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Post by stevehadcrackers on Mar 23, 2010 18:11:56 GMT -5
Welp, the two I came here to post have already been mentioned: Evil Dead 2 and Cannibal! The Musical. My favorite part of the Cannibal commentary is when Trey Parker is talking about how he named Alfred Packer's horse after his girlfriend Lianne, who dumped him: "You want to know what Lianne's doing right now? She's married to a pharmacist and I'm worth 2 million. OOPS!"
The commentaries for the first Evil Dead movie are really good, too. I think there's one with just Bruce Campbell and one with Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert. I also enjoy the Sleepaway Camp commentary because the filmmakers have a good sense of humor about this odd little slasher movie they made. Also it's one of my favorite movies, so I'm a bit biased. ;D
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Post by Nuveena on Mar 24, 2010 16:50:10 GMT -5
Just about any that aren't from Tim Burton. Most of the time I just forget I'm listening to a commentary.
Mel Brooks' commentaries are usually pretty insightful. He's just a warm, funny person and it comes across as he recollects on his movies (I love when he mentions in the Young Frankenstein commentary that, after the monster runs away, Freddy's line is a reference to European plays that ended their first acts with "What have I done?" or "She's pregnant!"). Same on Del Toro's commentaries; he has a great sense of humor about his own stuff and is always really informative.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Mar 26, 2010 12:44:39 GMT -5
The 2 best I've ever heard are from
The Old Dark House. Classic Whale horror film. Gloria Stuart acted in it and gave, despite her age, the most lucid actor's commentary I ever heard.
Limbo. John Sayles is nothing less than a great writer, no matter the genre. In this track, he gives the equivalent of an expensive weekend-long film school course on lighting, lenses, and other directorial matters. I own, but have not yet watched Honeydrippers, and I fully expect him to be as good on that track, but I can't swear to it yet.
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Post by ometiklon on Mar 27, 2010 20:24:53 GMT -5
While not my favorite commentary "I still liked it though" I just finished watching War of the Worlds (1953). It has 2 commentary tracks. The first by both lead stars of the film Ann Robinson and Gene Barry. I watched move with the second commentary by Joe Dante Bob Burns and Bill Warren playing. On the second track Bob Burns And Joe Dante reference A show called Mystery Science Theater 3000.
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Post by audreyii on Mar 31, 2010 19:50:09 GMT -5
Does Commentary: The Musical count?
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Post by Bix Dugan on Apr 1, 2010 12:22:17 GMT -5
Two more.
These were both based on Graphic Novels, so they had that as a background to the commentary tracks.
From Hell
The League of Extrordinary Gentlemen
A lot of the "making of the sets" stories were involved in the tracks, too.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Apr 4, 2010 6:18:02 GMT -5
Dark City's are all facinating, especially Roger Eberts commentary. Did you listen to the commentary he did for Citizen Kane? I don't know... I remember parts of it so I must have caught some of it. My DVD is in a box (I'm going to be moving in a month) so I can't look to see if it's on their. ---- I wanted to add the musical commentary track on "Dr. Horribles Sing Along Blog" - very cute n' clever. You know who does very interesting brutally candid commentaries is Joel Schumacher. His audio track on Batman & Robin was the best thing about the film and the one he did for Veronica Guerin bowled me over (it seems he had a bad drug addiction). He might not be the greatest director, and can sometime be a terrible one. But he's not a boring or unlikeable man and his passion for Verinica Guerin was commendable.
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Post by GodoHell on Apr 4, 2010 12:06:34 GMT -5
"Cannibal! The Musical" has one of the most entertaining commentary tracks I've ever heard...about as funny as the movie itself. It includes Matt Stone and Trey Parker getting drunk while watching the movie with a couple of friends who also helped make it. By the end of the movie, they're all completely smashed and spouting ridiculousness! I love it! I am glad to see a few people have already beat me to this recommendation.
