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Yeah, I just saw that- I wonder what it could be for? Can't be Keaton, since Kino's already pressed their last disc for that, and seems like it wouldn't be Lang, since this past year saw a giant flood of Lang stuff that didn't tempt Kalat out. More Godzilla material, maybe?

The phrase "getting back in the game for one last big score" makes it sound like he's doing Rififi or something, but he's probably just being colorful. I can't think of anything along those lines that's particularly in his wheelhouse.

We know that someone new (Criterion?) has picked up the rights to the Harold Lloyd catalog, and I could certainly see Kalat being all over those.

Oh, man, that would be amazing. Though now you bring silent comedy up- I know Kalat's a big A Woman of Paris fan, and I can imagine that Criterion's going to need to pull out the stops to sell that one- though unless it's on a double feature with The Kid, it's hard to see how that one would be coming out anything within the next year.

Give me Kalat on a MoC early Lang set: Die Spinnen, Harakiri, Das wanderende Bild, Vier um die Frau and Der müde Tod! A pipe dream obviously - perhaps their upcoming Birth of a Nation release would be a fair shout though?

I wasn't sure whether to post this here or in the Universal / Hitchcock thread, but this seemed like a better fit.

I have this strange compulsion to check out every extra on the discs I buy, even when - in the case of most studio releases - I already know they're going to be dull at best, brain-rotting at worst. But I had a real quandary with the William Friedkin commentary for Vertigo on the new Hitchcock set. From past experience, Friedkin is one of the worst commentators around, and amusement at his incompetence usually runs out long before he does, and Vertigo is a much longer film than The Leopard Man or The Narrow Margin. So how to give this commentary a fair shot?

There was the drinking game option, but I don't think my liver could have stood it, and there probably wasn't enough liquor in the house, so instead I decided on a "three strikes" policy. I'd identify three likely 'commentary crimes' and see how long it took Friedkin to bumble his way into them. They were: Stating the Obvious; Narrating On-Screen Action; and Saying Something Really Dumb (I decided ahead of time I'd accept Idiotic Generalization, Factual Inaccuracy or Untenable Conclusion).

Off we go.

Less than a minute in, James Stewart's name appears in big letters on the screen. "THE FILM STARS JAMES STEWART!" Friedkin proclaims. This is like shooting fish in a barrel. But wait, is this 'Stating the Obvious' or 'Narrating On-Screen Action'? I decide to give 'Reading Out the Credits' a pass so I can at least make it to the film proper.

I needn't have worried, because Friedkin immediately ticks the 'Stating the Obvious' box by explaining what 'vertigo' is (dizziness arising from a fear of heights, apparently - who knew?) as soon as the film's title appears. We're one minute in.

Throughout the credits, Friedkin continues to call out the names, sometimes appending near-worthless IMDB factoids to them ("HITCHCOCK MADE ELEVEN MOVIES WITH HIM!" For the uninitiated, Friedkin talks like he's explaining the film to his deaf aunt), but I've given the credits a pass and will have to wait for the first shot of the film proper in order to tick my next box.

(By the way, I really ought to have added 'Reading From IMDB Print-Outs' to my trifecta - lesson for next time.)

Friedkin immediately obliges by Narrating On-Screen Action: "THIS FILM OPENS WITH A ROOFTOP CHASE!" Three and a half minutes down, how many to go? Little Billy only has one life left!

He's too busy telling us what's happening on-screen for the next couple of minutes to draw any asinine conclusions or offer nincompoop analysis, but as that opening scene concludes and things slow down, the verbal diarrhoea starts to flow, right on cue. I decide that the following statement more than meets the criteria of Idiotic Generalization, and at six and a half minutes, I'm done, conscience clear: "IN A HITCHCOCK FILM, THE STORY IS LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE VISUAL IMPACT!"

But before I get my hands on the remote in order to stop the madness, I also catch this little Bizarro gem: "HITCHCOCK WAS INFLUENCED BY EDGAR ALLEN POE AS A CHILD!" It's almost tempting enough to keep listening and see where he thinks he's going with this, but from past experience I just know it's going to be a can't stop-talking non sequitur, so I cut my losses and run for my life.

zedz wrote:I wasn't sure whether to post this here or in the Universal / Hitchcock thread, but this seemed like a better fit.

I have this strange compulsion to check out every extra on the discs I buy, even when - in the case of most studio releases - I already know they're going to be dull at best, brain-rotting at worst.

I'm the same. Discs are marked as "Watched" and not logged as "Done" until I've gone through all the extras. I tend to put the dull stuff on in the background while I'm working.

I'm exactly the same. There are some commentaries that drive me to get all sorts of long-ignored household jobs out of the way.

