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Creator's Audio Comments on Movies

I like watching movies that I liked or found interesting again with audio comments. As directors keep mentioning, they wonder who listens to them, or whether anybody seriously wants them at all. But I don't understand this scepticism. They often are genuinly interesting. When you're really into a movie or franchise, DVD bonus material (or online videos that could have been DVD bonus material) are great to feed a fan's longing for more input. And an audio commentary to a movie is like 90 minutes of extra bonus material. This is why, when buying DVDs I often make my decision dependable on whether there is audio commentary included or not. Recently I've watched more movies' audio commentary in a short amount of time than usual. That's why they're on my mind.

In my mind, there are a couple of types of audio commentary.

Director's Fan Service

This is the most common kind of audio commentary found on movie DVDs. The director talks about the scenes currently seen on screen, gives background information, tells an interesting anecdote from the set, explains the idea behind a scene, talks about difficulties on the way to the final scene, indroduces an actor, comments on a camerapersons creativity, mentions cut scenes, alternative story paths or differences between the original script and the result, thanks somebody for creative input, and so on. There is often some of this in the other types of commentaries, which is good because it's what I'm mostly interested in. Directors usually have more than enough to say to fill a movie's length with more or less constant comments. If not it can be like the following kind of audio commentary.

Director's Mandatory Overtime

If the director doesn't feel like doing the commentary, can't be bothered or for some other reason can't think of interesting things to say it can seem like they were made to record the commentary. Some comments every other scene, some renark inbetween two scenes but half the movie is still playing without any commentary. This can be disappointing and maybe even boring. But it's still so much more than no commentary at all. Sometimes in these cases the commenting person resort to describing what's seen on screen because nothing else comes to mind.

Director's Film Industry Lecture

A solution to not having anything interesting to say about what's playing can be to just talk about whatever the directo feels like talking about. Whose (of their colleagues) work is underrated, what people don't understand about certain classic movies, what they would like to work on in the future, who acts well with whome, practical tipps for other directors and so on. Not what I expect from a movie's audio commentary. But it can be interesting, too.

Director and Actor's Dialogue

My favourite audio commentaries are of this kind. If two to four people come together and watch a movie they have made together, there's certainly enough to talk about. It can be chaotic, harmonic, mostly one-sided or evenly distributed. Because of the extra dynamic those tend to be the most cheerful. They can also leave me wondering what each of the people would have had to tell if they each had had the entire movie's time alone.

Individual Commentaries for Different Departments

When much more than three people are to record audio commentary it makes sense to separate them into two or more commentary tracks. Sometimes teams are separated into departments. For example actors, camera and lighting or costume and set designers record their own commentary. This format is probably especially interesting for people who work in film or are aspecially interested in some part of the production process.

Edited Compilation of Comments

While it is true that producing an audio commentary is an easy way to add long playing bonus material to a DVD compared to producting other types of material, that doesn't mean that no work is put into producing them. Sometimes various people record their comments individually and the most interesting comments are chosen for the commentary track.

Interrupting the Playback

One of the features with which Video DVD was promoted as more useful than VHS and DV was the ability to change the order or selection of video content depending on thhe viewer's choice. This sadly rarely used feature means a DVD can contain several different cuts of a movie or let the viewer decide how a story continues. Only once I saw a DVD that contained the setting to interrupt the movie with clips of the director commenting on the current scene. I forgot which movie that was.

Visual Commentary

Not audio commentary. But it can go along with an audio commentary track. These are DVD dubpictures (little drawings, diagrams, text, handwriting, arrows) that may contain additional information, funny remarks, etc. They are overlayed just like subtitles. But often positioned outside of the movies' imagery, meaning one has to use the player's settings to create black bars and hope that it still renders the additional pictures, which software DVD players don't do.

Fan's Reaction Videos

  • The eXistenZ' third audio commentary track featuring two enthusiastic special effects artists manage to talk about a few dozen other movies as well as the one they're watching and commenting on. Thus it is making for an interesting podcast episode.
  • My Dream Computer Mouse

    I use the mouse a lot when I'm on a PC. And I have very specific expectations to a good mouse that I haven't seen met in any product. I know that my expectations must be high, considering that others don't seem to have them. But I also think that the differences between a 20 Euro mouse and a 150 Euro mouse are very small. I believe that others would like a mouse with the features that I desire in a good computer mouse. They may not realise it because it doesn't exist. But I would be surprised if I woudl be alone with these preferences. I'd like to describe those features here for that reason, but also with a little bit of hope that somebody might have a tip for me for a product to try out.

    Form Factor

    Most ergonomic mice are restricting because they prevent switching the position of the hand from time to time. Therefore I'd profer a simple shape with no unnecessary folds and pertrusions. There are some not so default mouse designs though that I don't mind, like those that hold the hand in a 90 degree rotated position, as if you're going to shake somebody's hand. That form factor likely prevents issues with your wrist. I'm not considering non-mouse pointing devices, like joysticks or trackballs. Althought I like the idea of a pointing device that only sends out positional information relative to a screen's center and physically snap back to their center position when untouched. I'd try one of those if it would be supported by an OS that I'm using.