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Post by pups4ever on Apr 4, 2010 12:35:47 GMT -5
The commentary track to "Pink Floyd: The Wall" by Roger Waters and Gerald Scarfe is really good. Waters talks about the inspirations for the album, and even some of his problems with the film. At times, he makes fun of it MST-style and it is quite funny.
One interesting thing about this is that Waters was on the left speaker and Scarfe was on the right. Why haven't more DVD's done this? It's really good for keeping track of who is talking.
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Post by PimPamPet on Apr 4, 2010 21:06:37 GMT -5
I almost never listen to commentaries, and this would belong in TV anyway, but the most amazing commentary I've heard is from the Definitive Twilight Zone episode Last Night of a Jockey, which starred Mickey Rooney. The excessively meek author of some TZ companion book interviews him, because left alone Rooney would say nothing. After a jovial, "HI! I'm Mickey Rooney!" he turns into the world's biggest a-hole. The interviewer starts to ask if he remembers anything about this episode, but is rudely interrupted by a gravelly, "No, I don't remember anything about this..." "Well, we'll watch it together for the first t..." "I don't care. ...Anything about it." Prolonged silence...Author: ...Today's audience doesn't understand, you were playing a jockey, and for years you were the brunt of 'short' joke... Rooney: Well, let... I, I, I'M TIRED OF THAT! Author: oh. Prolonged silence...Rooney: ...I don't see why people enjoy something like this now, but maybe they do. Author: Had you met Rod Serling? Rooney: Yeah. Author: Do you remember where, or... Rooney: No. I don't remember anything. Wish I could help you. His other great, responses -- instant and thoughtless -- were, "I don't remember! Too long ago." "It's just a performance. I don't know what to say about it." "Nothing. That's for other people." "No. Nothing. You just played the scene." And much, much more. Wow. That sounds pretty horrible. I actually own the DVD set, but I haven't really checked out the special features yet. Are they all like this? (And why was it even included if it's that bad?)
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Post by hopesfall on Apr 7, 2010 13:38:30 GMT -5
I've always liked the commentary for the original Dawn Of The Dead with George A. Romero and Tom Savini. It's also my favorite movie, so that helps.
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Post by ilmatto on Apr 7, 2010 22:51:42 GMT -5
The Peter Cowie commentaries and video essays on Criterion Collection Ingmar Bergman films, in particular the Winter Light trilogy. Also Wanda Ventham in the UFO Box Set DVDs. There, that establishes the spectrum.
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Post by Melkor on Apr 11, 2010 13:47:22 GMT -5
I've enjoyed a lot of commentary tracks, but The Lord of The Rings trilogy cast commentary is the only commentary on a non kung fu movie that held my attention 100% the entire running time.
As far as kung fu movies go, there's not a lot of good ones unfortunately. But these ones are tops for me-
Black Dragon, Way of the Black Dragon and Death of Bruce Lee, all commentated on by Ron Van Clief and George Weirdo Tan.
Along Comes a Tiger- Wong Tao and Toby Russell
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Post by hsauertieg on Jun 10, 2010 14:55:40 GMT -5
David F. Friedman and Mike Vraney do a really great commentary track for the 1930s film "Marihuana." Friedman talks about the film and about "roadshow" films generally.
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Post by Justin T on Jun 10, 2010 22:24:05 GMT -5
I will echo the love for the commentary tracks for Evil Dead 2 and Ghostbusters. I have the old DVD with the shadorama option, its great.
The Evil Dead 2 track is one of the funniest things I've ever heard, I was laughing hard the first time I listend to it
Other Favorites:
John Carpenter and Kurt Russell on Escape From New York, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China: These two are so much fun to listen to, they are informative and funny as hell.
Paul Verhoven, Capser Van Dien, Dina Meyer and Neil Patrick Harris on Starship Troopers: They are all in the same room and just have a blast talking about the movie, cracking jokes while talking about filming the movie. This movie is a guilty pleasure of mine and I love this commentary.
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