Of all the tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions hap­pen­ing around me as I grew up in the 1980s and 90s, none excit­ed me more than the DVD direc­tor’s com­men­tary. Yes, LaserDisc diehards, I know com­men­tary tracks did­n’t begin with the advent of DVDs, but they unques­tion­ably came into their own as a form on that for­mat. A promis­ing-enough direc­tor’s com­men­tary — one fea­tur­ing a fun­ny film­mak­er, or one full of fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries, or one wonky enough to get as deep into the nuts and bolts of the craft as time allowed — could by itself con­vince me to rent or even buy a disc, whether or not I cared for or had even heard of the movie itself.

And so I found it a bit dis­may­ing that, as online stream­ing began to dis­place disc-watch­ing as the home-the­ater tech­nol­o­gy of choice, direc­tor’s com­men­tary tracks — or com­men­tary tracks by any­one else, for that mat­ter — looked like a soon-to-be thing of the past. But as we’ve learned, espe­cial­ly this cen­tu­ry, tech­nol­o­gy tends to open a win­dow when it clos­es a door. At the New York Times, inter­net video has opened anoth­er win­dow onto the mind of the mod­ern film­mak­er with Anato­my of a Scene, a series of clips that each take just one scene from a film and have the film’s direc­tor explain in depth, DVD-com­men­tary-style, what went into that scene.

At the top of the post, you can hear Wes Ander­son, a direc­tor long known for his mas­tery of a cer­tain aes­thet­ic, explain some of the tech­niques that make up that aes­thet­ic as he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors used them in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Below that, Tim Bur­ton, who grew famous using an equal­ly dis­tinc­tive but whol­ly dif­fer­ent visu­al vocab­u­lary from Ander­son­’s, talks about a scene from Big Eyes, his film about the life of painter Mar­garet Keane. Keane’s paint­ings fea­ture heav­i­ly in the back­ground, which gives Bur­ton the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about how they cap­ti­vat­ed him in child­hood: “I found them quite dis­turb­ing, and the col­or schemes were quite lurid” — and so he explains how those lurid col­ors pro­vid­ed the col­or scheme for the movie itself.

The direc­tors of Anato­my of a Scene tend to talk about their recent films, and in recent years we’ve seen a fair few high-pro­file Hol­ly­wood movies deal­ing with out­er space and the worlds beyond Earth: Christo­pher Nolan’s Inter­stel­lar, for instance, whose scene of its astro­nauts hurtling into the great unknown pro­vides the mate­r­i­al for its Anato­my of a Scene video. Rid­ley Scott, always a stim­u­lat­ing com­menter, has also done one on The Mar­t­ian, his own lat­est space movie which came out this year. Scott talks over the scene where his film’s astro­naut, marooned and seek­ing any tool of sur­vival, digs NASA’s Pathfind­er out of the Mar­t­ian sands, about how, as “one of those prim­i­tives who can actu­al­ly draw,” he sto­ry­boards every­thing in detail: “By the time I start the movie, I’ve kind of ‘filmed’ it on paper, and when I get there, it gives me the con­fi­dence to feel free to allow the actors and every­body else to do their thing.”

But Anato­my of a Scene does­n’t just invite house­hold names. I used to live in Los Ange­les and still keep up with movies that exam­ine the city, and so I found fas­ci­nat­ing indeed their video with Dan Gilroy on Night­crawler, my favorite Los Ange­les movie of this past year (maybe along­side Paul Thomas Ander­son­’s Thomas Pyn­chon adap­ta­tion Inher­ent Vice, a scene from which also gets anat­o­mized). The Times has put togeth­er over a hun­dred of these videos, all of which you can watch at their Anato­my of a Scene page or on Youtube. They’ve includ­ed scenes from the work of such auteurs as Olivi­er Assayas, Noah Baum­bach, Richard Lin­klater, and Lukas Moodys­son (as well as scenes from such, er, oth­er sorts of pic­tures as Zack Sny­der’s Man of Steel). If the com­men­tary is dead, well, long live the com­men­tary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lan­dis Decon­structs Trail­ers of Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Films: Cit­i­zen Kane, Sun­set Boule­vard, 2001 & More

Moviedrome: Film­mak­er Alex Cox Pro­vides Video Intro­duc­tions to 100+ Clas­sic Cult Films

Direc­tor Robert Rodriguez Teach­es The Basics of Film­mak­ing in Under 10 Min­utes

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Last year, I post­ed about The City in Cin­e­ma, my series of video essays explor­ing cities as revealed and re-imag­ined by the films set in them — or rather, at that time, about one city in par­tic­u­lar: Los Ange­les, birth­place of Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma and end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing urban phe­nom­e­non in its own right. But ever since I first began the project, I knew I’d want to extend it to oth­er cities. When first I stepped beyond Los Ange­les with The City in Cin­e­ma, I stepped into the city I’ve long con­sid­ered my favorite to vis­it in Amer­i­ca.

