DVD Extras?

[rcarlberg]

I posted this a couple years ago and got some good responses, but it's been a while and it might be worthwhile to bring it up again.

Part A: DVDs
What DVDs have you seen that have really nifty extras on the disc, like cool deleted scenes, informative director's commentaries, funny bloopers, anything that makes a disc worth owning? I have a few that fall into this category but unfortunately they seem to be rather rare.

Part 2: Blu-ray
Has anyone seen a Blu-ray disc that utilizes the "BD-Live" feature (internet connectivity) for anything other than ads or previews of other films? When first announced this feature was supposed to link you to alternate endings, in-movie trivia, Google map links, actor bios at IMDB, commentaries, fan forums, all sorts of cool stuff. Unfortunately I haven't seen ANYTHING like this yet -- and I've been looking.

[Dave (in MA)]

Part 2: Blu-ray
Has anyone seen a Blu-ray disc that utilizes the "BD-Live" feature (internet connectivity) for anything other than ads or previews of other films? When first announced this feature was supposed to link you to alternate endings, in-movie trivia, Google map links, actor bios at IMDB, commentaries, fan forums, all sorts of cool stuff. Unfortunately I haven't seen ANYTHING like this yet -- and I've been looking.

I think the Neil Young Archives is supposed to have lots of extras, but I only sprung for the DVD version.

[GuitarGeek]

I don't have a Blu-Ray player so I can't comment on any Blu-Rays, but my favorite DVD's, as far as "extras" go:

The Grateful Dead Movie: 90 minutes of extra concert footage, a great audio commentary, the TV commercial for the From The Mars Hotel album, and a bunch of really cool interviews. The commentary has some great stories about the making of the film. There's a great piece where Gary Guiterez tells of how he created the opening animation sequence. There's some hilarious stories on the audio commentary, one of my favorites being Susan Crutcher telling of the day a couple of Jerry's Hell's Angels buddies came to visit while they were working one editing the film.

The Closing Of Winterland: Another Grateful Dead one, this one sticks out in my mind because amongst the bonus features is a period news piece, which includes a brief interview with Dick Latvala, who was at the time still more than a decade away from becoming the Dead's archivist. The reporter seems astonished when Dick says he came all the way from Hawaii to see the Winterland show, but then Dick adds "Well, I went to the shows down in LA and San Diego last week too".

Evil Dead: There's two audio commentaries on this one. The first is Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert. The second features Bruce Campbell, by himself. Both are good, but Campbell's in particular is hilarious as he almost ridicules the movie, or at least the actions of the characters within. "OK, that guy should know better to wander off into the woods by himself, he's toast".

Bubba Ho-Tep: Another Bruce Campbell film, and another one with two commentaries. The first commentary is Campbell with the director Don Coscarelli. That one is again informative, but it's the other commentary, credited on the DVD as being done by "The King", though presumably it's Campbell doing the commentary, in character, as Elvis Presley. He spends the entire commentary totally ripping the film to shreds. He complains about the premise of the film, the language ("When I was making pictures, you couldn't talk like that in 'em"), the depiction of himself in the film ("I'd never speak to a woman that way!"), and even throws in his apparent opinion of Tom Parker (when the narration mentions that Elvis should have fired Parker by the time he started making movies, The King responds with "No, I should have fired him long before that!").

Phantasm: Another Don Coscarelli picture, this one has a great commentary where he reveals, for instance, that he wasn't happy when Star Wars came out, as he had spent a couple years working on his picture, only have it to come out in the shadow of a much more popular film which also had robed little people who keep their faces hidden in it.

Heavy Metal: This was one of the first DVD's I got when we got our first player. The film has an audio commentary that isn't very good, basically consisting of Don Macek reading from the book he wrote about the movie. But you also get a work print of the film, with a lot of cut scenes and dialog (there's no music or sound effects in the work print, so there's lots of dead air when there's no dialog). The work print actually has a much better audio commentary, with Macek commenting about some of the mischievous things the animators tossed in on the pencil tests, and also how apparently at one point, we were actually to see the robot and Gloria's wedding (complete with a rabbinical robot officiating), though that bit doesn't actually appear in the version we see here. There's also a good documentary about the making of the film, which at last explains why the shot of the house exploding at the end of film is very clearly a model shot and not actual animation (they were going to animate it, using rotoscoping, but Columbia moved the release date up and there wasn't enough time to finish it).

