen to the "Usual Suspects" commentary track again. I tried once and turned it off halfway through. It just seemed that every other sentence was, "See that arm on the far right side of the screen? That's my arm! See that guy who just walked by in the background? He was my roommate in college. . . . "

More of a wish commentary would be something on those old Hammer flicks. I have one on "Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell", but none on any of the famous Vamp flicks.


Dawn of the Dead remake commentary is the tits.

Worst commentary of all time has to belong to Brendan Fraser on The Mummy (Ultimate Edition).

Just listening to him make these really horrible jokes and him just droning on about some stupid, inane crap, just about made me want to stick a pencil all the way into my ear.

It was so bad, it actually made me want to turn on the snooze fest Zemekis commentary on Cast Away.

I generally prefer more academic commentaries to the gimmicky, intentionally silly ones (however, unintentionally silly ones like on Carpenter and Russel on THE THING or Milius and Schwarzenegger on CONAN are gold).

It helps, though, if said academic is a great speaker, like Roger Ebert or Rudy Behlmer. Both have deliberate, clear voices with a almost sing-song cadence to the way they speak which helps make potentially dry information utterly fascinating.

One of the best I've heard in awhile is Vaughn and Wilson's commentary on WEDDING CRASHERS UNCORKED. They could make another hilarious movie out of it.

My favorite unintentionally funny commentary is Arnold on Terminator 3:

"This scene with the enlargement of the breasts was fantastic. You can deflate and inflate the breasts on command - it's a whole new concept. Because there's some guys that like little breasts and there's some guys that like big breasts... wouldn't it be nice if you can play both sides, you know, sometimes even simultaneously?"

The region 2 Flash Gordon dvd has a commentary track with Brian Blessed!
Man, i´d love to hear that.
I wonder if he is shouting on the commentary track? Just like he tends to do in all of his movies.
"GORDONS ALIVE"

Best: Shaun of the Dead - Best of all there's two of 'em so its three times the fun. The Pacino joke had me floored.Not to mention I bought this with Dawn of the Dead in one of those combo pack deals.

Worst: Star Wars: The Unnecessary Sequels - I just once, just once wanted to hear to Lucas tear himself away about talking about the fart he recorded to use in the movie and just acknowledge the fans' anger and say "Yeah, I fucked up.I fucked up big time, but you know what? Its over and I'm still rich. Eat me you little shits!"

Not Terrible but Disappointing: The Incredibles - Talk to me about character, concept and references, Brad, don't give the "oh this was a hard shot" bullshit. I don't care that the animators had a hard time doing it; that's their job, not yours. Give 'em their own commentary about how hard it is so I can ignore it and just listen to yours about how the story came together. That's what your supposed to do as the director. Love you.

I was pretty disappointed in the commentary on Batman: TAS volume 4. I don't have any of the other volumes, so I can't speak for those, but the crew on this set just didn't have anything to great to talk about, and you can kind of tell they aren't all that interested. I really wanted to hear some good stuff about "Legends of the Dark Knight." All they really do is tell you if a guest star came in to voice a certain character (which you can get from the credits) or just say, "Ooh, that's a cool shot."

I did appreciate them opening one with "We decided to comment on this episode because the fans hate it. It's apparently the worst episode we ever did," but then the commentary just consists of them going, "Oh come on, this isn't that bad. Look, that guys pretty cool, right?"

I can't imagine what the critics' commentary on the Matrix trilogy would be like.

Incident at Loch Ness: both best and worst.

You might think the commentary on this gimmicky, kinda fun movie would explain everything, but instead it is part of the joke.

Zach Penn alienates every cast member into quitting the commentary, until they are pulling guys off the street to do the commentary with him. Pretty clever, for a little while. The bit with Herzog talking about how a woman wouldn't touch Zach Penn with a pair of pliers is hilarious

William Freidkin does a great commentary, especially on The French Connection. Favorite quote is regarding the filming of the chase sequence, and the fact that they did it with real traffic, unbeknownst to the citizenry, at 90 mph.

"I would never do it today. I had no qualms about it then, but that's because I was a callow, heedless youth."

Check out the article about the Wachowkis in the new Rolling Stone. Basically it says that one of them pretty much got too distracted with shacking up with a bondage queen and his sex change to bother writing decent sequels. Makes me wonder if V will suffer the same fate.

All the Mr. Show DVD's had FANTASTIC commentaries.

Sorry if it's been mentioned, but the single best commentary ever has to be Evil Dead 2's.

Did anyone else listen to Mike Nelson's commentary of Night of the Living Dead, in a recent dvd spawning of it? It's not quite MST3K quality but a lot of it's really good stuff.

Is he serious or does he just rip it like MST3K? I'd imagine the former, but I can't imagine much point unless he's doing the latter.

