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[sora87]

I'm working my way through my annual Lord of the Rings extended editions extravaganza at the moment and I've never properly watched the appendices. So I'm watching them this time after the films and they are so well done and full of interesting stuff and behind the scenes footage, it's really cool to see it all.

So what are your favorite bonus stuff from dvd/bd releases?
I remember the box set edition of Blade Runner that came out having some good stuff in there too.

 

[jett]

The Alien Anthology is king of the hill. There's a stupid amount of content. They threw in everything they could find.

My single favorite bonus feature is the Dangerous Days documentary from Blade Runner. You don't often see a professional-quality feature-length making-of doc included in a package.

 

[Christine]

The in-character commentary track for This Is Spinal Tap is one of the most fabulous jewels of the bonus features era.

 

[BTails]

Alsways liked the commentaries on the original "Askew-niverse" films (Clerks, Mallrats, etc...), as they're usually full of great anecdotes and often hilarious.

A lot of Apocalypse Now blurays come with "Heart of Darkness", which is arguably better than the movie itself.

The Abyss has a great documentary on the making of the movie as well, which will hopefully make the cut when the movie finally hits Bluray next year.

Anything on Criterion releases is usually very high quality too.

 

[Giant Robot]

Heart of Darkness (Apocalypse Now).
The City of God supplemental documentary.
Alien 3 making of/supplemental documentary, there's a ton of stuff in it that explains why Alien 3 was a nightmare for David Fincher.

 

[Brianimaniac]

The documentaries about the Alien movies are great movies all on their own. Even the ones about the bad movies in the series are great.

Prometheus too.

Prometheus is fun because there's recorded evidence of Ridley Scott being responsible for specific things that morons blame Damon Lindelof for.

 

[TedHub]

Perhaps a little niche but I always thought the commentaries on the Homestar Runner DVDs were super fun.

 

[Sgt. Kabukiman]

I love the Batman and Superman anthologies.
Extensive documentaries and audio commentaries for every film and they don't really censor themselves when talking about the shitty ones.

I also like the ones mentioned above like the Alien anthology, the Peter Jackson films (including The Hobbit where the bonus features are more interesting than the movies) and Blade Runner.

I haven't bought them on blu-ray yet but the Star Trek films on DVD had great special features a well, especially The Motion Picture with an audio commentary from the legendary Robert Wise.

 

[Loxley]

That hour-long documentary that chronicles the catastrophe that was the making of The Phantom Menace is pretty damn good. It's like the team making it saw the writing on the wall early on and made sure to document everything that went wrong production.

 

[Concrete Charlie]

There's a bunch of different commentaries in the Fight Club blu ray that are pretty great.

 

[Hjod]

Best commentaries found on DVDs are Arnold on Commando and the track with Ben Affleck and Michael Bay on Armageddon.

 

[LordRaptor]

Die Hard With a Vengeance is totally worth it for the batshit-crazy alternate ending

e:
also the Futurama cast commentaries are hilarious IIRC

 

[dreamcastmaster]

Best commentaries found on DVDs are Arnold on Commando and the track with Ben Affleck and Michael Bay on Armageddon.

The best is Arnold on Total Recall. He didn't do one for Commando, unfortunately.

 

[old manatee]

The best commentary track I've heard was for The Limey.

Apparently Soderberg followed the script very loosely, so the commentary track is the screenwriter just badgering him about every change the made.

At one point he asks Soderberg why he cut out an entire scene full of dialog and Soderberg says that he wanted more coverage of a car driving away from a house, and on the screen there is just a car driving.

It's really contentious, and much more interesting than commentary tracks where they are just fawning all over each other.

 

[MisterFalcon]

There's a bunch of different commentaries in the Fight Club blu ray that are pretty great.

Brad Pitt and David Fincher are really great together.

(scene where a stuntman throws himself down the stairs in Fight Club)
"David, how many takes did you shoot for this ?"
"About twelve"
"And which take did you use ?"
"The first"

Another commentary with some animosity is Sum Of All Fears with Tom Clancy being very unhappy at the story having been rewritten. Men In Black also has a strange combination of cheerful Barry Sonnenfeld and mega grumpy Tommy Lee Jones.

One of my favourite things on making the movie is from the first Hunger Games movie where there is a massive BTS feature that goes into every facet of making a film from a massively popular book series. And Oblivion for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWmJUAVuhP

 

[Bleepey]

Any Asian cinema cinephile should buy Hong Kong Legends DVDs. Basically anything with Bey Logan.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Anchorman had a hilarious commentary track that's basically like a movie in of itself. They go in and out of character, random celebrities show up, etc.

 

[geomon]

The original Ghostbusters DVD video commentary, with MST3K silhouettes.

You could only watch it on a 4x3 television.

 

[Protome]

I bet it doesn't hold up now, but a lot of the stuff that became Pottermore (sorting hat quiz, getting your wand etc etc) was all included as playable bonus content in the Philosopher's Stone DVD. As a kid I thought it was the coolest shit.

 

[sora87]

Some cool suggestions! Will definitely check them out probably starting with the Aliens stuff.

 

[mavericktopgun]

The Titanic Bonus Features

 

[rekameohs]

The Phantom Menace making of is incredible. I don't think I've seen a more candid look at a troubled production.

 

[Brian_FETO]

The commentary tracks on Community DVDs are awesome. There's one for every episode with a rotating cast, each episode is like a podcast with people from the show

I've heard 4's wasn't great (I didn't buy it) but I've watched the first 3 all the way through with commentary. Admittedly I bought 5 when it went on sale but never watched, it's supposed to be a return to form for the commentary tracks though

 

[Dangansona]

From what I've seen so far the 50 years of Bond collection has some great Interviews and Making Ofs. Criterions are always great.

 

[Mister_Bubbles]

Dog Soldiers has an amazing commentary with the cast getting drunk and bantering along with the film.

 

[thenexus6]

DANGEROUS DAYS - Blade Runner is the GOAT

 

[Daniel Jackson]

The on-screen in-episode guide on the Game of Thrones blu-ray boxes (don't think the dvd's have it)
Very handy for first time viewers (such as myself) to keep up with all the characters and locations.

 

[Deleted member 102362]

Anything Charles de Lauzirika has worked on is amazing, specifically Blade Runner and the Alien Anthology. The breadth and depth of the supplemental material is staggering, especially the individual film making-of documentaries.

 

[Sean]

24 Season 2 DVD had a two hour documentary showing how they created the season finale episode from start to finish. Everything from script meetings, fight choreography, location shooting, filming a massive cliffhanger ending in front of 150 extras.

I found it quite interesting.