I was recently involved in a discussion of interesting DVD special features -- good, bad, and ugly. As someone with a too-large DVD collection, I've seen my share of each category. Here are a few that came up:
Insomnia -- The director's commentary on this film by Christopher Nolan presents the movie in the order in which it was filmed. You get to see the out-of-order jumble that is the standard for movie making, and marvel how anyone can keep it all straight.
Galaxy Quest -- This disc has an alternate audio track that plays the whole movie in Thermian, the language of the movie's aliens. Well, I think the whole movie. No one has ever made it through the whole thing.
The Abyss -- The special edition of this film has a warts-and-all documentary that shows what a tyrant director James Cameron is on the set. But he did get results here.
Total Recall -- I've mentioned this one before, but it bears mentioning again. This disc has a terrible commentary track of Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger narrating everything that happens on screen in incomprehensible accents.
The Matrix -- The box set of all three movies has a pair of commentaries for each film, one by two philosophers who ate up all that heroes' journey junk with a spoon, and one by a group of film critics who loved the original film but trashed the two sequels in their reviews (and do so again at length in the commentaries).
The Mist -- Director Frank Darabont originally wanted to release this movie in black-and-white, but couldn't get the studio to go for it. But you can see his original vision by selecting the special black-and-white presentation of the movie on the DVD.
Can anyone think of other good ones?
4 comments:
The commentary on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is actually "Commentary! The Musical", another set of songs by the cast (as themselves).
The Abyss documentary you refer to is among the best I've ever seen.
Back in the days of laserdisc, my special edition of Coppola's Dracula came with an "editing room" where you were given three or four takes of each shot in a scene, and then had to select your favorite take for each shot. When you were done, the player would play the entire scene according to your editing decisions.
It was fascinating stuff, especially in that pre-DVD era...
FKL
I really liked the commentary track on Airplaine! featuring the Zuckers Brothers and Jim Abrahams. They talk a lot about how the movie and the jokes came to be.
They also revealed that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's role of co-pilot Roger Murdock was originally intended for baseball star Pete Rose. Due to Rose's schedule and his commitment to baseball, he had to decline the role.
how about "Easter egg" hidden extras? for example on the ST:DS9 DVDs you can highlight little bits of the station on the extras menu and get short interviews and insights on specific characters or series moments. which are all really cool except you have to "hunt" for them which I found rather annoying.
the mole
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