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This is the shelf of DVD’s with commentaries I intend to watch over the next few weeks. I watched Independence Day tonight actually. Very interesting.. ;) Grease I have already watched but I ran out of room on the other shelves. A couple of these I have watched the commentaries before but need a refresher.
I’m blogging like there’s no tomorrow today ;)
If you look in my side bar down a little bit, you’ll see last week’s stats on what I have been listening to. I seem to be overdosing on Nirvana a little. However there is a reasonable explanation. 1. I am addicted to their music right now and can’t stop playing it. 2. The network box has been down for a few days and the only music on my playlist I could actually play was Nirvana.
New bits for the server box have been ordered and are on the way so soon the Linux server will be back up and this means reliable music playing 24/7 so things will get different then.
The track which I expect will go to the top of my playlist with a bullet next week is the one I am listening to now – t.A.T.u – 30 Minutes – lastfm is excellent, I really love it, whose idea was that again? I can’t remember who told me about it now.. If you don’t use last.fm you should be using it. Seriously. You can either use it with your winamp type program or listen via their streaming or something. Check it out here.
Matching up with this post of Sephy’s. ;)
When I was growing up, I watched a LOT of movies. My parents had one of the first video machines on the block. We were one of the first people to sign up at “Focus Video” i think it was called, and we usually between the four of us rented anywhere between 2-10 movies a week. So a lot of movies have influenced me over time. Every time I mention a movie to my good friend Sephiroth, most of the time he has never seen it. This is partly because he is a lot younger than me. Many of the movies I really loved were from the 80’s.
A fair while ago we decided the easiest thing to do was for him to just make a list of movies I thought he should at some point in his life see. I suggested he get Ferris Bueller’s Day Off a while back and when he said to me yesterday that he had it, I decided I would like to re-watch it myself. Of course I already had it here in my enormous DVD collection ;) hehe I must take pics and post them for you some time. But I watched it with the Director’s Commentary. John Hughes reminds me a lot of a guy we both know from baiting, Bandit. The way he talks is quite similar.
One of the lesser known facts about this movie was that Ferris was actually the first teenager chosen to go on the space shuttle. Just before before this film was released, the Challenger accident happened. So the film was edited to remove that bit of the storyline.
John Hughes talked quite a bit about the Institute of Art, and one thing he said was that he used to go there a lot when he was taking a day off from school. Long before I heard him say this, this movie inspired me and probably a whole generation of kids to do the same thing. My number one destination was always the Museum {the egypt room, does this come as a surprise to anyone? ;) but I also loved the rocks}, followed by the Art Gallery. There’s something about those places that make you forget all your troubles and just *be*. I would usually go to the art gallery once a week minimum.
I didn’t go to school for almost all of year 11 at school – the deputy principal died while scuba diving (an aneurysm – is that how you spell that?) about two months into the school year and I did not enjoy the way the other kids revelled in it. He was a good guy and we interacted a lot with each other the previous year because I got kicked out of art class – I can’t draw and I hated it and the Art Teacher was a nasty cow who liked to point out I couldn’t draw – and he was the teacher who ran the detention I got sent to instead of going to art class. I explained to him why I hated art class and he admitted to me that he never could draw either but he loved to take coloured pencils and just make little colored squares with them. I had a huge pencil case full of great pencils and the two of us often spent an hour sharing a desk and pencils, just coloring in squares and enjoying the colors and talking about all kinds of stuff.
He inspired me to take a few different classes the next year when I didn’t have to take art, one of them being Latin with a really good teacher friend of his (and the dead poets society had something to do with that too, seen that one Sephy?) but the other kids thought it was great that he died because he was the real disciplinarian. So there I was, probably one of the only people in the school who was upset about this and I really missed him – typing about it opens up a big hole I had forgotten about, too. A couple of days after it happened some kids got real rowdy laughing and joking about it and I took one look and thought, it’s going to be like this for the rest of the year. I don’t need this. These people suck, bigtime. So each day my Mum would drop me off at school, I would go and sign in at home room, then I would walk down to the train station and catch a train into the city. I’d go wherever I felt like going. If I had enough money I might go to the movies but usually I had to look for stuff that was free and save any money I had for buying lunch.