I tend to put on commentaries while I play video games- you can generally tell how good it is by how well I do in the game. I get killed over and over again when it's Kalat, whereas a Drew Casper is like playing in God mode, my anger at his idiocy driving me to new heights.

I hardly ever watch extras any more. Can't seem to make time for them, for some reason, even the ones that looks enticing. I've had Criterion's Last Emperor set since it came out and still haven't looked through the extras.

Sometimes, the extras go unwatched by me, but other times, I buy movies exclusively for their extras (see: any non-Steven Soderbergh film with a Soderbergh commentary).

I'm glad to see I shouldn't feel so ashamed for not digesting 100% of the extras (or even 20%) on any disc. I usually watch any documentary about the making-of a film (the MOC Murnaus, Lawrence of Arabie, Die Nibelungen) but I rarely get around to checking out commentaries or other loose ends.

I try to watch any English language extras, but anything of meaningful length that requires my full attention- unless it's an actual extra film- tends to go unwatched. I have plenty of time for things that can play in the background, but I can never justify watching an episode of Cineastes de Notre Temps when I could watch an actual movie in the same time and with the same focus.

Drucker wrote:I'm glad to see I shouldn't feel so ashamed for not digesting 100% of the extras (or even 20%) on any disc. I usually watch any documentary about the making-of a film (the MOC Murnaus, Lawrence of Arabie, Die Nibelungen) but I rarely get around to checking out commentaries or other loose ends.

I'm with you. Interesting documentaries - making of, filmmaker bios, anything that gives historical or social context to the main feature - usually gets watched. Commentaries, talk-show style interviews and the like get short shrift, watched/listened to maybe once, if that.

A few months ago I had a hard drive crash and had to rebuild my entire DVDPedia database from scratch (crash occurred during a scheduled back-up corrupting said back-up). Every extra that had an IMDB entry was logged and keyworded. Some nights we want to watch something, but are too fatigued to concentrate on an actual film. So I can search on the keywords and watch a director or actor bio or something similar. I find we get to more of the extras this way.

I don't know why, but I like listening to William Friedkin's commentaries. I think it's just his voice and the way he speaks makes everything sound more interesting than it really is. He could be reading a shampoo bottle and it would still sound fascinating to me.

"OKAY, THIS IS A SHAMPOO BOTTLE HERE! THE LABEL SAYS THAT YOU SHOULDN'T GET IT IN YOUR EYES! I THINK THAT'S JUST TELLING PEOPLE TO PUT IN THEIR EYES!

*Friedkin pours shampoo in his eyes*

"WOW, THAT HURT A LOT MORE THAN I EXPECTED IT TO! I GUESS YOU SHOULDN'T PUT IT IN YOUR EYES!"

Mr Sausage wrote:I hardly ever watch extras any more. Can't seem to make time for them, for some reason, even the ones that looks enticing. I've had Criterion's Last Emperor set since it came out and still haven't looked through the extras.

Do yourself a favour and watch them instead of the movie next time.

I'm very glad to see I'm not the only one who feels obliged to go through all the extras of a disc before I feel I'm done (some of my friends think I'm nuts to do so and I started believing them). But only in a few cases do I still like commentaries, so like matrixschmatrix I tend to play games while I watch them and seldom are they that riveting that it disturbs my game. Although I have to say the Marion Keane commentaries on the Hitchcock Criterions drove me up the wall and I had to shut down the discs as otherwise I would have had to rebuy a lot more than just the DVDs.
Probably the best commentary I listened to in the last month was Frank Darabont's commentary on the Shawshank Redemption BD.

I have to do everything. Image galleries, restoration demonstrations. Ah, colour bars!

zedz wrote:

Mr Sausage wrote:I hardly ever watch extras any more. Can't seem to make time for them, for some reason, even the ones that looks enticing. I've had Criterion's Last Emperor set since it came out and still haven't looked through the extras.

Do yourself a favour and watch them instead of the movie next time.

Extras in general or just the Last Emperor?

Mr Sausage wrote:

zedz wrote:

Mr Sausage wrote:I hardly ever watch extras any more. Can't seem to make time for them, for some reason, even the ones that looks enticing. I've had Criterion's Last Emperor set since it came out and still haven't looked through the extras.

Do yourself a favour and watch them instead of the movie next time.

Extras in general or just the Last Emperor?

Just that particular movie. I never really liked it in the first place, and the dodgy reframing on Criterion's disc just makes my teeth ache, but the extras, particularly the ones providing historical context, are excellent, as I recall.

The Narrator Returns wrote:"OKAY, THIS IS A SHAMPOO BOTTLE HERE! THE LABEL SAYS THAT YOU SHOULDN'T GET IT IN YOUR EYES! I THINK THAT'S JUST TELLING PEOPLE TO PUT IN THEIR EYES!