    Buttons

    I don't really need more than three button. with less than three, I definitely miss the missing ones. But I never got used to additional buttons enough that I'd use them regularly. The same goes for additional wheels. Three keys and one wheel are enough to to many things on its own. For more there are enough additional keys on the keyboard to press and hold down. So I'd prefer there to not be any additional buttons that could be pressed accidently and cause unexpected/unintended behaviour. The three usual buttons should be hard to press compared to most mice. I would like to have to use some force so that it is impossible for me to ever accidently press one by sliding across the surface with a finger, by slipping off the scroll wheel or from random finger spasms. I don't need to be able to click repeadedly very quickly. I don't want the buttons to bounce back to support additional clicks. I want an anti-gamer mouse in this regard. Touch fields that aren't disabled by default also are unacceptable to me. I don't think I'd mind a bit of travel as long as there is a clear clicking point.

    Caseing, Size and Weight

    I wouldn't mind a rugged case that doesn't mind being handled roughly. Or a sealed one that doesn't mind being under water and can be cleaned easily. A metal case isn't so nice because it can feel uncomfortably cold. But metal parts would be good because they add weight. I haven't had a mouse yet that's as heavy as I would deem ideal, even after adding steel weights. But most mice can be brought to a comfortable weight by filling most of their free space inside with steel parts. The other things where I'd like my ideal mouse to go above what's considered reasonable is its size. I don't want my hand to hover over the mouse like a spide with long legs. I want my hand to completely lay on the mouse. The wrist on its back, leaving the forearm lifted from the table; the fingers resting on their respective buttons without bending up much. My hands are surely larger than average (although I've seen people with much larger hands.) So a mouse for me should also be that large. Some ergonomic office mice come close to such a comfortanle hand position. But they seem to be made for average-sized hands. I haven't seen a really large mouse like that yet. Maybe what I feel that I want would look rediculous. Maybe it would be so. But so did 5 inch phones when they first came out. And I argue they also fill hands more comfortably.

    Scroll Wheel

    I have very specific ideas of how the scroll wheel of the perfect computer mouse should be. There should be exactly one. I should be between the left and the right button (because that's what I'm used to and it works very well that way, not because I believe there have been enough expreriments for the perfect position), pertrude above the left and the right button about 3 or 4 millimeters and be about two cenrtimeters in diameter (or a bit smaller). It should serve as the middle/third mouse button. (That one isn't necessary, but very useful sometimes.) So far so usual. It should not be tiltable to use it for additional buttons/functions unless this feature is deactivated by default. The wheel should have haptically clear steps or clicks that reliably corrospond to scroll steps. It should never come to rest between two steps. Some force should be necessary to turn the wheel so what brushing it on one side accidentally (as an example) won't turn it a click in either direction. The surface of the wheel should have a rough and deep rubber profile. Only very few gamer mice ever had scroll wheels with a profile as rough as I want one. And of those most have been changed for mass profuction. And of the one remaining mouse with a scroll wheel nearly as rough as I would deem minimal, only the first shipment had it. Even in mice with changable wheels or surfaces I've never seen one with a grip nearly good enough to call it acceptable. Basically, what I want it a scroll wheel that never turns unintentionally, always turns 100% reliably when turned intentionally, even with greacy as fuck fingers because I'm eating chicken wings in between very important scrolling action and I don't have time to wipe my fingers. There should be little rubber spikes or canyons that aren't reduced to a millimeter after a few years of scrolling (or the wheel needs to be replacable).

    Battery, Wireless, Cable

    Of course a wireless mouse is nicer than a wired one. Battery powered devices should have standardised replacable batteries. But I see the problems with that in mice. Nowadays I would actually be OK with a non-replacable battery in a mouse (I am already). But I'd also like one that takes Canon LP-E6 batteries or similar small camera batteries. If it is a wireless mouse it should use little currents to make it work. With a battery with 1.5 Ah or more charging shouldn't be necessary more than once a year. But a wired mouse is OK, too, if it has a good silicone cable.

    (tbc)

    I may be like Homer Simpsen when he designed his dream car here. But I expect that I will only be convinced of that by giving me my supposed dream mouse to use.

