“But I think we pulled it off” and other DVD audio commentary inanities (1 Viewer)

[Scott Burke]

I do not normally listen to commentary tracks, however out of the ones I have listened to, Psycho 98 was pretty bad. Also, even thought the commentary for braveheart was fun, it was only fun when he talked. I thought there was a lot of dead air in that movie.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Oh, the other one that is HORRIBLE to listen to is the Farrelly brothers! These guys are completely worthless, and spend the entire track telling you where scenes were shot, and identifying every extra in every scene (they like to put their friends, family, and family's friends in every scene)

Ugh. Horrid.

Dead air is certainly an issue, Braveheart being a guilty one there- as is Heston on Ben Hur--- gaps as long as 30 minutes.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I actually liked the Resident Evil track. Sure, it got dopey at times, but Jovovich and Rodriguez add an impertinent sense of life to the proceedings. Compare that with the terrible inanity found with the actors' tracks for American Pie 2 or Melanie Griffith's commentary for Crazy in Alabama or the annoying Donal Logue, who ruins the group piece for The Tao of Steve - I'll take Milla and Michelle anyday! At least they made me laugh.

Don't forget The Patriot as one of the worst. Here's ONE sentence from Roland Emmerich:

"It's simply a fact, you know, that this happened, I mean, there was like kind of extremely young kids in the war effort and there's also like kind of this moment where like kind of you have to... you have to, where he has to, the character has to kind of like make this moral decision, now he's only kind of set on kind of like kind of trying to kind of rescue his son and, uh, he knows that he, in a way, he has to kind of do everything you know to get his son, and one kind of choice is to give his, uh, kids like guns to try to help him distract, you know, the soldiers from him while he, you know, so it's more possible for him to kind of like kind of save him."


But hilariously so, due to the ever-unbalanced presence of Anne Heche, who tries very hard to convince us the remaker's superior to the original! (I think she actually believed it...)

 

[Lew Crippen]

I guess Kevin Smith must be an acquired taste, as I thought that the commentary on Criterion’s Chasing Amy was mostly inane. But I can't blame it all on Smith, as Ben Affleck and Jason Mewes were also pretty unenlightening.

If you think that pointing out friends and relatives who are extras is boring, one of the Beastie Boys actually pointed out who owned a dog in a commentary on Criterion’s Beastie Boys Video Anthology.

I’m with Vince in liking some of the technical explanations.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

I love how Ben Stiller (I think), on one of the commentary tracks for The Ben Stiller Show, starts to describe what's happening in a sketch and then says: "Wait, I don't want this to be one of those commentaries where they just describe what's happening on screen." Then he says: "I just listened to a commentary where the director just said, over and over again: 'Oh, I love this scene... I love this scene... I love this scene."

I myself definitely prefer technique-oriented commentaries to descriptive or anecdotal commentaries; hearing about how they achieved a particular shot, or the technical aspects of a scene, may be a little dry but it's better than the "irrelevant in-joke" approach or the "play-by-play" approach (I find this is a problem with a lot of critics' commentaries: they tell you what's happening onscreen and maybe give a vague thematic interpretation of it. An exception is Roger Ebert on Kane and Casablanca, and those are very technique-oriented commentaries).

 

[Alex Spindler]

An interesting topic. I've similarly extracted commmentaries for listening in the car or other times.

Worst for me has to be the Farrelly brothers. While I love that they fill their movies with friends and families, they literally spend the entire commentary identifying them for you.

I'm also wary of actor commentaries who aren't the lead in the film. They seem to fall back on saying how every actor on the screen is 'amazing' and 'so giving'. At least provide us some anecdotes or something.

The whole 'model/real/model/matte' style can be good if done in moderation or as an isolated example, but some just fill the entire time with air.


I recall from when the Total Recall disc was announced that Dan Brecher said the commentary would go like this:

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Oh, god- that one was HORRID. I love the guys and the disc-- but their commentary of the videos was completely worthless.

 

[Scott Kimball]

The worst I've heard has to be on My Dog Skip. The commentary is by Frankie Muniz (who doesn't seem to have a lot to say) and the dog trainer (yes, the dog trainer) who yaks so much, poor Frankie couldn't say anything even if he knew what to say...

I enjoy commentaries by film historians and critics on the classics.
I also enjoyed William Frienkin's commentary on "The Hunted" more than I enjoyed the film itself. The man is a master of the craft.

I, too, wish that more cinematographers would do commentaries. I once had the pleasure of working with Russell Carpenter. I learned more from him in four days than I learned in four years of college. It's the technical detail that a DP can provide that I am most interested in.

