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

[Charles de Lauzirika]

If all goes as planned, I should have one or two more DataStream-style multimedia commentaries on the way later this year. It's not always easy to put one of these together if you don't have the material to make it work, but "Die Another Day" seemed like a natural for this "gadgety" supplement.

The MI6 DataStream was an experiment to help me vent my frustration with the whole White Rabbit craze that followed the release of "The Matrix" DVD. White Rabbit was certainly a great idea and an important evolutionary step in DVD interactivity, but I hated that you had to jump out of the movie in order to see the featurette, taking it out of real-time context. I wasn't sure it was going to work, but now that I've been through it once successfully, I'm going to try to do more of these in the future.

 

[MarkHarrison]

I absolutely detest the White Rabbit tracks. Just make them featurettes that I can view seperately. When I want to watch a movie, I want to watch it uninterrupted. When I want to see bonus features, I don't want to watch the movie to do so. Especially when there's only 6-8 spread over two hours. At the very least, I feel the viewer should have the option to watch them seperately or integrated into the movie.

Just my opinion of course.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

Good to know, Charlie. Looking forward to more of these. I do prefer it when the movie keeps playing in a smaller frame. When the number of jumpouts on those other titles, particularly The Matrix, added up to less than the running time of the feature, I always wondered why they just didn't have both appear simultaneously so you could sort of compare before and after (where applicable).

In addition to the subtitle factoids, pop-up production drawings, selected storyboards, costume designs, posters, etc. might also be worthy of inclusion in these tracks rather than as separate galleries. I recall Tomorrow Never Dies had this by itself on the first special edition, and seemed to include nearly every storyboard drawn for the film. I'm sure today's multi-tasking DVD viewer could easily keep up.

 

[MarkHastings]

Me too. I don't want to have to watch the entire movie all over again just to find the few hidden features. I'm not positive which movie, but I think it was one of the Infini-film movies (like Austin Powers Goldmember) where they'd have one of those "White Rabbit" tracks, but they also allowed you to watch all of the featurettes separately I think it was the old "Go Inside The Movie" things.

I was just watching the Critic...there was an episode that had a spinning reel that you'd click and it would show you story board comparisons. It was nice because it was built so that you could fast-forward and still see the spinning reel, unlike some of those "Click here to see a featurette" where they build it into the subtitle track and if you are scanning the movie, it doesn't show up.

 

[MarkHarrison]

I've found that on my player, I can scan at 2x and still see the icons (and subtitles). But what's even better is that on most of these discs, I'm able to hit the stop button and jump directly to the various tracks. Then I don't have to watch for an icon (which I usually miss because after 30 minutes go by with nothing poping up on the screen, I tend to get into the movie too much).

 

[Andy Sheets]

I think all the New Line Infinifilm dvd's are like that. Thirteen Days is another one that lets you either click on the icon during the film or just watch all those segments as one complete feature.

 

[Holadem]

I only read the first couple of posts in this thread when it was started, but I nearly fell of my couch when I heard Jonathan Mostow say those exact same words "But I think we pulled it off" on the T3 track (00:19:37).

--
H

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

McG lets someone get under his skin on the commentary track for CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE:

"...and you see from the girls' performances that, I mean, they're just really having a good time out there and, you know, it's interesting that some people found that infuriating that, you know "Hey, they're having such a good time making this picture," which I thought was strange and just goes into the fundamental take if you hate yourself, you will hate Charlie's Angels."

And later, he pats himself on the head for making one of the few Hollywood motion pictures without substance...

"Drew and I have this thing where we say it's, you know, people always try to make films that contemplate the human condition, and we feel that it's even a greater contribution to make a film that helps you forget the human condition."

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Edit: Whoa, I just realized I listened to the entire audio commentary for this big pile of stupid. What's wrong with me?!?!?!

 

[Ray_R]

Ben Affleck is completely hilarious on the commentary track of Armageddon Criterion! I actually had to stop the disc because I was laughing too damn hard! Woooooo!

 

[Neil_Duffy]

Quality thread... ha ha...I'm roarin with laughter... has Brett Ratner come out with any pearls to equal that gem from McG?

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

That's the thing that bugs me most about this thread. it was my suggestion that got it created and it came to me AFTER I'd listened to all these interminable commentaries and I dread going back into them to try and find the retarded statements. But I will from time to time, just to keep the original intention of this thread alive.

The Ratner question is apt: he DOES barf out some doozies on his commentaries. There's one that comes to mind, but I'm gonna go home tonight and jot it down verbatim so I can post it tomorrow.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

Here we go. Brett Ratner talks Rush Hour:

"I said "Okay, how am I gonna convince this guy to work with me. He's been making movies longer than I've been alive." So I sit down and say "I just have to be honest," so I sat down and I told him basically, "Okay, this script sucks, but I think I know how to make it better." So what I did was I told him also, I said "Jackie, in order to succeed in America, you have to a movie that's a typical American film. I wanna put you with real actors, and let you concentrate on the acting, and then it's gonna take you to the next level."

In all fairness, I guess there was no way for Brett to predict that "next level" would consist largely of glorified sidekick roles in a series of typical American films. Oh well, at least he got him away from all those Chinese non-actors.

(Then again, I've never particularly thought of Jackie Chan as a good actor, and i have most of his movies! He usually overdoes even the most subtle scenes. He's more of a presence, and an athlete, than anything)

 

[chris_clem]

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!

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

Hell, that means someday they might let even ME do a novelty audio commentary just to fill the space. Maybe the makers of public domain DVDs will one day come to HTF looking for volunteers who'll do it for cheap (or nothing!) and some folks here will get their due. At my worst, I know I'd bring more to the table than friggin' Carrot Top.

But I don't work with props.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

Just thought of another classic and ported over some comments I made at another board awhile back.

Probably the weirdest DVD audio commentary I've ever heard has got to be the track by 60's dub talent Peter Fernandez and Corrine Orr on the SPEED RACER THE MOVIE disc that came out a couple or three years back (and which is still available). Fernandez voiced Speed and Orr did Spritle, and while the former rightly tailors his commentary to now-grown fans of the series, who might like to know how they did things back in those days (and even mentions other cartoons and movies his stable worked on!), the latter rather cluelessly, and repeatedly, aims her comments at under-5 crowd, talking to Fernandez IN CHARACTER and apparently thinking many of us LITERALLY never grew up and/or that she really is the living incarnation of the characters she played, and dispensing McNuggets of morality accordingly. I'd started this track with the intention of cleaning up my place and doing a little reading while it played, but after a few minutes I flopped on the floor and just listened to this hilarious repartee, with Fernandez constantly responding with confused and/or frightened moments of dead air every time Orr flakes out, before returning to whatever it was he was talking about.

A unique experience to be sure...and worth the purchase price alone!

 

[Jeff_HR]

I've found that John Frankenheimer's commentaries are the ones I like the best.

 

[David_Blackwell]

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

 

[Eric_B_C]

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!

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

In case anyone's interested HTF member Herschel Gelman has started

www.ratethatcommentary.com

If, like me, you've got the time to actually listen to these things in the faint hope of possibly learning something, it's a good place to post a few thoughts.

 

[Eric_B_C]

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.)