    Alternative Operating System: Haiku OS
    This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

    Haiku OS

    Haiku OS is a BeOS clone. I didn't use BeOS back in the day (although I wish somebody would have showed it to me). So I'm not sure, but Haiku seems to be pretty much the same experience. But Haiku is open source, still actively developed and compatible with newer hardware. It ran relatively well on the Core2Duo PC I've tested it on. Except for the included web browser. That thing crashed. For a lot of people whether a desktop OS is usable is decided on how good of a web browser is available for it. Haiku OS Beta 3 looked promising with its WebPositive using WebKit 612.1.21. But at least on the old PC I've tested it on it wasn't usable. It was slower than imaginable and kept crashing after one or two page loads. (The simple included help pages at that. I didn't even feed it something complex, like YouTube or Google Docs.) But I've heard others hat a pretty good web experience with it. At least as long as nobody asks about security. The rest of the system is snappy enough. It's no KolibriOS, but on any x86 or x86_64 from the last ten years it should be as fast as anyone wishes their OS to be and much older computers run it just fine. There seems to be a not so small community of users and developers. Every new Beta that is released comes closer to a desktop OS that has everything that people ask about/for. (Let's not talk about big games people are familiar with.) And because of the growing community and the fact that the 32 bit version can still run many applications compiled for the original BeOS this is not just a small OS with theoretical goals bigger than its community. It's really usable already and it looks to me that it has good chances of becoming more important in the future. I'm not sure if I'd have said that five years ago. It's moving slowly (compared to Windows and Linux), but consistently towards its goals.

    Edit 2024: The have been two new alpha releases since I wrote about Haiku here. It is definitely capable of being an everyday desktop OS even though the release candidate's version labels are modest. The biggest change recently has been that GTK has been ported to Haiku, meaning that a large number of graphical applications becomes available or portable. Applications that have been written with other operating systems in mind. This has been demonstrated with Inkskape and GIMP. But many more applications will follow, I'm sure. I suspect that this also means that Firefox or some fork of it will be the web browser most people will use on Haiku. It certainly makes it more usable as ther main OS for many people.

    Alternative Operating System: Essence
    This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

    Essence

    This is one I'm continuasly disappointed to not have been able yet to get running on real hardware. I like what I've seen. But I can't get it to boot, as do others. I don't know too much about the internals of Essence. But it seems to be relatively far in develpment. There is a sleek GUI with tabbing windows in the look of early Chromoium browsers, which looks very inviting, if only I could get it to even try to boot on any computer. The focus has not been on making the OS actually boot on real hardware so far. And unfortunately there has been no release since 2022 and no update to the code for over a year. So I stopped hoping that it might be working soon. I was looking forward to getting to know a knew OS that doesn't take a Unix-like approach and has nice tabbing windows.

    Film: Everything Everywhere All at Once

    When I first saw that movie I felt like I had just watched a work in movie history that marks a bifurcation: Before and after the existance of this film. Similarly to Matrix. There's before and after. Before being a world in which such a film does not exist and after a world in which anything produced will be compared to it. On the top of the list of reasons for why I felt that way is probably how unique and unseen many of the ideas of this film have been (to me).

    Because of my inability to describe stories of films accurately in few or single sentences, I'll just quote Letterboxd here: "An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes."

    I still like to see the film as this unique piece of movie history. And I will always praise it for some uncommon and daring choices, well-chosen portrayals of chaos, carelessly genius storytelling and its ability to surprise and entertain me more than any move in years, which now, after decades of watching all movies that sound interesting, itself is an achievement. I don't know what additional impression it has on Asian-Americans. (Apparently some details are easy to relate to for sombody who has grown up as an American with Chinese parents.) I also can't view it from the angle of an immigrant parent. I recognise that there are things to say about this part of the story. I can't with my experience though. But as a science fiction action film alone it has made my day, week and more when I saw it. The contrast between everyday life and science fiction action life probably plays a big role in making the impression of something that I haven't seen before. It is an overall good film. Even the fighting scenes are creative and worth watching. I often either skip parts of fighting scenes or with I has skipped them because it's enough to see who one/how many are down/whether somebody is injured or dead at the end of the scene. Most movie fighting coreography is the same moves in a new order with marginally creative new elements. This is an exception, as Matrix was, and contains some really creative stuff. (Maybe the first fighting scene is still the best in this regard though.) So many things especially the main character experiences and does are unexpected; can't be expected because this multiverse family story has never been told before.

    I'm sure for most people the film will go down in history as just another science fiction film. The fact that I got the DVD a few weeks after it's cinema release for 6 €, which is as low as new DVD prices go, I think, suggests that it's not seen as an especially successful movie. I intentionally didn't look up how well it did and what most people think of it. For me it's a genius film for many reasons. And I'm not even a person looking back at my life and thinking about what could have been if I had made different choices. How good must the film be if you can relate to any of it's topics? I feel confirmed in my impression that this film is unlike any other before by the titles listed under "Similar Films" on Letterboxd: Free Guy, Guardians of the Galaxy, Barbie, Matrix

    Some may think the crazy travelling-between-worlds stull was too much, because it goes on and on. But I like that. It has enough crazy ideas to not make it boring. One scene that ends in switching between worlds each frame for seconds, made a special impression with me, because it went on for longer than it has to, and then still went on for longer than I thought it might. A few seconds for which you nee 30 new ideas/images/worlds for each second, it was quite long. When looking at the individual frames I noticed that many are repeated multiple times and others are almost identical (from the same world, so to speak). I'll attach here all the different images from that scene that were shown too short to appreciate them.

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