What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

I was wondering if i could get peoples opinions on why you listen to commentarys on you discs. I have never listened to one all the way through I usually just turn it on for about 20 seconds and turn it off again. But I have been thinking about listening to some and just wanted to see what you all listened to them for?

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

For the same reason I would watch any of the behind the scences extras on a dvd to learn more about the movie.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

Listen to a few from this list and you'll find out just how entertaining and informative they can be:

http://www.ratethatcommentary.com/top100.php

A few of my favorites are from John Carpenter, Joe Bob Briggs, Terry Gilliam and Guillermo Del Toro.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

If you enjoy the peron who made the film or starred in it then a commentary gives you a chance to hear what that person thinks of the movie and what they thought while making it. I have been listening to John Waters commentary lately because I loved his Stand-Up special and just wanted to hear more stories from him about the movies. The Hairspray commentary sucks though :)

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Some of them are just a good listen, IMO. I'll probably never purposefully sit down to watch Batman & Robin from start to finish ever again, unless its to listen the Schumacher commentary. While there are certainly better commentaries than this one, the B&R commentary is probably the best reason to own the film, let alone even watch it.

Also, sometimes I want to watch a movie while I fall asleep, but I know that leaving it on the dialogue will keep me up. If I switch to the commentary, I'll be engaged enough that I can close my eyes and follow what's going on, without giving much attention to what is happening onscreen.

Quick question to the OP: When you said that you have been thinking about listening to some, which films are appealing to you right now? Just curious to what type of commentary has you ready to jump on the bandwagon.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

Lord Of the Rings Extended editions, The ones on the Matrix ultimate collection is what interested me the most when I read that they had one from people who loved it and people who hated it. and I started looking at my dvds and most of them have commentary's and i thought if that many movies have them there must be something to them

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Absolutely Agree! :)

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

The reason you would listen to or read anything about that particular film or film-making in general.

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I think I may know only a handful of people who ever listen to commentaries.

I love them and find them to be extremely entertaining or informative. Sometimes both.

It depends on what you are looking for in a commentary, but there are many flavors... technical, informative, funny, experimental, DRUNK, done by cast, done by director, done by famous movie critics/scholars, surprise appearances from carrot top, completely sung, done in character (Bruce Cambell's Elvis Bubba Ho-Tep commentary).

Sometimes a bad film can be made great by a good commentary. The Batman and Robin commentary mentioned above is one of them.

I mainly listen to get more information about a film and I love really detailed commentaries that are candid and discuss certain shots and moments in depth.

Some directors and commentaries are pretty bland to terrible. Usually with those I shut them off, or just go to a specific scene I'm interested to hear about.

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Commentaries are kind of a crapshoot. Some are fascinating, some are boring. I usually avoid them when actors are in the majority, because all you tend to get is a mutual admiration society.

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They are interesting as they give the viewer so much extra insight into the process of making the film.

Some are better than others. The most interesting are usually classic films and independent films that have an interesting back story of how the film came together on a low budget with few resources.

Anything by John Carpenter is good and movies like The Evil Dead, Road House (Kevin Smith commentary), Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused (Criterion) & El Mariachi come to mind as interesting ones.

Sometimes I'll flip to the audio commentary during a certain scene and don't necessarily listen to it all the way through.

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(A couple of NSFW moments)
Joe Bob Briggs' Greatest Hits

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

I can't imagine not listening to commentaries. Good or bad I listen to every one if I like the movie. I love cinema & want to know as much as I can about a movie I enjoy. I love insight into the process of making a movie. I can't even understand why someone who owns a lot of films, would not want to learn more about the things they are spending so much money on.

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I always (when allowed) rip commentary tracks to MP3 and listen to them on commute. Then I don't feel like 'wasting time' in front of the TV set. That's how I like to listen to them. Now with certain releases (like Disney) doesn't allow me to do that.

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I usually listen to one or two a week while I'm cleaning or doing work around the house. Some are interesting and funny, but I do give up on a lot of them pretty quick. I don't like the commentaries where they do play by play. I've been going through the Simpsons commentaries and I enjoyed them up to about season 5. Now they have some producer, Dave Mirkin I believe, who dominates the conversations and points out everything..."This is Homer getting upset at Bart because Bart does something dumb." I don't need play by play, but I do like it if they point out an obscure reference or give interesting facts about the show/episode.

