A friend of mine in Burbank and in the TV biz, told me that watching the Pixar “Making of…” features on their DVDs was the equavalent of an animation school scholarship. LOTR had some great bonus features, any others that stand out? I am always watching movies these days and wondering, “How did they do that?”
Personally I haven’t been wowed by any bonus feature on dvds - if I have a choice, I’d rather get the movie only version so I get a better quality version of the movie if possible (ie. Superbit)
That said, the one reason I bought the extended versions of LOTR were for the actor commentary, specifically Merry and Pippin’s - they’re hilarious. Similarly, the commentary on Goonies, ResidentEvil and School of Rock are funny too. I’ve been meaning to get “This is Spinal Tap” which has a great commentary track too from what I’ve heard. I dunno, I find directors/producer commentary monotonous and boring.
Maybe I need to get some of these newer versions of these pixar movies - I don’t think there was much bonus stuff on my original toy story and others. The Incredibles didn’t have too much either from what I remember. Oh. THERE’s a GREAT BONUS 
Jack Jack Attack! ehehe
The Incredibles had some good stuff, check out Nemo, Toy Story and Monsters Inc. MOF, Pixar even sells their animation rendering software on their site, for a mere $999. I mean I could make a fully animated Ironman film if I had a disposable couple of grand and a year to do it. I hear ya on the high rez, what are you showing it on? LCD, plasma?
you’re mostly talking animation, but I have a few non-animated for you.
In the “wait a second, what’s going on?” category of extras, in Scarface there is a scene in a Freedom City barracks-type building in Miami where all the Cubans with questionable pasts were housed/detained, where Tony Montana kinda-sorta proposes sex to Manny. Manny blows it off but Tony persists and nothing happens. It was completely cut out of the movie b/c they decided they did not want to include that angle (I remember the review of the anniversary dvd mentioning it, so it’s not my active imagination). There are a few other scenes that have the undertone to it that you realize after seeing the extra but are absolutely clueless to before seeing the extra bc they were subtle, such as Tony getting angry that Manny had a date (before Tony even knew it was his sister Manny was dating) in the bathtub “fly fly pellican” scene a/k/a the “who you gonna trust, man?” scene.
I own Heat also as one of fav movies and there’s a pretty good “making of” re the shootout.
********** 24 spoiler alert below *******************
********** 24 spoiler alert below *******************
********** 24 spoiler alert below *******************
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At the end of 24, Season 2, episode 24, when Mandy tries to kill Palmer, there is a great extra after she puts the acid on his hand and drops, where instead of season ending with him lying on ground dying, Palmer lies on the ground dying but instead of credits rolling he gets up from the ground and says “thank you for buying Allstate.” Actually, he doesn’t say that, but he gets up and waves to the crowd of reporters and says “I’m ok, I’m ok” and gets into the limo. The producer explained that this was the whole scene in the script b/c he knew one of the extras on site would leak it, so they filmed it all the way through, then cut the scene at editing with Palmer dying on the ground.
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Season 2 also - I also like the making of the Bauer-martial arts guy fight scene in the LA Colleseum. They were really hitting each other and they only used a double for one stunt. Kiefer needed break once b/c the guy took him down and almost broke his ribs.
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Season 2 also - they filmed the whole torture scene without the little evil torture specialist Ronnie and it was only the 2 thugs, one of whom was named Ronnie originally. They decided after that it didn’t work and wanted the dispute b/w the thugs and the specialist so they re-shot the scene making the new character the torture specialist. BUT the main bad guy Kingsley who was on the phone with Ronnie during the scene was off set done filming so they couldn’t re-shoot his part. So they re-did the whole torture with 3 guys instead of 2 on site and had the new guy be the new Ronnie and spliced his answers to Kingsley on the phone into the conversation Kingsley had with the previous Ronnie. Pretty unusual but flawlessly done.
Yeah, we kinda went down the animation path. I mentioned Heat in another thread last week, saying it was one of the rare films where you root for the bad guys. It is classic, and I think I saw somewhere where they have done a re-release or directors cut. Scarface I thought was just too over the top. Duh. I couldn’t take AP doing that Cuban drawl (after years of Michael Corleone). Just me I think. Speaking of 24, I watched a serious dog last night with Keifer and a very, VERY young Reece Witherspoon called Freeway (1996 if I recall). Only made it half way, then eject, seal, and back to the local Netflicks warehouse. I will look at the Heat extra again, thanks.
Here’s another: For those DVDs that contain an alternative ending in the extras, has there been a ‘major’ film that SHOULD have used an alternative instead of the one that made the final cut??? Hummmmm.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Here’s another: For those DVDs that contain an alternative ending in the extras, has there been a ‘major’ film that SHOULD have used an alternative instead of the one that made the final cut??? Hummmmm.
The classic for this is Brazil - the studio reedited the original movie against Terry Gilliam wishes and released their version instead. The story ends completely differently. Gilliam started showing his version at film festivals where it won awards and was finally released.
Interesting for me, I actually saw the Gilliam version first and didn’t know the studio version existed until years later.
two alternate endings that sucked: ronin & bourne identity haha
one “director’s cut” I’m dying for:
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the ‘alternate’ ending of ‘What Dreams May Come’ is a lot better than the movie ending IMHO, but it didn’t test as well so it’s relegated to the DVD bonus features…
I think one of the coolest DVD extra is in the ‘butterfly effect’ where you get these prompts while you’re watching the movie and can change things on the fly, hard to explain but much better than just leaving the cut scenes in the bonus section.
I’ve heard you can do something similar with the BeastieBoys anthology from Crtierion Co. … one of these days I’ll have to buy it and try…
There is some “virtual reality” porn DVD’s where you can choose naughty or nice, position etc…