The Brian Blessed track on FLASH GORDON is amazing. Sure, it's funny, but it's also pretty damn entertaining to listen to the guy, and you can tell he has real love for the flick and understands it.

The Jackass the movie cast commentary was really freaking hilarious, at times even funnier than the movie The Old School commentary was also funny. As for worst commentaries The Basic commentary was one of the most boring things I've ever sat through, and just about any commentary that isn't screen specific ie. The Rock Criterion and The Silence of the Lambs Criterion commentaries. That's all I can really think of right now.

I just heard the Silence of the Lambs one and, sure enough, it's a great track.

Here are best commentaries and worst commentaries lists from a commentary review site. I haven't heard any of the top 5 commentaries on that list... I should work on that. I even have the Criterion Brazil, and just keep meaning to listen to the commentary, but haven't yet.

Well like I was saying, I just don't like commentaries that are in reality spliced together interviews. I'd rather hear them talking about what is going on right at the moment, but hey that's just me.

Oh, that's funny, when I was replying I had misread your message as saying you liked the Silence of the Lambs track. I do normally prefer ones that aren't spliced-together interviews, because that just seems like cheating, but I've heard some really good spliced ones (like Silence) and some really bad ones that are screen-specific.

I also don't like spliced-together interviews, like on the first TERMINATOR 2 special edition. But I don't mind spliced-together scene-specific commentaries like on ALIENS. I think having that many people in the room together would turn into a clusterfuck of voices talking over each other, like on THE GOONIES track. And yes, some straight-forward screen-specific tracks can be deadly without proper editing. Also, it helps if the participants are at least vaguely (but sincerely) enthusiastic about the film. I've found all six of the STAR WARS commentaries to be joyless, bitter experiences (with the occasional exception of Carrie Fisher.)

So I guess I really don't mind which method is used, so long as the final result is successful at keeping me engaged in the experience.

Y'know it's funny. I actually like the goonies track. I think its even cool how they show them now, and how corey feldman refers to himself as corey haim. Another good commentary that springs to mind is the clerks x first cut version on the second disc. It's great to hear them rip on each other and just talk about all the things that they changed and the jokes. The jokes are some of the funniest I have ever heard on a commentary. I also like how you can use the angle feature on your remote and watch them the entire time talking. Sometimes I'll watch that instead of just listening to the track. Anybody else know of any other flicks that have that feature aside from the mallrats collectors edition as well?

Director, visual effects supervisor and the production designer on the Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow commentary. "In this scene only the phone is real and all else is blue screen. Here the actors are in front of a blue screen, there was nothing else on the set. In this scene only the door is real. This scene was done by an Australian visual effects company called blah blah blah..." It's really just them describing what's real and what's not. Could you talk just a little about the story and actors and your influences and stuff like that please.

I've really stopped watching commentaries the past few years, but I used to throw them on every now and again...

BEST

I'll echo the sentiments for Fincher's solo commentary on FIGHT CLUB. Very solid.

Jay Roach and Mike Myers were pretty good on the first AUSTIN POWERS film.

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson (I think he's on it, too) for ZOOLANDER (which also wins the title for funniest menu audio).

Verhoven's Robocop commentary is good, too. A nice introduction into his warped European mind.

And albeit a bit droll, I enjoyed Nicholas Meyer's WRATH OF KHAN commentary and McTiernan's for the first DIE HARD.

WORST

Any Mel Brooks commentary. Years ago I tried listening to the MEN IN TIGHTS commentary on laserdisc. Awful. Dom Deluise appears on screen. "Here's my good friend Dom Deluise." Yeah, no shit, Mel. This ain't radio, we see him, too.

The Star Wars ones are boring, and full of revisionist Lucas history. But they're still not as bad as the definitive collection laserdisc commentary, which was about two minutes of talking for every twenty minutes of screentime.

The absolute worst was W.D. Richter's BUCKAROO BANZAI commentary. He even had one of the secondary actors (Rico? I can't remember) there in character(!?). And yet no one explained to them that commentaries involve speaking. They talk over opening credits then...silence. I skip to next chapter, maybe in the next scene there's something worth commenting on...nope, silence. Next chapter? Silence. Fed up, I turned it off.

He rips on certain parts it, but delivers it all as "behind the scenes info" as opposed to just making it a running commentary, which can be pretty entertaining. For the most part he's respectful of the film, and finds comedy elsewhere by strange digressions.

*high priest tries to seduce Conan -- Conan knocks him out*

Milius: "This is kind of a homophobic scene."
Arnold: "Yeah but he works for Doom!"
Milius: "Yeah... Yeah! I like that! It's... it's Doom-o-phobic!"