*Friedkin pours shampoo in his eyes*

"WOW, THAT HURT A LOT MORE THAN I EXPECTED IT TO! I GUESS YOU SHOULDN'T PUT IT IN YOUR EYES!"

I just read that with Friedkin's voice in my head. Awesome. I can do an impersonation of him, so it's fun to say it out loud as well.

A while ago when we were mentioning favorite commentaries in rapid succession I blanked on this and forgot to include the best director to give commentaries that I can recall: Kazuya Tsurumaki.

I base the praise on the commentaries he gives on his series FlCl, which reveal the inspiration for most of the craziness of FlCl in a brilliantly offhand way. Every commentary for each episode runs the same way. Tsurumaki and the Japanese moderator talk about details and get into discursive reminiscence on this vanished Japanese soft drink of yesteryear, or this popular fad that only locals would appreciate. Once in a while Tsurumaki mentions the guest directors who directed a scene here or there, and talks all about what else they have done that he loves. He shares stories of his vespa, which was somehow broken filming the stop–motion credit sequence of the show and which has never run right ever again. He tells us which music videos by The Pillows were his favorites when he was younger. He talks about the zipper on this character's jacket, and the frets on this character's guitar.

Then in the last two minutes of each episode, as the credits roll, the commentator tries to drag Tsurumaki towards clarity. "What was the point of the main character missing his brain in this episode?" the commentator asks, or: "what's the meaning to you of how he's afraid to swing a baseball bat?" And suddenly, in the remaining 45 seconds or whatever, Tsurumaki inevitably delivers a by–now absurdly logical, clear and concise account of the various themes each episode touches upon, and how the visual and dramatic metaphors in the episode have been arranged around those themes.

It's remarkable because what happens in any episode of FlCl can be intriguing, but it also always feels a little obscure–I imagine in good part due to the density of the episodes. But in a couple of seconds Tsurumaki can make plain an enormously thorough and organized purpose behind each crazy story, and he makes it clear that the expression of the ideas in each nutty episode was actually a catalog of well–realized visuals and dramatic coups compressed into an absurdly small space. And so Tsurumaki manages to reveal his own mysterious genius even as he dispels most of the mysterious obscurantism created by the series. All six episodes have commentary like this, and it plays out the same way every time. It's fantastic.

I'm very happy to add Radley Metzger to the "gives good commentary" pile - on the evidence of The Lickerish Quartet and Camille 2000 he's a highly articulate and engaging speaker who covers a huge amount of ground.

It helps a lot that he was the distributor of his own films, as it meant that had first-hand experience of the entire filmmaking process from scripting to release, and also an encyclopaedic knowledge of the surrounding social and cultural context - something he had to pay particular attention to because he was constantly pushing the envelope with regard to what was permissible onscreen.

manicsounds wrote:

The Narrator Returns wrote:"OKAY, THIS IS A SHAMPOO BOTTLE HERE! THE LABEL SAYS THAT YOU SHOULDN'T GET IT IN YOUR EYES! I THINK THAT'S JUST TELLING PEOPLE TO PUT IN THEIR EYES!

*Friedkin pours shampoo in his eyes*

"WOW, THAT HURT A LOT MORE THAN I EXPECTED IT TO! I GUESS YOU SHOULDN'T PUT IT IN YOUR EYES!"

I just read that with Friedkin's voice in my head. Awesome. I can do an impersonation of him, so it's fun to say it out loud as well.

Well, Friedkin's voice does nothing for me, and—at least judging from what bit of the commentary on To Live and Die in L.A. I sat through, he's very much of the Narrating Everything That's Happening on Screen school.

I agree about The Last Emperor extras (though I like the film too) - not just the historical Ian Buruma piece, but also the excellent interviews about the creation of the music, which is much more in depth about the process (perhaps because of the collaboration involved) than almost any other score-related extra I have seen on a DVD. It is a real shame that the aspect ratio issues relating to the main feature have perhaps caused people to steer clear of this edition of the film, which is one of Criterion's best.

zedz wrote:I'm exactly the same. There are some commentaries that drive me to get all sorts of long-ignored household jobs out of the way.

Non commentary related but this reminds me that sometimes while playing a computer game or surfing the internet I give myself a small, arbitrary 'shutting off time' to push me into actually getting up and doing a particular job. I decided a month or two ago while surfing the internet to turn the television over to the Sarah Millican comedy show on the BBC and, having a good idea about her normal routine, thought that I would watch it until the first time she said something about eating, exercising or being fat. I thought I would have maybe five minutes or so before I needed to turn off. The following is what happened:

<click to channel>

"So I was on a treadmill eating an Aero bar the other day...."

<turns television off>

I didn't even get to five seconds!