commentary junkie

[ironymaiden]

i love commentary tracks on DVDs. i like to gather factoids about the production, about how movies and tv work, and about the creative process. i like craft; it's a whole other layer of entertainment for me. i've been working through Babylon 5 in order (i've seen fistfuls of episodes, but not the full story arc) and i'm partway through season two. this set of packaging sends you to the special features when you have completed viewing the last episode of the disc. so i decided to rewatch one with JMS commenting. which is quite good, since he's the creative force, but i just had to turn the damn thing off. he's telling plot spoilers not just from later in the season, but from later in the series. i suppose i shouldn't expect to be protected from 10 year old pop culture, but damn. no more special features for me until i'm done. sigh.

Comments

[buhrger]

I probably <3 JMS more than I <3 Joss, which is saying something.
i ♥ them differently - joss is ultimately better at writing people (and comic dialogue), but jms is better at seeing the big picture, and turning that big picture into a fascinating chain of events. (all of the above IMHO, of course.)
i've sometimes thought that if i had a ridiculously huge sum of money, and couldn't use it to fight AIDS in africa or something else useful, i'd get joss and jms into a room together and ask them to make an interesting 5-year genre tv show for me.

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

I can't really argue with you on any of that. I'm more impressed by JMS's ability to tie together 5 seasons of plot than by Joss's ability to write dialoge, but that's me and probably more about where my skills lie than anything else.

[buhrger]

there were times in BtVS when i wished someone had put the series (or at least the season) together beforehand - in some ways b5 spoiled me for most of tv. but at the same time, i think i have a stronger emotional connection to most of the buffy/angel/firefly characers than most of the b5/crusade characters...