DVD commentaries: Most informative and most entertaining?

That's true, but he has a text-to-speech program that he could use to simulate talking for a commentary track. It wouldn't be quite the same, but...

 

The "Spinal Tap" commentary is the next best thing to sequel...it's the greatest project they did with the characters outside of the original film.

 

Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies

 

Michael Jeck's masterful commentary on Criterion's SEVEN SAMURAI will long remain my all-time favorite. Hard to believe it was recorded 24 years ago!

 

Big western/cowboy fan and I really enjoyed the the commentary by some of the actors who would later go on to bigger things in the Gunsmoke series box set. The commentary by Bruce Dern on some of the episodes he was in is hilarious, talks about going to Hollywood and being looked down on by the "California" actors and how he always told his daughter about his experiences and wanted her to treat everyone the same in the business, talks about other actors he learned from. he's very witty in a casual way & seems like the type of person you'd want to have a beer with on the porch.

 

I got some laughs from Roger Waters and Gerald Scarfe in their commentary for Pink Floyd The Wall.

Milius and Schwarzenegger are having fun on Conan The Barbarian as well.

And yes, Carpenter and Russell have a great time in their commentaries for EFNY, The Thing, and Big Trouble In Little China.

 

I like the ones where they go into the making of and what it was like filming scenes: Re-Shoots, re-schedules, props breaking down etc.

When "Weird Al" Yankovic and Jay Levey did commentary for "UHF" (1989), they gave some similar information. The most incredible was listening to Al give exact addresses for all the places they filmed. (This was 13 years after).
I don't think I'd be able to remember all that.

 

My favorite is Francis Ford Coppola "Godfather III" describing the film that might have been.

 

All season of Mad Men are great.

 

Jim Lovell - Apollo 13

 

Any time Kurt Russell and John Carpenter get together, it's a glorious thing.

Any Roger Ebert commentary is gold. I especially love the one he did for "Citizen Kane", which is my favorite movie ever.

All of the "Evil Dead"/"Army of Darkness" commentaries. Bruce and Sam have a great interplay going on in those.

 

The Criterion The Graduate LD. Most informative one ever, lost to history.

 

Same goes for the Criterion Sid & Nancy. I taped it off cable and have to hold on to that. What station was it that was playing commentary tracks after the regular showing? Bravo? Anyway this track has many contributors and doesn't shy from challenging the accuracy of what you are looking at. It's as good as the movie.

 

Another vote for UHF and Ghostbusters!

 

Count me in as another vote for Roger Ebert's Citizen Kane commentary track.

However I must confess that I have much love for ALL the commentary tracks on the Fight Club disc. I once watched that movie 5 times in three days as a way of "celebrating" my first week of summer vacation. David Fincher gets a track. The author of the book, Chuck Palanuik, gets a track. The cast gets a track. I think even the score composers get a track. I listened to them all.

 

When I first got into LaserDiscs back with that Criterion 2001, there was a local store that rented LDs, and I found the one for THE GRADUATE from Criterion. Since LDs were so expensive, I couldn't afford to grab all I wanted right away, so renting was a good option to at least SEE some of my old favorites in the widescreen format.

I remember being dazzled by THE GRADUATE in widescreen, just watching the movie. Then I found the commentary track and was mesmerized again, learning a lot from it.

I believe I even videotaped the commentary track, and probably still have it somewhere, but I never bought the discs themselves. I think I later bought THE GRADUATE in a non-Criterion version.

Harry

 

Don't forget Marilyn, too! Here's what I said about that track in my review:

"This one starts slowly, as in the early moments, Jim does little more than say "Remember that?" to Marilyn. However, once the two of them get more comfortable with the format and the movie's action heats up it becomes more compelling. Jim offers a lot of good details about the factual side of the mission; he points out how the movie differs from reality and helps fill in some of the gaps.

Marilyn doesn't say much but she does provide a welcome emotional component to the track. Unsurprisingly, Jim doesn't deviate from the detached flight jock tone during his comments, so it was nice to have someone attach some feeling to the events. All in all, it's a fine commentary; as with Frank McCourt's track on Angela's Ashes, it's very cool to be able to hear the person being depicted on screen describe the events."

 

Lost to antiquity is Scorsese's commentary on the Criterion LD.

And the Alan Parker commentary from "The Wall" LD.

I could just poop in a melon from sadness and

 

Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" commentary, that is. For some reason I can't edit my post?

 

Ebert's "Citizen Kane" of course, most informative. A few months ago I worked my way through the director/writers track for the Lord Of The Rings set. It was fascinating to hear stuff like how often they had to stitch a scene together from performances sometimes shot years apart. The time flew by for me.

The aforementioned "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" Criterion for Hunter S. Thompson's track, for entertainment. If you're familiar with him, it's hysterical (although by that point in his life he wasn't so much the brilliant writer as he was a fairly pathetic lifestyle casualty) but almost impossible to listen to if you're not used to his mumbling. I heard it long ago, but I recall the commentary for "Boogie Nights" was very entertaining because several of the participants were clearly enjoying their liquid refreshments.

 

Another vote for This is Spinal Tap, both the in character and out of character commentary tracks are great.

Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier - Roadhouse (I saw a clip from a Kevin Smith Q&A on Youtube where he explains how that came about. It started from a joke about Roadhouse made on the Clerks commentary track, then Smith and Mosier were approached about doing a commentary for Roadhouse. Kevin was game but wondered if anyone actually involved with the movie wanted to have a go instead, Kevin said he was given a firm response of 'no.')

Ken Russell - Tommy the Movie (He tells a story about how Ann-Margret's husband, Roger Smith walked in during the shooting of Champagne sequence and threatened to divorce Ann on the spot and said she was killing her career.)

 

Since several people have already mentioned John Carpenter's commentary tracks, I just wanted to throw out an FYI.... he does a commentary on the new Shout Factory reissue of Prince of Darkness. I'm not sure when the track was recorded, but I know it wasn't included on either of the previous DVD editions.

 

From my review:

"Recorded in 2001 – I believe - it appears this track makes its US debut here; from what I found, it only appeared on non-US DVDs in the past."

It's an okay track but it's not great. Carpenter's track for the new "Body Bags" Blu-ray is borderline awful, though:

"Carpenter enjoys a strong reputation as an audio commentator, but I don’t think he does it; while some of his tracks are very good, others seem unremakable to bland, and he follows the latter path here. When he chats with the actors, he appears more interested in other aspects of their careers than in their work on Bags, and he also likes to narrate the on-screen action. Occasional filmmaking nuggets emerge, but they’re buried in these slow, rambling conversations. "

 

http://www.ratethatcommentary.com/

The above site ranks the best commentaries found on DVD.

 

Interesting - I've only heard one of the top 10! ("Rounders", BTW - which is a good track but not one of the 10 best ever, IMO.)

Also interesting that Bogdanovich has TWO in the top 10. Perhaps he's interesting when he discusses his own films, but when he talks about other people's movies, he's usually a bore.

Two phrases chill me to the bone: "audio commentary with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich" and "audio commentary with film critic Richard Schickel". Brr!