And what city, exact­ly, would that be? “Port­land, Ore­gon: one of the nation’s most beau­ti­ful cities, with Mount Hood ris­ing in the dis­tance, majes­tic, serene, white with eter­nal snow,” a “city of wide streets, mod­ern build­ings” whose cit­i­zens “attend many fine church­es” and live in “beau­ti­ful homes,” a city where “in the soft cli­mate, gar­dens grow lush and green through­out the year” with ros­es “every­where in pro­fu­sion,” a “fam­i­ly town, a good place to bring up chil­dren.” Or so, in any case, goes the open­ing of Port­land Exposé, a 1957 true-crime moral­i­ty play, one of the very first films to use Port­land as a set­ting, and the one that opens my lat­est long-form video essay, Port­land, the City in Cin­e­ma.

At that time not much more than a small-to-medi­um-sized town in the woods, Port­land claims only a scant cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry up through the 1970s. But every Port­land movie that came out then, such as the CBS nuclear-strike drama­ti­za­tion A Day Called X and the bohemi­an land-use satire Prop­er­ty, boasts its own sort of inter­est. And then, in the 1980s, emerges Gus Van Sant, unques­tion­ably the fore­most Port­land auteur of his gen­er­a­tion. His black-and-white debut fea­ture Mala Noche, which deals humor­ous­ly with themes of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty on Port­land’s for­mer Skid Row (now the thor­ough­ly gen­tri­fied Pearl Dis­trict) drew the Hol­ly­wood atten­tion that would ulti­mate­ly get him mak­ing main­stream fea­tures like Good Will Hunt­ing and Milk.

But Van Sant has, in par­al­lel, led anoth­er career as a thor­ough­ly inde­pen­dent film­mak­er, and one who shoots most of those thor­ough­ly inde­pen­dent films in Port­land. That track of Van San­t’s work has led to such for­mi­da­ble Port­land movies, cen­tral to a project like this, as Drug­store Cow­boy, My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, and Para­noid Park. Dur­ing the 1990s, the time of the “Indiewood” boom in Amer­i­ca, oth­er film­mak­ers dis­cov­ered Port­land’s poten­tial as a rich and under­used urban set­ting: Annette Hay­wood-Carter for her adap­ta­tion of Joyce Car­ol Oates’ nov­el Fox­fire, for instance, or Jake Kas­dan for his uncon­ven­tion­al detec­tive sto­ry and black roman­tic com­e­dy Zero Effect.

Albert Pyun, per­haps the last great B‑movie auteur, also came to Port­land of the 1990s for his Andrew Dice Clay vehi­cle Brain Smash­er… a Love Sto­ry. And not much lat­er, the city host­ed the likes of Body of Evi­dence, a high­ly unerot­ic erot­ic thriller star­ring Willem Dafoe and Madon­na. But it, too, reveals the the city’s poten­tial (or poten­tial for mis­use) as a set­ting, as does the more recent Untrace­able, a bland com­pro­mise between tech­no-thriller and tor­ture hor­ror that at least had the mon­ey to shoot Port­land from some impres­sive angles.

