“But I think we pulled it off” and other DVD audio commentary inanities - Page 8

I don't know if this has been said earlier (I read the first couple of pages and skipped ahead:b ) but my vote for the worst commentary track EVER has got to be from the film The Rules of Attraction. It's bad enough that this film is mildly horrible by itself (It's just a total mess that doesn't quite come together). However, it also somehow manages to put 5 or 6 separate commentary tracks on the disc (they were trying to go for some record I guess...) which is usually a good thing except that for no good reason at all one of them happens to be by the idiotic "comedian" Carrottop!!!!! He has absolutely nothing to do with the film and gets to do a running commentary on it while watching it for the first time!!!! I truly wish I was kidding, but apparently someone at that studio (a response from a previous thread points that finger at director Roger Avary)must have thought it would be funny...un-f*$#ing-believable!

I like the commentary Track that John Carpenter does with Natasha Henstridge for GHOSTS OF MARS.

I was bored by the director and actors commentary on SWAT, but I loved the writer's commentary track for the same movie.

I was frustrated by the T3 commentary. The actors commentary has several tracks edited together for teh actors track. However I found the bits by Kristanna Loken and Claire Danes (with the director chiming here and there), But the dominance of teh Arnold commentary just drove me nuts and I wanted to hear more of what the other actors had to say.

Star Trek: Nemesis had a boring track due to Stuart Braid's montone.

The commentary track for THE BREED BY the director and Adrian Paul had lots of production stories and how they had to fight the producers every step of the way from the movie.

Finally, I just listened to the commentary track for HONEY and Jessica Alba obsesses over the clothes she wears in the movie (and even points it out!).

Be Seeing You,
David Blackwell

I like the idea of ripping commentary tracks to MP3. That's a great idea! I've actually ripped the MOVIE dialog to MP3, but never the commentary. Consider the idea now stolen by me

Kevin Smith: With Smith and Affleck on a commentary track you can't go wrong. Jay Mewes is a useless junkie on the tracks. Perhaps the best KS commentary track though for sheer amusement was "Clerks: The Animated Series". I really enjoyed those. Chasing Amy is okay. Mallrats is probably the best, followed by the big Dogma track. (Shame Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back didn't go the two commentary track route.)

Bad tracks? Well "The Replacement Killers" put me off right away when the director starts the commentary track by quite obviously asking the person recording "What should I talk about then?" I turned it off right there and then

The Costner/Robbins commentary track on Bull Durham is bugging me (about half way through) as they seem to spend a lot of time just watching the movie (even after Costner says "we should be careful that we don't just start watching the movie").

Pearl Harbor 4 disker: You have Affleck and Hartnett who are hysterical, but then it goes rambling on with Michael Bay (who if I recall is actually on TWO tracks) and Alec Baldwin. Now I love Alec Baldwin but DAMN the man is dull on this track.

I don't recall ever hearing "But I think we pulled it off", but I gotta agree with Stiller. A lot of them are "Oh I love this scene... Oh I love this scene too..." Tiresome. (Incidentally, Zoolander's commentary track from Stiller is great.)

My biggest peeve is LONG PERIODS OF SILENCE!

I checked the site out. Was disappointed to see I only have 3 of the top 10 commentary. (If I could find Brazil at a decent price, I'd have 5 of the tracks.)

I thought AB was fine on this commentary - not funny, but informative.

And I don't mean to follow you around just to correct this, but it's Bruckheimer on the commentary with Baldwin/Hartnett/Affleck, not Bay. Bay is usually quite good in his commentaries. Bruckheimer?

Hey Brian, thanks for the plug!


To be honest, you shouldn't put too much faith in that top 10 list on my site yet. Most of the commentaries on that list only have one vote, so the top ten is a little arbitrary... if one person votes a track a 10 right now, it'll be on the list.

Once there are enough votes I'll put a vote minimum on the top 10, so it'll only have commentary tracks that several people rated highly. At that point it'll become a bit more of a definitive list.

Not to say that it's completely useless right now, since you know that at least one person thought very highly of every track on there. That's worth something...

--Hersch

It's Bruckheimer? Fair enough. It was a while ago I listened too it now. I thought it was Bay. And I have no problem with Baldwin. It was just hard to take the dryness of Baldwin after laughing my head off at Affleck and Hartnett. It's hard to segue to a serious discussion about post 9/11 views of the movie right after Affleck and Hartnett have been going on about wrestling naked in vaseline! (Though really that is more of a criticism of the editor of the track I guess. Affleck and Hartnett should have had one to themselves I think.)



Still reminded me that I've never seen Brazil Criterion in the real world for less than $90! (Canadian.) Great site though. I plan to sign up and start trawling through commentaries. (Especially when I see the cast one for Fellowship only ranked 7/10! Criminal)

I think that some of the best commentary´s I listened to was by either Terry Gilliam or Ridley Scott. Those two have very interesting things to say...Gilliam being kind of "Hollywood´s bad boy" and really not caring about praising each and every one he works with along with praising the studios....Ridley Scott also has some very interesting anecdotes and really explains some of the technical things in a good way so anyone can understand.

