Michael Corvin

I have been buying DVDs since 98 and in that time there have been some great documentaries accompanying the dvd release. "The Hampster Effect" comes to mind. But since the popularization of DVD the documentaries have dissolved into self-indulgent fluff pieces. HBO behind the scenes type promotional material. That being said, I can't remember the last great documentary I saw up until now. Within the last 2 months there have been several stellar docs.

Clerks X - "Snowball Effect" - This is great, covers everything you ever wanted to know about Kevin Smith and clerks and then some.

Star Wars - "Empire of Dreams" - Great as well. Solid mix of interviews and behind the scenes stuff for fans and non-fans.

Aladdin - "A Diamond in the Rough" & "Alan Menken" - Both of these were excellent. Chronicling the development of Aladdin was great. I usually am pretty good at catching references and metaphors in movies, but it never even occurred to me that the thought of the Genie being free is a western theme. Makes perfect sense. The Alan Menken piece was great. A lot of times music IS a character, it would be nice to see some other features on other composers.

The Shawshank Redemption - "Hope Springs Eternal" & "the Redeeming Feature" - Again, brilliant mix of new interviews and making of infotainment.

Dream Theater - Live at Budokan - most probably haven't even heard of them, but there is a great tour documentary chronicling what it is like to be on the road, practice and dealing with jet lag while trying to put on a show in Tokyo. Good stuff.

So what other great documentaries do you think have been released on DVD this year?

Drexl

The doc on Clerks is called "The Snowball Effect." "Mae Day" is the short film.

Supersize Me was good, and Tom Dowd and the Language of Music is supposed to be pretty good. That one on Broadway airing on PBS this week looks good too.

Also, there was that one that won some award in France about that president and that war in some desert country or something, and another one with some people saying the first one was bullshit.

I don't know. The DVDs you mention are special re-releases (except Aladdin, but that's a Platinum Edition), which tend to have better content (less fluff) than new releases. You mentioned the "Star Wars" doc; well, the other SW DVDs had pretty good docs too. Surely ROTK:EE will have something good, but then again, so did the other EE's.

Jackskeleton

I declare it the year of documentaries when Hearts of darkness comes out on dvd.

slowcloud

I think Michael Corvin is talking about supplemental docs as special features tagged on to DVDs of feature films-- not stand-alone feature-length documentaries on DVD. Though, with the rise in popularity of documentaries in the movie theaters, I can see why the forum so quickly took this turn.

Anyway, back on subject, I certainly haven't seen any great docs on DVD since the Lord of the Rings extended edition docs, but I haven't watched many of them. There's so much "making of" fluff. It would be great to see Heart of Darkness packaged with a special edition of Apocalypse Now Redux.