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^ Mel Gibson does alot of that shot by shot description on the BRAVEHEART disc - it's boring and tedious to say the least.

What I can't stand is when there's dead space in between banter - that just makes me wanna crawl the walls.

I also don't dig it when a commentary digresses to nothing that has to do with anything regarding the film, A recent example, is lead singer 'E' of the Eels where he orders and receives Chinese take out and talks to his dog :hairpull:

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one of the more interesting commentary tracks on DVD (on bluray this type of commentary is more common place) is the original Fame - where the commentary track branches to video of the actors talking/reflecting about the film, the majority of the commentary though is director Alan Parker in audio form (although he finally does appear on screen at the very end)

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I love commentaries; they're my favorite special feature.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

I could never sit and watch a commentary, but it works as background noise for me.

Another annoying thing is when the commentators say "I don't want spoil this for the listeners" as if people listen to commentaries before watching the movie/tv show first.

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When that happens, I'm always ROTFLMFAO

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

you're obviousily listening to the wrong commentaries ;)

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Braveheart is my all time favorite film but damn was that commentary disappointing. I think the problem there is the solo commentary where it's just one guy in a room with no one to riff off of. With two people you can at least get one of them to go off on tangents and keep it from being a snoozefest.

There is another one that comes to mind that was stitched together and felt very disjointed. Armageddon, maybe? Like all the actors recorded solo and then they were all spliced together for a giant mish-mash of a commentary.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

^ I'm curious to hear the commentary for APOCALYPTO where Gibson has someone to "riff off of" But back on the subject of BRAVEHEART - he needed a cheat sheet or something on topics of the film he could refer to and talk about during the long stretches where has nothing remarkable to say.

I didn't mind ARMAGEDDON - but obviousily the mass filmmaker/actor commentary track of ALIENS is the best of the best.

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Yeah, Armageddon is one of those. That type of commentary rarely works, IMO. I much prefer everybody in the same room sharing their stories with the film.

A few DVDs offer video commentary, which is often a nice feature. Jerry Maguire, Mallrats, and I think The Goonies all had one.

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I've noticed that this happens often on Criterion commentaries involving the actors. Whether it's Johnny Depp, Udo Kier, or James Woods. They're always giving page-long comments to certain scenes. But it always feels like they're still watching the movie with you. Weird.

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I won't name the film since it's adult in nature, but there's a Jerry Butler/Robert Kerman commentary track which is insanely fascinating to listen to but there's a moment during the commentary where the topic veers onto a topic that was deleted for I guess legal reasons, it's a long stretch of dead air and leaves one to wonder what was exactly said - there are other commentaries that delete audio portions, and it's kind of a shame that they can't retain them.

In a similiar vein, it's really interesting that Malcolm McDowell bascially ripped Caligula for nearly it's entire two and half hour running time.

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for the most part, the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is good (but not great) recollection from the 'kids' (now adults) of the film.

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I think it was on Dawson's Creek that the commentary was spoiling future seasons

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

I was referring to commentators speaking about the specific episode/movie they are commenting on not future episodes. It's the "Well, I won't comment about what is going to happen right now in case you haven't seen it" moments that get me - as if people watch commentaries first before the show. Not spoiling future episodes/sequels would make sense.

I remember watching an XFiles commentary way back when and they through out a couple of spoilers for the movie and future episodes which I hadn't seen yet, so I stop listening to their commentaries until I watched the complete series.

That's why I'm holding off on the Lost commentaries, I'm not sure if they'll drop spoilers or not. I'll wait until I finish the series then go back.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

the real question is what ISN'T the appeal of commentaries?

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I watch a lot of parts of commentaries. I start watching it and my skip around to interesting parts of the movie to see what they say about it. The best commentary I've every listened to was from Recount. It was by Danny Strong of Buffy fame and was very informative on the history of the FL election recount as well as interviewing the real people and filming the movie.

But for the most part, commentaries are not really that interesting unless I really like the movie or the commentators are really funny. I watch most stuff with Seth Green, but I find it amazing how humorless a lot of actors/directiors/etc. really are.

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Is there a primer anywhere on how to do this for the less tech-savvy, or someone like me who just wants to do it quickly and cleanly? Thanks to a desk job, I've listened to virtually every commentary on every disc I've ever bought, but this has always meant bringing the discs to work with me. It would be much easier if I could rip them and put them on my iPod and listen to them wherever I please.