-Scott

 

[Eric Paddon]

My vote for worst commentary is George Sidney's solo commentary on the LD edition of "Show Boat" (1951). This is a textbook example of why directors should have a film historian interviewing them or prodding them during a commentary. First, Sidney at one point says that he can see a modern truck in the background of one shot when it's just a horse-drawn cart perfectly appropriate for the scene. Then he proceeds to go silent for about half the time and then he ends up taking a dismissive view of the source material (the stage musical) that left me quite infuriated.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

This quote, pulled from an earlier post regarding Roland Emmerich's commentary on The Patriot is symptomatic of what's wrong with many "blockbuster" directors these days. If there's any subtext or social commentary in the movie at all (as there can be even in big-budget filmmaking), it's because it was in the script and is a natural side-effect of simply transferring the material to the screen. Directors like Emmerich, DeBont, Harlin and others seem completely oblivious to anything deeper than the cool imagery they're capable of splashing across the screen. These guys can make a movie LOOK great, but it's doubtful they truly understand what it is they've created. Hope they don't consider themselves auteurs in anything other than style.

In fact, I've read in more than one source (I might try to find them) that The Patriot was more of a reflection of Mel Gibson's politics than anything, which means there IS a political statement to the film, but I'd bet Emmerich's commentary pays it no mind because he's blind to it.

 

[jonathan_little]

I was surprised when director Carl Franklin ended his recent Out of Time commentary about five minutes before the credits started rolling. I suppose it doesn't really matter since I really didn't get anything out of it and I doubt an extra five minutes would have proved any more interesting. He provides a little bit of information about the sets and locations, but overall I felt myself zoning out and ignoring it. I guess the most amazing thing is that DVDFile called this commentary a "highlight" or "absorbing."

 

[EricW]

avoid: Slater+Arquette commentary on True Romance

i don't listen to commentaries unless it's great director or one of my favourite releases of the year.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I also like the critical commentaries. The two you mention by Ebert are very good, but there are many others.

 

[george kaplan]

Vince,

How do you get a dvd commentary onto an ipod? And can you also do the same for the soundtrack? Thanks.

 

[Bill Buklis]

The dead air space is so bad sometimes I forget I'm listening to a commentary and am just watching the movie again. Suddenly someone starts talking and I'm going "shhh, the movie's on", 'til I realize "oh yeah, it's the commentary again!"

I've heard The Matrix commentary was supposed to be awful, but I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.

Ebert's commentary of Dark City is extremely good and it's quite clear that he's a fan of that under-rated film.

Perhaps the best that I can think of is Robert Rodriguez' commentary of El Mariachi. That was even specifically geared as a lesson in film school.

But, back to bad ones. It's been a while, but I recall being rather bored from the commentary of Goldfinger and had to turn it off after about a half hour of its uselessness.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

The Matrix commentary was a snooze. The tech guys offered some interesting tidbits of info but were generally quite dull in their presentation (plus most of the stuff they were talking about had already been reported and dissected to death in print media), and Carrie Ann Moss brought absolutely nothing of consequence to the proceedings. No matter, though, as I'm sure somewhere down the line we'll be conned into buying a deluxe trilogy collector's edition where the Wachowski's finally open up about their pseudo-Christian sci-fi epics. That might be nice, as I suspect they'd have a lot to save, provided they were able to articulate it.

 

[Jodee]

I hate it when the director claims "I haven't seen this movie in years" and then just starts watching the movie and says stuff like "Wow, this was a great scene", "I forgot how good a movie this was" followed by minutes of silence.

Argh! If you're doing a commentary track, wouldn't you perhaps want to sit down and watch the movie once and take notes, before you start to record the actual track?

 

[Dane Marvin]

Any commentary that is not scene-specific really tends to piss me off.

A.K.A. - Do not slap a bunch of interviews -- culled from various featurettes about the film -- over the film and call it a real audio commentary. I want the crew or cast members sitting in front of the screen, reacting.

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That said, some of the most entertaining and incredibly geeky commentary I have ever heard was from Weird Al on UHF. He rattles off extact street addresses of shooting locations from 10+ years ago, the first and last names of nearly every extra, and includes lots of other mind-blowing trivia tidbits throughout. To top it off, Michael Richards drops in for a bit and they call Victoria Jackson on the phone.

Some might dislike the commentary for being too damn informative, but I thought it was great.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I looked forward to the Patriot commentary before the disc came out, but it was unbearable. It's tough to even listen to the short segments over the deleted scenes. Too much "like" and "umm" and other similar filler.

 

[Chad A Wright]

Please tell me there is an easy way to do this on a Mac without extra software. I would love to load the commentaries onto my iPod. How did you do it?