WOW...I only lack 2 of the 25 best commentary´s on ratethatcommentary.com

Well, I just listened to the commentary track to "Big Fish" and I was happy to hear that it wasn't just Tim Burton. I forget who, but his name was Mark and he was good at asking Tim enough questions to keep him talking (which was a gripe of mine on Sleepy Hollow).

I was really excited to see that NIXON had two commentary tracks by Oliver Stone: one focusing on the historical aspects of the film, the other on the making of it.
It turns out that both tracks are just edited from one track! When Stone speaks on track 1, he's silent on number 2 and vice versa. A very bad marketing trick.

Was it marketing, or a global conspiracy developed by bible-belters to silence the important parts of Stone's commentary? Maybe he wasn't really silent.. Try it with headphones and listen back, and to the left..

Agreed.

Happy to see the love for Oliver's commentaries.  In recent months, I've been doing a "retrospective" (re-)viewing of many of his films and listening to his commentaries.


      Quote:
Warner has thankfully continued this trend.  The commentary on select scenes by Scorsese on his WHO'S THAT KNOCKING ON MY DOOR? and ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE plays, and the disc is then authored to advance to the next scenes for which there is commentary.  Whether this is a Warner decision or that of terrific DVD producer Jeffrey Schwarz, bravo.



LOL.
Edited by Paul.S - 12/20/09 at 9:55am

I remember when Criterion released the 2-disc CAV laser box of KING KONG in 1984, which contained the first audio commentary. This was an exciting new kind of feature for home video, and commentaries popped up only very infrequently for a number of years after. Other laser disc companies and major studios began adding them, but only for very special film releases, and they remained a coveted feature to be treasured. In those early years, the majority of commentaries were provided by historians, which to this day I find preferable to the nearly unlistenable mutual-admiration society junk that largely passes for commentary now (like Fox News passes for "news.") Once they began enlisting actors and directors, all bets were off. Good ones were bound to emerge. But these tracks have become so commonplace that they barely warrant the name "special feature." Every Tom, Dick and Harry first-time director with mediocre and lousy films began recording such tracks, having not even earned from us the time it would take to listen to their self-aggrandizing tripe. It is far more likely than not that even the silliest movie being made today will feature A dvd commmentary track. So, these are rarely exciting anymore. As long as I don't have to pay extra for them (I do with Criterion titles, but they are usually worth it), I don't care if they're there, but I am these days likely only to fork over two hours of my time for commentaries on films as marvelous as the ones they used to be limited to.

I think I understand what you mean by "Once they began enlisting actors and directors, all bets were off" based upon the comments that follow it--with which I mostly agree--but I don't think it's fair or accurate to point the perjorative finger at actors and directors.  I'd take issue with that even if I wasn't an actor.

The proliferation of sometimes self-aggrandizing supplements is a larger, often studio-helmed marketing dynamic seeking to drive sales by impressing consumers with more bullet points on the backs of DVD (and BD) cases.  Sure, there are plenty of examples of vanity (a recent "fave" was The Break-Up:  do Vince Vaughn [who was a producer on the film] and Jennifer Aniston really need a separate commentary track from director Peyton Reed?).  But there's been too wide of a caliber of contribution by a variety of different folks both above and below the line to paint with that broad of a brush:  Some historians are boring; some scholars pretentious.  Some actors and certainly directors bring a practical sensibility regarding physical production that is interesting.  Given the level of research and smarts they bring to the table, I'd put Ed Zwick and Oliver Stone right up there with any lauded, Peter-Cowie-talking-about-Bergman-again film school grad favorite academic example you'd care to cite.

Comedy is another quality with some merit:  some tracks provide as great or greater entertainment value than the movie itself.  Ben and Bruce on Armageddon has been mentioned in that vein already.  I found director Danny Leiner, Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott drinking their way through Dude, Where's My Car? hilarious and appropriate.

In the final analysis, I think it better to critique the substance (or lack thereof) of particpants' contributions rather than what role they played on the project.
Edited by Paul.S - 12/22/09 at 10:58pm

An earlier poster requested commentaries made after the box-office was tallied, and the movie performed well below expectations.

There's Michael Bay's commentary on The Island.
Apparently he spends much of his time defending the picture from the harsh beating it took with critics. It is, reportedly, quite amusing to hear MB flat out refuse to take any of the criticism at face value.
(I have the disc but haven't listened to the commentary.)

"Apparently"?  I think "supposedly" would be a better word choice. ;)  Please give it a listen, Fritz, and then comment.  I've heard that commentary and I wouldn't agree that's an accurate characterization of Mikey's position.  (Remember The Island did gross $127M foreign.)  My disappointment with Mikey on that one was that he didn't comment on the Clonus litigation.  But it's very possible that there was an NDA in connection with the settlement.  (Too bad that commentary does not appear on the German BD.)

Alexander Revisited:  The Final Cut is bubbling up to the top of one of my four (!) Netflix queues.  Am looking forward to Oliver's comments (and the absence of inanities).

Ironically, Oliver does use the "pulled it off" phrase about 35 minutes into the Revisited commentary (regarding the Battle Of Gaugamela).