I do wish that studios/distributors would appreciate the value of commentary tracks (which must now number in the tens of thousands) independent of the films they were recorded for. Anyone listening, especially a scholar or a devoted fan, has either seen the movie or is so intimately familiar with it as to not need to be watching it while the commentary is playing.

Perhaps with the move to downloading/streaming in the future, we'll see "catalog" supplementary features such as these made available for downloading on their own. In fact, I'd be happy to pay a small (small!) fee for a commentary from, say, iTunes, even for films I've maybe seen but don't feel overly compelled to own (or own anymore ;) ). It might be only be a small revenue stream for the companies that produced this stuff in the first place, but it's something. With physical media being liquidated in ever-increasing numbers at stores like Big Lots for as little as a dollar, surviving companies—and those that end up with the rights to materials produced by companies that fold—should really consider keeping this stuff available, affordably, for both current future enthusiasts.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

There's two ways to do this, as seen at ask.metafilter.com/37239/DVD-Commentary-to-MP3-Painlessly-On-a-Windows-PC :

- More tech-savvy required: Decrypt and extract the commentary audio directly from the DVD with some of the free programs mentioned there.

- Less tech-savvy required: Play the DVD in commentary mode on your computer, and run the free program Audacity to record the audio in realtime. (To avoid hearing it already while recording it, you can turn off or unplug your computer speakers, but don't mute the sound from onscreen controls or Audacity won't hear it to record it.) This could be done in the background while you do other things on the computer as long as you don't do anything that makes any other sound (watching Youtube videos, etc); or each movie one at a time could be left to run overnight; or you could knock out a bunch of movies over a weekend if you go occupy yourself with something else away from the computer and come back every couple of hours to start another movie.

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Thanks for the leads. I'll look into these on the weekend. I'm on a Mac, and the linked page is for PC, but perhaps I might get lucky. I do have a program called Mac The Ripper that seems to allow extraction of individual components of discs, although I don't use it for that, so I might just have to do a bit more reading.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

Oh, a Mac user!

Audacity does have a Mac version too. audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac

Mac The Ripper is perfect for decrypting if you want to go that route, but I don't know if you'd need another program (and if so, what) to turn the extracted file into an MP3.

There actually happens to be another MeFi page for Mac suggestions too: ask.metafilter.com/23457/DVD-Commentary-to-MP3-Painlessly-On-a-Mac
Including what might be the easiest option of all: iCommentary, a free simple Mac program designed specifically for extracting DVD commentary audio directly into MP3s! It is 5 years old now, so might not work for you, but worth a try.
icommentary.kempa.com/

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

Commentaries are hit or miss for me.

One of the best ones I listened to the entire way was Speed w/ Producer Mark Gordon and Graham Yost. They had alot of fun watching the movie and recalling the production, writing and putting the film together and played off each other really well. I recall one segment where they kind of poked fun at Speed 2, since neither had any involvement with it.

One of the worst I listened to was Terminator 3 with Jonathan Mostow and the actors. Mostow and Claire Daines were actually in the same room together, yet she was awful and stuttered quite a few times and could not put together one coherent thought off Mostow's questions. Lokken and The Governator was spliced in from pre-recorded sessions.

I listen to a few of 24's commentaries on the DVD sets and they are actually quite informative.

If I enjoyed the movie or TV show enough, I will listen to it.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

There were 2 DVD's that baffled me.

16 Blocks and Terminator Special Edition. Richard Donner and James Cameron did commentaries on the deleted scenes and not the actual movie. I was like okay? You would have thought that Cameron would have done it since that movie helped launch his career. As for Donner, I thought it was funny that there was a video introduction with him sitting in the recording studio introducing the deleted scenes and then it went to the scenes with his commentary, yet he doesn't have time to sit through the entire movie?

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

If you love those you should really pick up Journeys Below the Line: 24 - the Editing Process

It's only 30 minutes, but it is fascinating. I think it's on Netflix as well.

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

Yeah, I know what you meant and agree that it makes no sense. I was just throwing out an example of when it was an actual spoiler (at least for me).

Re: What is the Appeal of commentary's
 

This site has a bunch of commentaries you can stream or download http://listentoamovie.com/