DVD Buffet #1

DVD Buffet is a feature I'm going to do sometimes where I talk about the special features I watched from a variety of DVDs. Sorry if you thought this post was about all you can eat digital discs.

Oldboy - Commentary
First off let me just say, for those who are unaware: this film is a masterpiece. It has everything that makes a good movie, including what is easily one of the greatest fight scenes in cinematic history. I have the special three-disc collector's tin version, and it actually comes with three commentaries. I watched the one with the director and cast. It's a little unusual watching a subtitled commentary, and I get the feeling that a few comments may have been overlooked here and there, but it wasn't bad. With the cast there it didn't get too technical, there was a lot of joking and talk about performances and some behind the scenes stories, so it was an entertaining one, which is a relief because if you watch a lot of commentaries you know how boring some of them can be.

Kenny vs. Spenny Season 4 - Deleted Scenes and Alternate Episode
A few of the deleted scenes on this one weren't even deleted, they were in the episodes, so that was lame. But other than that there were some funny ones. I enjoyed seeing Spenny having to bring a goat to his dentist appointment, and Kenny messing around with people in his fat suit. The alternate episode was for the "First One to Stop Singing Loses" competition, so basically what we got was more songs by Kenny. I loved the one that was almost like a TV show theme song about how Baby Spenny was born when a homeless guy jerked off in a trash can and then it got struck by lightning. I don't care if the show is scripted or not, that's funny.

WALL-E - Deleted Scenes and 2 Short Films
I appreciate that the deleted scenes had introductions by the director, because I like hearing the reasons why scenes were omitted. Most of the time it's just for time or redundant content, but there was a scene here that required a whole explanation because they decided to re-do it in a different location with the characters' roles reversed because it wasn't quite right, so it was interesting to see that. The short films were both funny and cute. I loved the idea of BURN-E being about a robot who keeps getting screwed over by the events in the movie. Next time I watch WALL-E I'm going to look for him, because if he's visible in the actual movie then that's even more awesome. The other short, Presto, was about a hungry magician's rabbit who is denied a carrot so he messes with the magician and refuses to come out of the hat, causing all kinds of craziness that the audience seems to think is part of the act. Gotta give Pixar props for creativity.

The Breakfast Club - Character Profiles
When I say "character profiles" I mean people talking about the characters/actors in interviews, not little written articles that they sometimes do on DVDs. I have the "Flashback Edition" of the DVD, which was released somewhat recently, so seeing what the castmembers look like now and having them look back on the film was cool. Unfortunately Molly Ringwald and Emilio Estevez seemed to be unavailable for comment, and John Hughes hasn't been seen in public for many years, but the other castmembers offered a lot of insight. For example, I always felt that Alison sells out at the end when Claire gives her a makeover, and some of the people interviewed said that as well, but Judd Nelson had an acceptable theory: she didn't sell out, she was only letting Claire do something nice for her, it was just kind of a bonding experience. She probably wasn't about to come to school like that every day anyway. Interesting stuff though and a great movie. There were more featurettes about things other than the characters so I will look into those sometime too.