Best Directors Commentaries?

[Kevin Johnson]

Oh this is an easy one:

 

House of the Dead by Uve Boll. It's Uve and one of his actors doing the commentary. Uve is completely in rapturous love with his film, and the actor hates it and is trying to insult Uve and the film the entire time without Uve noticing. Pure comedic genius.

 

On a side note: House of the Dead should win the award for: Longest Continuous Sequence of Shots Using only a Complimentary Color 3 Point Lighting Setup.

 

- Gavin

 

I'll contribute the absolute worst commentary i've ever heard. Keeping in mind that this is also one of my favorite directors and I revisit his films regularly, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" was amazingly bad. They sound like they're in this incredibly loud and busy restaurant with a shitty tape recorder in the center of the table. It made me feel like he (wes anderson) didn't really care about the fans and aspiring filmmakers that could gain insight from his experiences and execution of the film.

Edited November 13, 2006 by Kevin Johnson

[adam greeves]

one that i recently listened to was john frankenheimers the train. he doesnt talk over dialog and you could probably watch it while watching the film for the first time. it was mostly interesting to hear how they did stunts in the 60s. things you would never be able to do today. and having a train run over 10 cameras :o

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

Terry Gilliam always does great commentaries. The one he does for the Criterion Edition of "Time Bandits" is packed with useful information. I'd like to hear a commentary for "Baron Munchausen" or "Fisher King", but we'll see. Also, a commentary on all those films by TG's DP Roger Pratt would be fantastic as well.

[Christian Janss]

One funny-but-not-that-informative one was from Soderbergh on The Limey, the write constantly complains how these minor characters didn't have enough backstory and Soderbergh finally just gives up defending himself. One second thought, not so much funny, more just depressing...

 

 

Can anyone list some that are heavy in specifically DP/shooting/lighting information?

 

One I saw was in a special feature on American Beauty (Hall does little things like highlighting roses and little pools of light in depressing offices).

 

-Christian Janss

[Andy_Alderslade]

One funny-but-not-that-informative one was from Soderbergh on The Limey, the write constantly complains how these minor characters didn't have enough backstory and Soderbergh finally just gives up defending himself. One second thought, not so much funny, more just depressing...

 

I was just about to suggest this myself.

 

I actually think its really interesting showing the difficulties of the writer/director relationship, how necessary it is to learn to 'kill your babys' when they don't work and how often writers are underappreciated.

[Walter Graff]

One of my favorites is John Badham's Saturday Night Fever. Not only did this movie change the way movies were made, but it is so much part of the American culture of the time. And as popular a film as it is, in reality it really was a very low budget production.

[Walter Graff]

I had some sort of error posting he last message. Here is what I was saying

 

 

One of my favorites is John Badham's Saturday Night Fever. Not only did this movie change the way movies were made, but it is so much part of the American culture of the time. And as popular a film as it is, in reality it really was a very low budget production. The directors track is great! Mr Badham looks at many aspects of the film that many directors never discuss on such a film.

 

 

One of my favorite parts. Of course as we now know the Bee Gees wrote five songs for the film. And these songs would go on to inspire a whole new form of music. Some of the single biggest selling songs of all times. They never say the film nor the script, simply wrote the tracks. Towards the end of teh film, Tony is making the trip to NY to see Stephanie. There is a music bridge when he is waiting for the subway. The director needed a song to carry Tony into NYC. He turned to the editor and said, hey we got any of those songs left by that band the Bee Gees? The editor said yea there is one. He said throw it in here cause we have nothing else for this spot and we need something. It was a little known song called "How deep is your Love", a song that would become one of the most popular songs of all time. And of course Badham discusses being fired after making the film once the execs watched it

Edited January 28, 2007 by Walter Graff

[Felipe Perez-Burchard]

one that i found to be quite good was Anthony Minghella on "the talented mr. ripley" , i find it superior to some of the ones I think are really good, many of which have already been mentioned on the thread...

...technical, motivational, anecdotal, a good blend...

 

 

On the DP side, Alex Thompson is featured a good amount on the Alien3 track, but he mainly talks about the difficulties Fincher had, and on the Seven track, Darious is great, but only pops in between Arthur Max's (production designer) lengthy (but great) comments.

I wish there was more DP commentaries around.

 

:)

Edited January 28, 2007 by Felipe Perez-Burchard