After you watch the movie -- do you listen to the commentaries, if any? What movies have the best commentaries?

Fuck commentaries... just give me the movie.

IceNine said:

Yes, the movie is the most important thing, but don't you find the commentaries interesting?

When I'm bored, or if it's a truly fascinating movie that I want to know more about, I look into the special features. My kids love the special features because sometimes there's games and such.

Sometimes it's cool... sometimes it's boring.

slm4m said:

Not very often... I usually just want to check the movie out and I find the commentaries boring and aggravating. Kevin Smith does good commentaries, but most of the others that I have checked out bored me into a near-suicidal depression.

IceNine said:

I have to agree with IceNine...


Fuck commentaries!

why buy the DVD. I mean, how many times are you going to watch the movie?

Unless it's a movie that you want to watch over and over, there's no point in buying it. and if it's worth it, then probably with time you'll also want to listen to the commentaries.

I agree with Ice to a certain extent.

I've watched a lot of movies with commentaries, of the 70 or so DVDs I have with commentary, I've probably watched about half of them. But I watch with commentary a lot less these days.

What I've learned is that solo commentaries usually aren't that good. One surprising exception to this rule is Roger Ebert, as I thought he gave a fascinating commentary on Dark City. I haven't seen Citizen Kane with commentary, but I've heard he did a good job on that too.

Group commentaries however, can be very good. The notable ones I would like to mention here are Toy Story 1 and 2, and The Simpsons. Both groups did great jobs, were casual and had fun, but also didn't just turn the commentary into a laugh track.

The bests commentaries are the ones that aren't taken too seriously.

I forgot to add, something that I've enjoyed about recent movies, is some of them have a trivia track, subtitles that tell you interesting facts about the movie without changing the sound or visual content of the movie. Those are great to watch. And infinifilm does something neat too, where you can access special features, a lot of them, while watching the movie.
[This message was edited Tue May 20 11:21:40 PDT 2003 by savoirfaire]

best commentary tracks so far:

"can't hardly wait" (fun to listen to the director rip the movie to shreds because the studio wanted it pg13 instead of r... says it would've been as good as "go" if the studio had left it alone.)

"the limey" (listening to the director - soderburgh - and the writer go at it... gives you an idea sometimes how much folks will go through even though they don't like each other personally to work together because of the respect they have for one another's craft.)

"sum of all fears" (listening to tom clancy rip everyone a new one for completely re-writing his story... with the producer of the jack ryan series sitting there taking it like a champ - because he bought the series for $1 haha)

"the goonies" (best cast commentary... all the kids are back, and it's often in video in a side window so you can see what the kids look like now... and yes, she's still beautiful heheh.)

"as good as it gets" (this gets mentioned because it's jack's first commentary - even though it's a cast commentary track - he's hilarious in the small comments he adds:)

"almost famous: director's cut" (because crowe does the commentary with his mother... it'll make you miss your's, i promise...)

any paul thomas anderson commentary (hard eight, boogie nights... makes you long for one for magnolia & punch drunk love)

any oliver stone commentary (same comments go for the pt anderson comments)

"the rock" (for the couple minutes where ed harris talks about his lack of love for james cameron - they worked together on 'the abyss' - nothing better than a straight shooter... haha)

"bound" (from the creators of 'the matrix' - and much of the same cast - plus jennifer tilly's silliness... just awesome... can't wait for the SE's of the matrix films with commentary tracks to be re-released)

"contact" (jodie foster's commentary track... damn, she's just so smart...)

those are just a few... i've fallen behind lately, but they're one of the major reasons i will or won't buy a dvd (extras)...

I just listened to the cast comentary for LOTR Ian McKellan is smart, his comments are great.

Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs...cool games!

Friday After Next...funny stuff.

I LOVE alternate endings...
[This message was edited Tue May 20 13:44:36 PDT 2003 by Revolution]

I love the outtakes or deleted scenes. I always watch
them if they are included...