The other thing I really loved about this movie was the idea of life moving pretty fast so you have to stop to take a look around once in a while. I firmly believe in that to this day. You have to have me time, every now and then. I had a lot of me time when I was in year 11 and this was one of the things that taught me to really love my own company. I couldn’t often talk anyone into taking even one day off school with me. They were all worried about getting caught.
The irony of this is, I never did get caught. I actually passed all my classes. I even passed exams I did not show up for. There were almost 500 kids in my year level of school, 5 year levels in total and most of them had over 500 too. My maths class had 60 kids in it. So one kid was not missed. Nobody ever said anything to me about it. At the end of the school year I was dreading getting my school report but when I did get it and I found I had mostly got b’s, I suggested to my Mum that it might be time to look at changing schools.
Wow, that blog kinda went off track a little there. ;) Sorry about that.. ;)
Ouch, I have just been working on a scambaiting task so complex that my head hurts and I had to stop! I can’t even explain it to you, it’s just too hard. I’ve been working pretty hard on baiting stuff all day actually.
So then I go to look at pretty pictures instead. But all the pretty pictures have disappeared from the network drive and now I can’t find them! ;(
Last night I watched about half of the Apollo 13 commentary track and it was fascinating. I think I might go watch the rest of it soon. If my head doesn’t explode first. I’m just going to do the blog rounds for the day..
Everybody loves Sunday, yeah? Except every day is like Sunday to me now, being that I don’t have to work and all. ;) I just realised though, reading the usual blogs, I missed Australian Idol tonight. That’s mainly because I haven’t been watching it regularly so I’m not wound up like an alarm clock that rings when it turns up on the tv ;) But I was kind of looking forward to laughing hysterically at Bobby Flynn again. I’ll just have to wait till it gets uploaded to youtube I guess.
I watched Priscilla Queen Of The Desert with commentary track last night, it was great. I am thinking I might go watch Apollo 13 with the Jim and Marilyn Lovell commentary track. ;) Just recharging the cordless bluetooth headset which I watch tv with when the other half is sleeping ;)
I’ve been a little inspired by this blog here today during my read through of the usual suspects. My first thought on reading this was – do people still buy cd’s? Over the past couple of years I have bought two, to be precise. Metallica’s The Black Album and Guy Sebastian’s A Beautiful Life and that’s only because I am a huge fan of his. But don’t shoot me, we’re all entitled to like stuff whether it’s good or shyte. ;)
I’m not into reading CD liners but I am really into listening to DVD commentary tracks. Over the past 24 hours I have listened to two – Top Gun (Tony Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer and writer Jack Epps, along with technical advisors Captain Mike Galpin, Pete Pettigrew and Vice Admiral Mike McCabe) and Pretty Woman (Director Garry Marshall).
The question you’re probably asking is, why do I love commentary tracks? If you have never sat down and listened to one yourself you might wonder what the heck I am on about. Take a movie that you really enjoy or love, and then get a whole new dimension added to it by people who were involved in the making of it or even acted in it perhaps. I’ve listened to probably more than 50 of them over the last couple of years, I don’t like to buy a DVD unless it contains a commentary and I have noticed now that sometimes they are adding commentaries to movies which means I have to buy another copy! This happened with both Romeo + Juliet and Top Gun – I now have early copies without any extra features which I may as well use as coasters because I value the new copies a lot more.
So the ones I listened to yesterday were just completely fascinating. Top Gun is a movie which I do love – mainly for the opening sequence more than anything. I’ve been demonstrating that to customers for about 14 years – I used to have it on laserdisc and I used to demonstrate it on a $10,000 THX system we had in a sound lounge in the very first store I worked in. The sound on that movie is incredible, there’s no doubt about it.
Seriously, if you have a decent surround sound system, go play just the opening sequence at a fairly high volume and you’ll see why I used to sell so many of those THX systems and surround sound systems in general. There’s something so indescribable in that opening sequence. 9 times out of ten it actually makes my eyes water and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. So it was hilarious to hear Tony Scott say that he was fired 3 times from Top Gun and one of the times was for that opening sequence footage.
The Pretty Woman commentary track was just lovely. Garry Marshall was the director of a lot of stuff I really loved when growing up, including Happy Days. You’d think one guy would have trouble carrying a track all on his own but he talked for most of the way through the movie about all kinds of stuff, and he was funny and friendly and so interesting. I didn’t realise until he mentioned it that he also directed The Princess Diaries which I also loved, one of the major reasons being Hector Elizondo who plays a similar type of character to his Pretty Woman role.
