Friday, January 28, 2011

Audio Commentaries

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Once again big thank you to everyone who replied through facebook. It's pretty much the reason I'm posting immediately after waking up.

I remember the first time I checked out an audio commentary was with 'Resident Evil'. It was one of the only movies I had at the time since all my favorites were always on direct dvd. I always liked checking out interviews and making of's but audio commentary sounded interesting too. I remember a big part of the cast rambling on about German beer, yogurt, Milla Jovovich's sexiness and how they cut the ending out when Milla Jovovich killing the licker with the huge machine on the cover of the DVD. I have to say even though resident evil is not that good a film, the commentary was awesome. Everyone talked like if they were good friends always keeping the track interesting to listen to. I enjoyed it so much and re heard/watched it multiple times
after words.

Audio commentaries are the first special feature I look for when buying a movie. However I also check who does it. I like my commentaries done by directors and producers or cast members because they always seem to have this great bond since they all worked together extensively on the movie. I love them so much that I own a copy of 'The Devil's Backbone' with commentary by Guillermo Del Toro and his director of photography Guillermo Navarro.(awesome by the way) However there is another DVD with a different commentary done just by Del Toro where he rambles about all the meanings and quotes in the movie. I'm actually going to buy that 2nd DVD just for commentary, thats how important they are too me.

Depending on which one you check out commentaries can be like film classes. They director will go on about how they achieved certain shots and usually throw in fun stories about the performances and effects. It's pretty much a run through of the film where you constantly learn about how things played out and what changed throughout the making of the movie. Listening to someone go on about something they love is a truly unique experience. I'm sure not all are awesome, but you have a movie you like and there is an audio commentary feature with cast and crew, I'm sure it will be fun to check out.

Some of my personal favorites so far are commentaries done by the J.J. Abrams crew like on LOST, Star Trek, Mission Impossible 3 and of course Guillermo Del Toro. I know I cyber jerk him off but he is truly one of the most fascinating people I have ever heard talk. Watch the commentary on Blade 2, Cronos, and Devil's Backbone, you won't regret it.
*Editors Note* I forgot to mention how awesome Robert Rodriguez's commentaries are. There is pretty much one for every film he does with like 10 other special features on each disc. A man who cares about his fans. Definitely check those out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Alan, so I just got done watching the interview with Guillermo Del Toro about the "Cronos" movie. I'm not sure if it's the one from the actual movie, but I just watched them all through YouTube which was a pain in the ass. With that being said, it was really hard for me to understand this guy for the fact being I don't understand spanish that well, but thank god for the subtitles. Somewhere in the interview towards the beginning he begins to talk about how his mother in one of the films he made in the early 1980's called "Matilde". He then tells the interviewer how the film was really bizarre from all of his other films he recently did in the past. Getting into it, it's about a woman who is psycho and has a sexual obsession with a crack in the wall inside of her bedroom. Okay, now that I seen and heard this interview, it shows me how he uses some of his old ideas and puts them into his latest ones. The point is whenever he talked about the "Matilde" film about the woman with the crazy obsession with the crack in her bedroom wall, it reminded me a lot of Pan's Labrinyth whenever Ofelia draws a door on the wall with a piece of chalk and suddenly an open spaced room is located right underneath the room next to her. Anyways in "Matilde" that kinda happens to the woman as well whenever see she's the crack in the wall becoming into a big blinded foetus that wants to strangle her. When I heard him talk about it, a memory from the past hit me whenever I had watched Pan's Labrinyth for the the first time and i remembered Ofelia making a door in her wall with a piece of chalk and then meets this face-blinded creature that starts to chase her throughout that whole scene. I'm not going to lie, that part creeped the crap out of me. Reason why I'm sending you this message is because I just thought that those things that gdt summarized went almost identical together and it just got me wondering. I felt both of those things maybe had a connection and I just wanted to let you know what i thought. Amusing interview. I like how he used these fantasized toy creatures in his youth videos that he made and how he used ketchup to show the horrific critical points of the short films. Awesome!

Alan Geiss said...

Well judging by what you said it isn't the same commentary but thats still pretty cool that you checked out what he had to say. The one I saw was on the criterion release of 'Cronos' and it's an interview he did in 2010 for the criterion release. About the similar themes, GDT has talked about how he writes down all his ideas in notebooks and whenever he is making a movie he pulls out these notebooks and reads them through and kind of shops around for what he wants to put in his movies. You'll notice he always has themes of father like figures in the main characters lives, always things in jars, always bugs, sometimes gears, and some how mentions catholicism. You def need to check out his commentaries man.