The box sets for "The Sopranos" provide several such one-on-one commentaries, with smart, straightforward analysis of editing choices and only the occasional dash of behind-the-scenes color.
That observation came to mind in reading one commentary on the judicial life of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
As the editors note with some surprise, only 3percentt were on social issues, and only one commentary was on abortion.
One commentary, however, uses recent Haggadot devised for feminist Seders to interject feminist insights and alternatives into the traditional ritual.
As a book about Shostakovich, the music historian Richard Taruskin has suggested, it can stand as simply one commentary among others.
For devoted petrolheads in the UK there will also be poignancy as they settle down tomorrow afternoon to hear Murray Walker's last formula one commentary.
In the hours before his race at London 2012, one commentary published in China Daily said: "The nation has been waiting four years to hear the Olympic starting gun for the star hurdler Liu Xiang".
This is a writer's Haggadah, and its authors seem to believe more than anything in the capacity of language to spur readers to empathic acts: " 'All who are bent with hunger come and eat.' This is one of those strange locutions linguists call a performative," reads one commentary by Goldstein, The uttering of it itself constitutes an act.
I admired the chutzpah of the Wachowskis in their monstrous DVD version of The Matrix, with so many extras you could hardly find Neo (they included one commentary in which three philosophers discussed the film, and another in which three critics took it to pieces).
One commentary suggests that the "speed at which the internet can spawn new ethical dilemmas has thus far understandably outpaced the rate at which organized psychology can develop ethical principles in a careful, deliberative fashion" (Humphreys et al. 2000).
