What audio commentaries do you listen to/like on you LOTR DVDs?

[johnsemlak]

I was listening through a few of the audio commentaries on the DVDs of all three films recently. I find that I quite enjoy the director and the writers commenting.

I was listening to the actor's commentaries and I find it sometimes enjoyable and sometimes rather uninteresting. A lot of the time it's just the actors showering each other with praise that didn't reallly inform me that much. I also thought at times the actors were making overly scripted comments and were'n't really talking much about their own experiences I think I would have preferred there to be fewer actors doing the commentary--perhaps a couple of the more articulate ones like John Rhys Davies, McKellan, Boyd, etc.

I haven't listened to the other two commentaries (can't remember what they're called). Are they interesting?

 

[Wormwood]

In order of (my) enjoyment:

1. Director's Commentary: Informative, interesting, worthwhile. Invaluable for understanding the minds that distilled (the kindest word I could think of) Tolkein to the screen.
2. Design Commentary: Some dull spots, but full of good behind-the-scenes info. They have every right to be proud of themselves, IMO.
3. Production Commentary: The least 'flashy' of the tracks, it's surprisingly entertaining. Like the Designers above, they are good for some anecdotes. It's refreshing to hear from the people we normally ignore but who are actually indispensible to the production of a film.
4. Actors: Ugh. The good? Billy Boyd, Christopher Lee and John Rhys-Davies are consistently entertaining and worth listening to. The bad? Everyone else. Awful. Eery time Sean Astin or Elijah Wood open their mouths, I die a little inside. Puerile, shallow, and boring.

 

[johnsemlak]

In order of (my) enjoyment:

4. Actors: Ugh. The good? Billy Boyd, Christopher Lee and John Rhys-Davies are consistently entertaining and worth listening to. The bad? Everyone else. Awful. Eery time Sean Astin or Elijah Wood open their mouths, I die a little inside. Puerile, shallow, and boring.

I didn't want to name names negatively but yeah, I pretty much was bored with Elijah Wood and Sean Astin (and Orlando Bloom as well). I have liked some of the bits with Andy Sirkus (sp?; the Gollum actor). I would have liked to have heard more of Christopher Lee on the commentary.

 

[Desdichado]

I didn't want to name names negatively but yeah, I pretty much was bored with Elijah Wood and Sean Astin (and Orlando Bloom as well). I have liked some of the bits with Andy Sirkus (sp?; the Gollum actor). I would have liked to have heard more of Christopher Lee on the commentary.

Christopher Lee bored me to tears, while I thouht the combination of all the hobbits together was generally the most entertaining. I haven't seen the production or design commentaries, and I haven't seen any RotK commentaries yet, though.

 

[KnowTheToe]

The Directors and writiers was always interesting. I tried listenening to the actors and could not do it. I don't really care about what they have to say. The standard audio track is the only thing worth watching more than once.

 

[Wombat]

I have only listened to the actors track on the first Fellowship disc and part of the director/writers commentary on the same disc.

Then again, I don't tend to listen to these commentary tracks on much of anything, so getting through one whole disc of it is pretty good.

I far, far prefer the appendices so far; I probably won't listen to the other commentaries.

 

[Desdichado]

Then again, I don't tend to listen to these commentary tracks on much of anything, so getting through one whole disc of it is pretty good.

I've never been able to watch commentary tracks, with the exception of the first two LotR movies. I'm sure I'll get around to RotK eventually; at least the director/writer and the actors tracks.

 

[mojo1701]

I've never been able to watch commentary tracks, with the exception of the first two LotR movies. I'm sure I'll get around to RotK eventually; at least the director/writer and the actors tracks.

I've only got 5 dvds here at school:

"Free Enterprise," and the Star Wars Trilogy DVDs.

I've watched "Free Enterprise" with the Director/Writers commentary, and I loved it: it explained a lot, as well as some amusing anecdotes.

And I've only had the chance to peruse through certain scenes of "The Empire Strikes Back."

 

[Kast]

I preferred listening to the Production and the Artistic commentaries. I only listened to the actor's commentary on Fellowship. That was enough of that for me.

The more of the Director/Writer's commentary I listened too (I listened to them all), the more I believed the movies ended up great despite their efforts (especially the writers), rather than because of them. Credit goes to Peter Jackson for being a taskmaster, but even more credit has to go to the art and production people as well as the actors and their commitment to the project, there was no way they were going to let it fail.

It especially got my blood boiling when I listened to some of the reasoning the writers came up for why they left certain things in or changed other things in the books, it seemed they didn't even really understand the themes or the characters at all. Perhaps its a credit to Tolkien for writing such strong characters in the first place, that any of them made it to the screen recognizable at all.

 

[Filby]

I've only listened to the director/writer and actor commentaries so far, though I'd like to listen to the others.

Between the two, I think that the director commentary is by far the most informative, not to mention the most consistent, insofar as there aren't as many dull spots. Each one managed to keep my attention through the whole thing. I was kind of annoyed at their reasoning for changing aspects of the story, too, but I still thought it was interesting to hear their thoughts anyway.

The actors' commentary, I think, had its high and low points. I was always interested in hearing what Ian McKellan, Christopher Lee, and John Rhys-Davies had to say. I looked forward to every exchange between Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan... the two have such perfect chemistry and comic timing, both on and off screen, I loved them.

On the other hand... Bernard Hill and Miranda Otto bored me to tears. And Orlando just spent too much time ooh-ing and ahh-ing at everything like a rapt fanboy. And as for Wood and Astin... I cringed every time they started talking. Elijah was boring in the extreme ("Yeah... uh, this part... this was actually filmed a couple of months after... the rest of the scene... and, um..."), and Sean Astin actually made me angry several times. His anti-war speech at the end of The Two Towers had me seeing red. Even though I happen to share his sentiment, the sheer pretentiousness of this man to hijack the commentary for the sake of his political opinions (just like his speech at the Golden Globes a couple years ago) astonished me. Every time either of the two started talking, I just thought, "Shut up so we can get back to Billy and Dom!"