Hard News: If you can't say something nice ...
337 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 9 10 11 12 13 14 Newer→ Last
-
Then again, I'm turning into a fan of quality over quantity. Personally, I'm quite happy with the two-disc edition I have of the 'final cut' of Blade Runner, whose sole special feature is a doozy.
Join me in my hatred of extra content and stupid filler, CraigI'm glad poor Orson died before they could get him to comment Citizen Kane on DVD (the guy ALWAYS needed money, he'd have done it). What's wrong with just watching the bloody film these days?
When they released that version of King Kong with swathes of extra content but without the film, I thought I could hear the cloppity-clop of the first harbinger of the apocalypse.
The problem is when the regional shortchanging extends to the proper content. I have a Marx Brothers set which comes a couple of films short compared to R1, and they tell you so on the box itself so you can seethe a little bit every time you pick it up. But then of course our box is more expensive, so it balances out I suppose.
-
Join me in my hatred of extra content and stupid filler, CraigI'm glad poor Orson died before they could get him to comment Citizen Kane on DVD (the guy ALWAYS needed money, he'd have done it). What's wrong with just watching the bloody film these days?
Well, like anything else there's an art to a good commentary track and not everyone has the gift. But I love Quentin Tarantino's explanation why he just won't do commentary tracks on his own films: 1) He's lived with the damn things for so long, and has nothing to say he hasn't said a million times before in a million interviews and 2) he goes to the movies to watch the damn film, not listen to some arsehole in the row behind provide a running commentary. Does he want to be that kind of arsehole? No, Sir.
Then you have David Lynch who says he just doesn't like analysing his films, because he's such an intuitive film-maker in the first place, and he's more interested in getting a mood across to the audience. That doesn't happen if he's there telling viewers what he thinks the appropriate reaction is at any given point.
-
Well, if you have to shell out $100 for it, no.
But if it was an extra $20, and the whole thing was brand new at the CD & DVD store's latest sale, you might :-)
Probably not -- though I don't want to come across as pissing on Warner Brothers, because that five-disc edition of BR is a masterclass in how you do fan service right. The time and money spent on getting the mare's nest of legal issues sorted was well spent.
But am I going to junk (say) my perfectly good bare-bones R4 edition of Chinatown, for one where the special features are a pretty meh-some 25-minute doco and some trailers? No. And while the four-disc version of Gone With The Wind I've seen around has some pretty tasty extras, I'd rather hire it than own it.
-
Oh, and I wouldn't buy Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan at any price -- even with a limited-edition, collectable man-kini thrown in. :)
-
They've also sold out of West Wing boxed sets (every episode, plus two discs of special features we got screwed out of in New Zealand) for $125...
OK, now I'm angry.
-
The only DVD commentaries I've found to be worth a damn are the ones that talk about the actual film-making process. Robert Rodriguez takes the cake for his commentary to Desperado (and he's prepared -- you can hear him rustling his notes as he talks about how the film was made). John McTiernan's commentary of Die Hard is a bit technical, but good if you're intersted in that sort of thing.
Most of the time, though, you just get people with nothing to say chucked in a recording booth and shown the film. Any commentary with Arnie is something to behold -- he has a prodigious gift for stating the bleeding obvious ("Ow! Dat vould haf huurt!" as his character gets punched, etc). His duo with Paul Verhoeven on the Total Recall commentary is fun for the combo of Dutch vs Austrian accents, and I'm told good things about his joint commentary on Conan the Barbarian.
The only other exceptions I can think of are when the commentors are genuinely fun to listen in their own right. The commentaries on Black Books are as funny as the episodes they're commenting on, for instance...
-
Cough ...
interesting segue from giving props to the assistant minister of arts and culture to giving a link to downloading pirated material, in an add on discussion amongst people who were interested in owning legitimate copies of media.
If the readers would like a more legal (is bypassing zones illegal?) way of purchasing the item, here's an alternative to buying an edited version.
borrow your mums credit card and buy it from
overseas and watch it on your brothers laptop if your tv and dvd player doesn't do ntsc, or possibly in pal format although this listing doesn't give episode length for bbc so it may be the same length as the region 4, or not.
