Scott Cee versus DVDs

Greetings and salutations, Loungeons.
I stayed in bed today until two in the afternoon, mostly because I was up until six in the morning doing what I'm about to spend the next ten or fifteen minutes typing about.
The weather is pretty nice, and I should get a lighter coat.

So... yeah. I was looking at my DVD collection, which is by no means extensive but overall I feel it's pretty good, and pondering what to watch. Normally I'd be net diving, but my laptop hard drive is toast (a story with which I may bore you at a later time) and I'm typing this from an alternate, undisclosed location.
So this was like a couple of months ago really, but I'm presenting this as if it was very recently, as is my way. It lends a sort of immediacy to proceedings, as if this is happening right now and you can all come with me on this journey of sitting up all hours of the day and night feeding discs into my Xbox.
I decided that I would watch Ghost in the Shell. Not just the first movie, but the sequel as well. And then Stand Alone Complex and then Second Gig. And then Solid State Society (which I had to get a lend of). I tried to watch the Laughing Man, which my friend told me was different from the first SAC, but it was just the Laughing Man episodes from the first series edited together and with different voice actors which rendered it unwatchable since I had just spent like two weeks watching all this GITS stuff. Crispin Freeman is Togusa. That's all I'm gonna say about that, because I could get all nerdy and extremely upset about that dub and nobody wants to read that.

Anyway, I've had most of the DVDs on the shelves for a while. And since I'd seen these movies so many times I thought it was time to watch/listen to the commentaries if any were available. So I did. I worked my way through every movie I have and watched the director's commentary on all of them. Some were good, some were boring as all hell, some were informative. And some were just odd.
Take for example, the commentary track on the first Back to the Future (for the trilogy rerelease in like 2010, I think it was). Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis do it, and it's like some guy with a really weird accent just asking them questions like they were on a panel about the movie. It doesn't even last the whole film either, it just stops about 15 minutes before the movie does (just after the lighning strikes the clock tower).
Whoever directed 300, is just a really boring guy, as is Rodriguez in the commentary on Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Michael Bay comes across as kind of a dick during his commentary on the first Transformers, and although Spielberg executive produced it, he drops Steven's name constantly. And then mentions James Cameron for no real reason during Revenge of the Fallen. So, I kind of don't like the guy based on that. I don't know him, I've never met him, but he seems like somebody I wouldn't get on with. And he does this weird thing of like... it's almost... he's contemptuous of the Transformers fans sometimes and then he was all like when we got Peter Cullen to do Optimus Prime, 'they were right after all'. It's just a weird thing. Too much focus on the stupid kids in those movies as well.
Oh, and it annoys me when there's no subtitles for commentary tracks.

Good commentaries are rare. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Bill Hader (and the director and producer whose names nobody will know) do a good one on Paul. I haven't seen Bill Hader in much stuff, but I want to. He's just a funny guy. Simon and Nick, of course, been a fan of them all the way back to Spaced. At the beginning, when they first see the alien stepping into the light they say "This one shot cost more than Shaun of the Dead". That's when you know you've got a good commentary, it's informative and funny.
Bruce Campbell does the commentary on Bubba Ho-tep in character as Elvis all the way through. Even when his phone goes off. Robert Downey Jr is also in character (actually like three different characters) during Tropic Thunder, because there's a joke in that movie about how the actor he's playing is really method and doesn't drop character until the DVD commentary is done.

This is a kinda boring 'versus', I guess.
So, in conclusion, if you're ever doing a DVD commentary - don't be boring, be RDJ or Bruce Campbell.

Also, I discovered that, despite owning this movie for like ten years, Battle Royale is still in the plastic wrap.

So, uh, what's good DVDs to watch for the commentary? Also, how are you?

I don't usually listen to commentaries myself, mostly because few of them are actually subtitled and that's a necessity for me.

Offhand, I know the first Pokemon movie was the first movie I watched with commentary, because it was subtitled. The most recent one I watched was Hotel Transylvania, the day after I watched it without commentary...

Between those two, probably only one or two movies I have watched with commentary. And I have to like the movie a fair bit to actually do this as well. So yeah, I need to particularly like the movie, AND it has to have subtitles for said commentary so yeah....

The only one I've watched, I think, was Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader's 1986 commentary for Taxi Driver a month or so ago. It was really good. Marty and Paul were very frank about how the movie was made and I learnt a lot about writing and directing and editing and all that. It was like being lectured by Scorsese himself. I took about three pages of notes.

Being an amateur film-maker I should watch commentaries more often. Well, the good ones at least. That Back to the Future one sounds pretty terrible, Scott Cee. What's the point if the person talking isn't even watching the movie?

I believe one of the commentaries for This is Spinal Tap is another with the actors doing it in-character. That might be entertaining.

quote Aevers

AVGN

Oh cool. Didn't know you were a fan.

I think the last commentary I watched was the commentary from the movie The Butterfly Effect. It divulged about the chaos theory, while weaving in between the movie. It was pretty interesting actually, I didn't watch the entire movie with it, but a good half hour to an hour.