Sermon from the Mount

DVD's are a wonderful piece of technology. They allow you to watch a movie at home with excellent picture quality, surround sound and a whole heap of extras. They are what is know as "A Good Thing". One of my favorite extras that you are increasingly finding on more and more DVD's these days is the Commentary. Because DVD's are capable of containing multiple audio tracks, rather than fill them with increasingly esoteric language tracks, many DVD's now include commentaries from the Actors/Writers/Directors/Producers involved in the making of these films.

An excellent example of the good use of such Commentaries is the disc for the movie Fight Club. The commentary by David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter is one of the best I've heard. It talks all about how they got the movie made, reasons behind what changes occurred in translating the book to the screen and many anecdotes and tales about the filming of the movie. The Commentary has a point and is informative. Having a number of contributors allows for the commentary to avoid being bogged down in tangents and left hanging in silence for long periods.

For every good disc however, there naturally has to be a bad one. And in this case, it the one I was watching last night - The Rules of Attraction - a dark, twisted comedy which I happen to adore. Now the movie is great. The problem arrives when you listen to the first of three commentaries on the disc (the only one I've heard so far). The first commentary I've listed to involves you having to sit through the prattling, in amongst long periods of silence, of one of the lead actresses and a few of the minor players. Now I can appreciate that actors and actresses who have only had a few roles, don't necessarily have all that much experience to draw upon to use in these commentaries. But it begs the question - why have them go solo then???

Just because the facility is available, doesn't mean you have to use it. I don't want to listen to dopey idiots prattle on about "How hard this was" or "Oh my god I don't remember that". I want to learn something when I spend the time listening to a commentary. I don't want to know that I have the exact same amount of insight as those who made the bloody film. Sitting through commentaries like this aren't what I call fun, they make me want to punch the tv (not to mention Hollywood actresses.....)