UK -
You'd be surprised to know that I agree with you. The only time I've used a torrent is to get a film that was released under Creative Commons (and then I blew my data cap by leaving the client on overnight - I didn't think my connection could serve 10G in one night but there you go...). I do prefer to get my content legally. We just disagree on what should be legal ;-)
Yes, bypassing zones is legal in NZ
-
I'm told good things about his joint commentary on Conan the Barbarian.
I'm not sure if Conan the Barbarian needs dialogue, let alone commentary.
-
I love Quentin Tarantino's explanation why he just won't do commentary tracks on his own films: 1) He's lived with the damn things for so long, and has nothing to say he hasn't said a million times before in a million interviews and 2) he goes to the movies to watch the damn film, not listen to some arsehole in the row behind provide a running commentary. Does he want to be that kind of arsehole? No, Sir.
If only he was as sensible about writing himself a cameo in every single film he's ever made...
Then you have David Lynch who says he just doesn't like analysing his films, because he's such an intuitive film-maker in the first place, and he's more interested in getting a mood across to the audience. That doesn't happen if he's there telling viewers what he thinks the appropriate reaction is at any given point.
Although I would have appreciated having a running commentary from him for the second half of Mulholland Drive, telling me exactly what the frack was supposed to be going on. It could start around the time the two leads go to the theatre in the middle of the night, which is more or less when my ability to construct a cohesive narrative from what was going on left the building.
You could build a good drinking game around DVD extras.
Drink once if in the 'making of' doco (by which I mean 'studio puff piece'), one of the leads saying something along the lines of: 'as soon as I read the script I knew I had to make this film' (__really__? Possibly your sense of judement needs a tune-up, given the POS I've just watched).
Drink once if one of the leads says 'director/actor X was a pleasure to work with, I've always wanted to work with them'.
Drink once if one of the leads says 'we had such fun making this film'.
And so on.
-
Although I would have appreciated having a running commentary from him for the second half of Mulholland Drive, telling me exactly what the frack was supposed to be going on.
Easy - the first half was Naomi Watts' character's drug induced dream, the 2nd half was what really happened.
The only thing that doesn't explain is the 2 inch high old people.
Salon did a marvelous deconstruction a few years back, but that's the gist of it.
-
A good commentary is about as hard to find as a good film. My all time favorite was Resident Evil. They made the commentary well in advance of it hitting the screens, had obviously had a lot of fun making the film, and it was not a particularly big budget one, so they weren't trying to live up to anything. I was quite surprised by the depth of thought that had gone into 'yet another zombie flick'. I was disappointed by the sequels, which gained nothing from higher budgets and more famous casting. It was like the first was designed by an ambitious and committed team following a strong director, and the second two were designed by committees and focus groups.
The only DVD commentaries I've found to be worth a damn are the ones that talk about the actual film-making process.
That is true, but you can take it way too far. There are 4 different commentaries on the extended edition of LOTR. Cast, director/writer, design team, production team. They become progressively less interesting (to me), and more and more technical. How deep do you really want to get into it? Multiple commentaries is a good idea for that reason.
The worst commentary I've heard is definitely George Lucas on Star Wars. It was like listening to your Grandma telling you something that she's forgotten she already told you a thousand times.
-
The weirdest commentary prize goes to Blade Runner, in which the actor's commentary was added in for the theatrical release, then removed for the director's cut.
-
There are 4 different commentaries on the extended edition of LOTR. Cast, director/writer, design team, production team.
Having listened to all four, it was too much. The last two should have been merged together. The cast one was the least informative, but if you were a fanboy/girl, entertaining.
-
The cast one was the least informative, but if you were a fanboy/girl, entertaining.
I generally agree. It depends on what it is you wish to be informed about. If you want to know how the actors thought and what they had to do, then that was quite informative. If you wanted to see exactly how they made the sets, then the design team one would be your pick. Being a fanboy, the cast entertained me the most.