Rock And Rule: My other favorite non-Disney animated feature. This one has a great audio commentary, plus a great making of featurette, which I remember seeing on Nickelodeon's old Lights! Camera! Action! show (hosted by Leonard Nimoy) back in the day. The deluxe edition comes with a bonus disc that gives you both the Canadian version of the film (which is slightly different from the version released Stateside) and the Devil And Daniel Mouse TV special that was also made by Nelvana Productions (and apparently served as the percursor to Rock And Rule).

The Doctor Who DVD's generally have good audio commentaries and documentaries too. Likewise for the Tomorrow People DVD's.

[SteveSly]

One that comes to mind is the Fish – Live At Nearfest DVD. The hour long interview / documentary “extra” part of the disc is almost as entertaining as the concert. Fish is always an interesting character.

Steve Sly

[GuitarGeek]

One that comes to mind is the Fish – Live At Nearfest DVD. The hour long interview / documentary “extra” part of the disc is almost as entertaining as the concert. Fish is always an interesting character.

Steve Sly

I didn't know such a thing existed. Would like to see that, as I remember liking his NEARfest performance a lot.

[benson]

Killer Klowns from Outer Space DVD has great extras. I also had no idea the Nearfest Fish show was on DVD. Link?

[SteveSly]

Killer Klowns from Outer Space DVD has great extras. I also had no idea the Nearfest Fish show was on DVD. Link?

I don't know if it is still in print or not. If Chad from NEARfest happens to see this thread he would probably know. The DVD contains the entire NEARfest performance as well as the hour long interview about the tour.

Steve Sly

[NogbadTheBad]

LOTR - Fellowship Extended Edition - has a bunch of really interesting documentaries on the making of..

[NogbadTheBad]

Not a real bonus disc but Romantic Warriors II Special Features DVD has excellent live performances from a bunch of bands (Rabbit Rabbit, Yugen, Thinking Plague, Aranis, Hamster Theater, Ruins Alone, Miriodor, Stormy Six) and some really interesting interviews.

[benson]

The Multi-disc "Blade Runner" DVD's (and Blu-ray I guess) have great extras including an incredible 3 1/2 documentary from 2007.

[no.nine]

The DVD of This is Spinal Tap is a must! Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest all do a commentary in character and it's hilarious. There's a part where one of them complains that, with all the film that had been shot during an entire tour, Marty DiBergi only used the footage that made them look bad!! (The old Criterion DVD adds another commentary with them out of character but I've never seen that one.)

Furthermore, there are almost two hours of outtakes, and because this film was essentially improvised, there's no duplication of material. And lots of it is just as funny as the scenes which made the final movie. Unquestionably an essential DVD!

[GuitarGeek]

The DVD of This is Spinal Tap is a must! Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest all do a commentary in character and it's hilarious. There's a part where one of them complains that, with all the film that had been shot during an entire tour, Marty DiBergi only used the footage that made them look bad!! [/SIZE]

Yeah, I remember them kvetching about DiBergi's "hatchet job" of a film in the Guitar World interview back when Break Like The Wind came out in 1992. They said they filmed multiple shows (I forget how many), and every night the pods worked perfectly. Except for the one that Marty actually chose for the film, of course.

I also remember them talking about the status of the band's catalog and how the legal position of their lawyers was that not only just Spinal Tap not have the rights to their catalog, but neither should anyone else (literally no one else, as in never to be reissued).

[GuitarGeek]

By the way, another one that I forgot about was The Blues Brothers. I guess there's been another DVD issued since the one I have, but the one I have has an "extended cut". Apparently, when the movie was originally made, John Landis had created a flick that was something like three hours long, and intended it to be screened with an intermission. Universal thought this would never fly, so they insisted he cut the film down. Apparently, a couple decades, they went looking for the original cut, with the intent of releasing it as a "director's cut", but it appears to no longer exist.