I’ll sit down and put together a list of some of my all time favourite commentary tracks over the next week or so, just in case anyone is interested. In the meantime, you might want to check out ratethatcommentary and see if your favourite movie has a track and then go find a copy of it to watch.
There’s also Wikipedia with info on alternate commentary tracks, which is something I may have to look into, sounds interesting! ;) and a really interesting quote from Jack Nicholson..
It seems to be summer again. It was 35 degrees C here today and for the first time this year I wore shorts and flippy shoes yay! The other half and I had the day off so we went to Shellharbour (over 50kms) to go shopping. We got us some nice dvd’s including a new issue of Top Gun with commentary track. I am looking forward to watching that. ;)
They have a Starbucks there and I had a new frappucino thing called Pumpkin Spice, it was amazingly nice. Wow, that rhymes. We also left our car with the car washing people and while we wandered round the shopping centre it got cleaned w00t that is wicked, definately going to do that again.
On the way back we stopped at this spot of beach near Gerringong and the sand was truly golden and warm and beautiful. I took off my flippy shoes and we went for a walk on it.
The music was great today, plenty of Nirvana and Metallica and Lukas and Toby, much singing along was done. I’m going to take some of the rest of the day off, maybe even all of it, even though I have a lot of baiting work to do. I’m here alone tomorrow and Sunday so I’ll work while the other half is at work.
We were looking for music dvd’s but didn’t really find what we were looking for. The music store was playing Marcia Hines new cd Discotheque and it was actually quite nice, I almost bought it but the other half grabbed it out of my hand and said he didn’t want to encourage her. Fair enough I guess.. :) That doesn’t mean I can’t buy it when he’s not there.. hehe
Oh back to the title of this post. The great thing about summer is the crickets. I love to go to sleep hearing that comforting chirp. Last year I had crickets outside my window but they haven’t come back yet ;( Hopefully soon. The bad thing about summer is people not wearing enough clothes. Because this is a holiday destination, you’ll see more ass crack at the local Mcdonalds in the carpark than you ever want to see in your lifetime.
As we were driving out of town today there was a fire in the middle of the road. Someone must have dropped a cigarette and it set the median nature strip on fire! ;( I’m always worried my Dad is going to set fire to things, and I wanted to buy these to stop him from doing it. I figure 72 of them is a pretty good deal, and if they’re everywhere there’s a good chance he’ll use them. But of course now they are sold out! ;(
I just saw Australian Idol – If Bobby Flynn is the new generation of Aussie music, I would like a plane ticket, thanks. When tonights performance appears on youtube, I’ll put it here for you all to laugh hilariously at. The dancing! OMG!
“I can’t see the point of painting everything black or white” – lyric from A-ha’s The Sun Never Shone That Day.
Well I really love A-ha. This lyric makes me think. I really do think of everything in terms of black or white. Good or bad. Hero or Zero. Love or Hate. Right or Wrong. For me there really are no in betweens. I do not think this is a bad thing for the most part but I know other people find it difficult to deal with when they are dealing with me – especially when they disagree with me.
On the other hand, people always know where they stand with me – if they bother to ask. I make no bones about it. I don’t go around behind peoples backs – I’ll say it to your face. Unlike a lot of people people in life.
However, I am happy to agree to disagree – it won’t stop me believing what I believe, it won’t change my opinion or way of doing things. I believe regardless of how compatible two people might be, they will never agree on everything.
Tomorrow I plan to get up early and watch a couple of movies. I haven’t seen Romeo + Juliet in a bit too long now, I bought Priscilla Queen Of The Desert ages ago but haven’t sat down to watch it on DVD yet, there’s a few others I may consider as well.
Last weekend I watched Grease with the commentary track – I got it on DVD, it’s a 2 disc version with a cute little leather jacket over it. They cleaned up the movie a fair bit digitally and it looks incredible on my TV. So good I want to watch it again a few more times. ;) Commentary tracks are always fascinating to me and this was no exception. Well worth watching.
I totally agree, it is disgraceful and something should be done about it! ;)