Having listened to all four, it was too much
You reckon? That's 12x4 = 48 hours of commentary, and 4 complete rewatchings of a 12 hour long movie. How could that possibly satisfy anyone? Did you also watch the extended credits?
Heh, I only made it through 2 of the commentaries. Your insanity surpasses mine totally.
-
I generally agree. It depends on what it is you wish to be informed about.
Sure - though it's not on the DVD, one of the more interesting 'Battlestar Galactica' podcasts was a three hour writer's meeting where they were 'breaking' an episode. I find it fascinating hearing a room of very smart writers just slamming ideas up against a wall and seeing what sticks. Most people would find it ball achingly dull. Ron Moore's podcasts also -- at least before the writer's strike -- had the advantage of immediacy, mostly being recorded two or three days before transmission. And there's one second season episode that Moore just shreds -- not in a nasty, bitchy way but he's very clear about why it doesn't work. And as he says repeatedly, when you're the executive producer/head writer you've nobody to pass the buck to.
And while I usually give the Beeb props for justifying the very expensive Doctor Who sets with enough extras to choke a horse, with some of the weaker stories they feel like padding. And twenty years (or more) after the fact, some of the commentaries can be forgiven for being a wee bit scatty.
-
The only DVD commentaries I've found to be worth a damn are the ones that talk about the actual film-making process.
There's a reasonable not-really-a-commentary that's just historic audio from the real players on Thirteen Days that I managed to get through, and the commentary from soldiers who were actually there on the Black Hawk Down three-disc is good:
we get annoyed when people call the mission a failure ... the mission was to capture Mohammed Farrah Aid-id. We did.
But most times, just give me a good making-of or retrospective (and I mean good - The Hundred Days on Master and Commander, or an episode of History through the Lens) over a commentary.
-
Yeah, a commentary can be to a good movie what golf is to a good walk.
-
Did you also watch the extended credits?
The extended credits include all the members of the club that paid $200 US or something to get a set of magazines and their name put at the end of the extended DVD. I fastforwarded to make sure my friend was there, noted that most of the cast seemed to be in it as well, and then pushed stop.
I did listen to all four commentaries though. Sean Astin is a whining self-important twit (his book on the movie and his life up to it is even worse), and Merry and Pippin don't just have comedy together on screen.
What do I win?
-
You'd be surprised to know that I agree with you.
???!!!!! (is that enough surprise?)
hopefully russell doesn't have any political ambitions. As hip and street as bittorrenting copyright material is it's not the sort of thing you'd want to be seen to be pushing if you were involved in anything arts in a professional capacity.
-
I remember enjoying the commentary of Fight Club and a couple of Kevin Smith movies. And the post-production commentary on LOTR was a surprising winner. The directors were too prone to making up stuff that sounded cool but was contradicted elsewhere, I'd already heard half of what the design team had to say, and the cast were a bit chaotic.
It all feels like so long ago. I've been a fangirl in recovery for nearly as long as I was a fangirl, now.
-
hopefully russell doesn't have any political ambitions. As hip and street as bittorrenting copyright material is it's not the sort of thing you'd want to be seen to be pushing if you were involved in anything arts in a professional capacity.
This particular comment of yours has just made my day 10% sadder.
-
I dunno where you guys get the time to watch all this stuff.....maybe I need to multitask more.
-
And while we're saying nothing nice about not-so-special features on DVDs, has anyone ever seen a deleted scene or "extended cut" that actually enhanced the reputation of a film. (And no, I'm counting Blade Runner, because both the director's cut and the final cut are shorter than the original theatrical releases.) There's versions of the first two Alien movies that contain both the original theatrical and extended versions. And in my not so humble opinion, they prove that -- for all their flaws -- both Ridley Scott and James Cameron's first thoughts were the right ones, because the additional material screwed with the pacing in films that depended for their effect on screwing up the tension until the acidic shit ate through the fan.
-
I dunno where you guys get the time to watch all this stuff.....maybe I need to multitask more.
Give up sleeping, and focus on the relative trivia in life. It more or less works for me.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.