What they did find, however, was an "answer print", which has some of the stuff that was originally cut to create the theatrical cut, but not all of it. So they used that to prepare the extended, which has a lot of good additional bits, scattered lines here and there, the John Lee Hooker and Cab Calloway songs are longer, a few extra scenes (including Jake and Elwood talking outside the church before the James Brown bit, and also Elwood quitting his job), and a slightly different ending. The opening scene, with Jake still in prison is also slightly longer, with what I take to be an insinuation that they're taking him to be executed (I guess you could argue that insinuation was always there...it's only when he meets up with Frank Oz is it actually mentioned that he's being released, and there's the moment just before that where the guard opens the door, turns and says "Well, this is it", but it's a little more blatant in the extended cut, with one of the guards saying, "Alright, the warden wants this over with quickly" or something like that).

Anyway, there's also a great documentary, where John Landis insinuates he enlisted the help of local mafia to get permission to film the Daly Plaza sequence at Daly Plaza. It's also mentioned that the exterior bits during the Ray Charles number (with all the people dancing on the street) was actually filmed in the dead of winter, although it's meant to take place in the summer. They probably did that deliberately to get a more energetic performance out of the dancers. And Dan Aykroyd tells a great story about Belushi wandering off from a location shoot (he's eventually found in a house a couple blocks down the from the shoot, apparently dozed off in the living room).

[Trane]

Actually outside the deleted scenes in a film, I rarely go through the DVD bonus stuff... But I will say that Spinal Tap and Hi-Fidelity's scenes are cool.... But then again, I don't really buy movie DVDs(rare exceptions when they're related to music (Hair Musical, Tommy, Quadrophenia, etc...)

I have borrowed some extended boxsets from the library (Blade Runner, for ex), and I came unimpressed by the extra-stuff... 99% seems pigeon bait, IMHO

[trurl]

Avatar implemented the BD Live function for actual relevant content.

[Plasmatopia]

Avatar implemented the BD Live function for actual relevant content.

A survey of Roger Dean's artwork?

[benson]

I don't know what pigeon bait is but most DVD extras, especially on older films or TV shows are very enlightening and honest. Yes, on new releases of movies or tv shows a lot of the extras are "promo fluff" and a bit "Rah rah", but for old films DVD that have new extras, most of them are great. The commentary on "Superman IV" is great and actually makes buying that film worth it. The documentary on Blade Runner is about as honest as you can get. Probably the best DVD extra ever.

[mozo-pg]

Cheech and Chong - There is a voice over version of the movie that offers lots of background information on the story. Like, the producer for C&C later went on to Rocky. I did not know that (loud voice).

[Trane]

I don't know what pigeon bait is but most DVD extras, especially on older films or TV shows are very enlightening and honest. Yes, on new releases of movies or tv shows a lot of the extras are "promo fluff" and a bit "Rah rah", but for old films DVD that have new extras, most of them are great. The commentary on "Superman IV" is great and actually makes buying that film worth it. The documentary on Blade Runner is about as honest as you can get. Probably the best DVD extra ever.

Yeah, I suppose that if the concerned given 60's film crew is still alive, they might have some cool anecdotes and insights about the era and context.

But my point was mostly about modern films, where the films are almost made with the making-of in mind.

[arabicadabra]

One that comes to mind is the Fish – Live At Nearfest DVD. The hour long interview / documentary “extra” part of the disc is almost as entertaining as the concert. Fish is always an interesting character.

Steve Sly

I LOVE that, because he talks about me and my coffee .....

[arabicadabra]

Any of the movies I have with Eliza Dushku doing commentary - Deluxe Edition The New Guy and regular Wrong Turn - are awesome just to hear that voice....

[Azol]

LOTR - Fellowship Extended Edition - has a bunch of really interesting documentaries on the making of..

Exactly - in fact, we spent even more time watching the extras than actual movies!

[UnephenStephen]

the 25th anniversary edition of The Exorcist included the Fear of God documentary and a bunch of other stuff.
the 5th Element - a lot of how-they-did-its related to the overall look of the film (sets, matte drawings, etc), special effects, the costumes of the aliens and the diva, etc
Skyfall has what they call an Ultraviolet version but not sure what that is (maybe something to do with a download).
i also generally like commentaries done by the stars or the director (or both) whether it be a movie or TV show. they're like popup videos with voices.