As the city of Port­land has devel­oped in a way appre­ci­at­ed by urban­ists for its com­pact down­town, use­ful tran­sit sys­tem, most­ly well-exe­cut­ed archi­tec­tur­al preser­va­tion, and over­all “smart” growth (by Amer­i­can stan­dards, any­way), the cin­e­ma of Port­land has devel­oped in a way appre­ci­at­ed by crit­ics. The 21st cen­tu­ry has so far seen such well-craft­ed, thought­ful Port­land pic­tures as Kel­ly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Aaron Katz’s Dance Par­ty USA and Cold Weath­er, and Matt McCormick­’s Some Days Are Bet­ter than Oth­ers. But if Port­land, the City in Cin­e­ma remains, in its cur­rent ver­sion, the defin­i­tive exam­i­na­tion of the cin­e­ma of Port­land, I’ll be ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed. I intend it in part as an appre­ci­a­tion of the Port­land movies already made, cer­tain­ly, but in larg­er part as a call for more Port­land movies in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Fit­ting, I sup­pose, that the only cre­ative meet­ing of the minds between two of the twen­ti­eth century’s best-known film direc­tors took place on a project about the prob­lem of non­hu­man intel­li­gence and the dan­ger­ous excess­es of human inge­nu­ity. For both Stan­ley Kubrick and Steven Spiel­berg, these were con­flicts rich with inher­ent dra­mat­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty. One of the many impor­tant dif­fer­ences between their approach­es, how­ev­er, is a stark one. As many crit­ics of AI: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence—the film Kubrick had in devel­op­ment since the 70s, then hand­ed off to Spiel­berg before he died—have point­ed out, Kubrick mined con­flict for philo­soph­i­cal insights that can leave view­ers intrigu­ing­ly puz­zled, if emo­tion­al­ly chilled; Spiel­berg push­es his dra­ma for max­i­mum emo­tion­al impact, which either warms audi­ences’ hearts or turns their stom­achs, depend­ing on their dis­po­si­tion.

In the lat­ter camp, we can firm­ly place Mon­ty Python alum­nus and cult direc­tor Ter­ry Gilliam. In the short clip at the top of the post, Gilliam expli­cates “the main dif­fer­ence” as he sees it between Spiel­berg and Kubrick. Spielberg’s films are “com­fort­ing,” they “give you answers, always, the films are… answers, and I don’t they’re very clever answers.” Kubrick’s movies, on the oth­er hand, always leave us with unan­swer­able questions—riddles that linger indef­i­nite­ly and that no one view­er can sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly solve. So says Gilliam, an infa­mous­ly quixot­ic direc­tor whose pur­suit of a vision unique­ly his own has always trumped any com­mer­cial appeal his work might have. Most suc­cess­ful films, he argues, “tie things up in neat lit­tle bows.” For Gilliam, this is a car­di­nal sin: “the Kubricks of this world, and the great film­mak­ers, make you go home and think about it.” Cer­tain­ly every fan of Kubrick will admit as much—as will those who don’t like his films, often for the very same rea­sons.

To make his point, Gilliam quotes Kubrick him­self, who issued an inci­sive cri­tique of Spielberg’s Nazi dra­ma Schindler’s List, say­ing that the movie “is about suc­cess. The Holo­caust was about failure”—the “com­plete fail­ure,” Gilliam adds, “of civ­i­liza­tion.” Not a sub­ject one can, or should, even attempt to spin pos­i­tive­ly, one would think. As an exam­ple of a Kubrick film that leaves us with an epis­te­mo­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al vor­tex, Gilliam cites the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pic­ture the great direc­tor did fin­ish, 2001: A Space Odyssey. To see in action how these two direc­tors’ approach­es great­ly diverge, watch the end­ings of both Schindler’s List and 2001, above. Of course the genre and sub­ject mat­ter couldn’t be more different—but that aside, you’ll note that nei­ther could Kubrick and Spielberg’s visu­al lan­guages and cin­e­mat­ic atti­tudes, in any of their films.

Despite this vast divide—between Spielberg’s “neat lit­tle bows” and Kubrick’s headtrips—it might be argued that their one col­lab­o­ra­tion, albeit a posthu­mous one for Kubrick, shows them work­ing more close­ly togeth­er than seems pos­si­ble. Or so argues Noel Mur­ray in a fas­ci­nat­ing crit­i­cal take on AI, a film that per­haps deserves greater appre­ci­a­tion as an “unnerv­ing,” exis­ten­tial­ist, and Kubrick-ian turn for Spiel­berg, that mas­ter of hap­py end­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage (and a New Short Film by Steven Spiel­berg & Meryl Streep)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Tony Zhou’s video essay series, Every Frame a Paint­ing, returns with “Buster Keaton: The Art of the Gag.” Although his series nev­er dis­ap­points, this par­tic­u­lar install­ment may be one of Tony’s best, tak­ing you inside the comedic gags of Buster Keaton, a found­ing father of visu­al com­e­dy. If you’ve ever found it hard to appre­ci­ate the artistry of film­mak­ers from the silent era, then you will def­i­nite­ly want to give this a watch. And once you’ve tak­en it all in, you’ll like­ly want to spend time with our pre­vi­ous post: The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online. Also don’t miss this col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing anoth­er found­ing father of visu­al com­e­dy: 65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Intel­li­gent Com­e­dy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist­Di­rec­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius