DUDE, SIN CITY WAS GREAT!

plus, they thanked all the golden & silver age comic artists at the end of the credits. You don't see "Neal Adams" referenced much anymore...

oh man, now i have even more reason to see this.

I love Brittany Murphy, though.

Probably catch it next weekend here.

Back in early '94 or so, I used a light box and black fabric paint to make a t-shirt of the "when you've got a condition, it's bad to forget your medicine" panel. I wore it at the San Diego con that year and it gave Miller a small chuckle. I wonder if I still have it somewhere.

Really, the last third in particular had me questioning my never-walk-out-of-a-movie rule. The whole thing was just draggy, repetitive, interminable nonsense. It wasn't the worst film I've ever seen, but it was not good at all. I wanted to like it so much, too! Stood in line for an hour to see this bitch.

I was very torn by this movie. On the one hand: totally gorgeous looking, fantastically complete and immersive visual world, non-stop action, well edited, thoroughly "entertaining", fun fun fun. So it totally works at being what it's trying to be, which is a film adaptation of a comic book. So it's not as if it's a failure, and the reviews which allege that it is too violent clearly just don't get the horror/comic book context, nor do I buy the idea that it's ultimately "dull" because it's so focused. So on all those fronts, it's a great film as an experience for the eyes and ears. On the other hand: what we have is a film adapatation of a comic book adaptation of noir as a template, so this triple amplified chain of exaggerrating something that was an exaggerration of something that was already very crude becomes very dodgy in relation to gender and how "maleness" and "femaleness" get visually realized and scripted. I found it a kind of embarassing reductio ad absurdum of cartoon lovin' fanboy heterosexual male desire: hookers (with hearts of gold!) innocent wittle schoolgirls (that you get to watch grow up just enough so that you can fuck them! and when you do it's because THEY PUSH THEMSELVES ON YOU! yeah that happens ALL the time!) ie. there's this fucked up centrifugal engine at work in which women are desirable yet continually the objects of extremely sadistic violent energies- the plots try to resolve this thorugh splitting- there is the "evil psychopath" who incarnates the direct sexual sadism (the bad guys) and then there are the good guys who as vigilante figures outside the law etc. just go out and seek to do good in the name of the ladies they love (the absent "good" women who sit on the sidelines and suffer, and look awfully good as they suffer) which makes them laughably improbable and corny, and the whole thing, when viewed coldly and dispassionately, looks pretty sad, a pure distillation of adolescent flight from what sex is like, what interactions between men and women are like, the compromises and shadings of, um, actual human people. So yes the picture succeeds at being a gorgeous comic book, but in the process the intensely adult precision of its art direction and focus reveals very clearly that it was made by people who know that these plotlines and characters are utterly flat and clichéd which means that you have a creeping sensation of void or flight that washes over you.

To put it another way: The question for Rosario isn't "omg, you played a prostitute, that must have been hard, eh?" but "geeze isn't it corny that somebody is so out of touch with what an actual prostitute's life is like that they when they stage a gang of prostitutes they basically look like Tekken fighters as dressed by Hot Topic?". I know the knee jerk response is Dude, it's a comic book what do you expect? to which I would reply "the plot of your comic book makes the way you think about women and the way you think about yourself extremely obvious, and the relentless violence of that vision and the virgin/whore clichés that drive your fantasies seem really obvious and worn-out".

Everybody BUT me seemed to love it, and I was kind of sad that I couldn't feel the same way. When you take away the movie's relation/debt to its source material, it seemed like so much wank-fodder for the CRWs of this world. It was just adolescent in a really terrible way, and I say this as a married man in his mid-to-late 20s who has a stack of comic books on his nightstand and has spent most of the morning falling off of a skateboard.

I totally give credit for the film for getting that comic book interior monologue thing down, but yet this also made for an incredibly dull film. I just failed to find entertainment in being treated to image after image of ACTION paired with that utterly relentless voiceover. Any drama/tension in the film just seemed to come from the voiceover or occasionally an ironic interplay between voiceover and image that seemed very one-note after half an hour. I have just never felt so passive and fidgety while watching an action film, couldn't engage with it at all.

Well, to be fair it IS an incredibly dull comicbook. Airtube's criticisms upthread are exactly why I think Miller shouldn't be a writer at all. I love the way he draws, especially in Sin City, but that's all the goddamn thing has going for it. I won't be seing this movie.

anyway yeah, i think porn really is the standard of comparison here. and i have kind of glaring incomprehension/complex about porn, so it makes sense that i didn't get into this movie too much.

i haven't read this particular set of miller comics so i don't know if it's sort of self-parodic itself.... "dark knight" is certainly, despite some satire and moments of mordant humor, pretty self-serious and "intense."

what's up with the IRAesque terrorists in this movie? they should have thrown in some digs at the italians and the poles too, just to round out the whole anti-catholic theme.

... the story was just a skeleton on which to hang the visuals and the sex and inventive violence.

Never underestimate the ability of the San Fernando Valley to recontextualize *anything*

punctured the pofaced 'seriousness' of miller's schtick

I don't know about that. I always thought of Sin City as having more than a touch of self-parody. Then again, I guess I was never 100% sure what to make of the comic.

But that may be why I enjoyed this movie so much more than I enjoyed reading the comics. I got it, finally, completely. Yes, it's parody. Ok, I can relax and just let the sickness wash over me. It's a big, fun sickness.

This is wise and smart.

hmm... I guess this statement assumes that we have already decided that Tarantino does not make porn, which I suppose we have not. Like Ned said, Momus to thread.

No it doesn't. This reviewer makes the same mistake the Drew does, to the opposite extreme. The mistake is to ascribe moral values to this material to begin with. It's not about anything but the way it's done. Ebert is the only critic who gets it completely right: "The movie is not about narrative but about style."

If you think about it, that most on-high classic of the noir genre Double Indemnity is the same way. There's not a moment when you believe the relationship between the Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwyk characters works, or needs to. It's an excuse for him to call her baby and for her to smoke constantly. It's pulp. It's walking and talking in a mannered way, affecting behavior which has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world. It has no moral whatsoever, no bearing on the human condition at all. If it did, they'd call it literature.

Don't you people know what pulp is? It's a guilty pleasure for chrissakes. A guilty pleasure that you shouldn't have to feel guilty about anymore.

Hmmm...out of curiosity, ever read a Mickey Spillane novel?

I found Mickey Spillane about as interesting as reading Sherlock Holmes books. Which is to say, quite a bit, but not in any life-changing way. Sherlock Holmes is pulp, too, though.

Ned the Sneak, I could be the greasy card-sharp that gets his head clobbered by Tony Mescaline every so often.

I agree with you very, very much. I make the mistake of assuming that other people don't already know this, which I guess is arrogant on my part.

But aren't you doing a bit or reifying yourself? That's a pretty ethereal word, seeing as how it means "making concrete that which is not concrete." You're going to need more than that post to substantiate that argument.

buddy, if you ever wind up in court, that 'get out of jail free' card you're waving won't help. this is a pathetic argument: rockist (pulp != literature -- why?), trivialist (james m cain was not just writing mannered stuff about nothing, and neither was wilder interested in fluff), and trivial. if you don't believe in the central relationship in 'DI' it's your loss: i'm not entirely claiming cain for neo-realism (ahem 'obsessione' ahem), but 'nothing whatsoever to do with the real world'? do me a lemon.

When you take away the movie's relation/debt to its source material

Why on earth would you do this??? ("Here's the thread where Dan makes a complete 180-degree turn on his normal rhetorical stance!")

oh, this is rich. Morning, ILX. Tell you what, now let's hear someone argue that comic books are literature, that they don't get enough respect, blah blah fart piss blah. I don't spend a lot of time putting art into careful constructs in my head -- valid, invalid, moral, immoral, whatever -- and I don't believe anyone should. But if you can't tell the difference between what has and was meant to have weight and bearing on your life and what does not and was not meant to, you're the one I feel sorry for.

as it goes i have never read a comic, but i have read 'double indemnity'. cain (pulp) was a stated influence on camus (literature). so yes the pulp/literature debate *is* stale, but it was *you* who raised it.

I don't spend a lot of time putting art into careful constructs in my head -- valid, invalid, moral, immoral, whatever -- and I don't believe anyone should.

what does this even mean? it must be literature!

fuck you too!

I agree with you, really. That's not even what I was saying. I was addressing the specific issue of ascribing morality to something that is an exercise in pure style, which is a silly thing to do, and an all-too-popular one.

i have read 'double indemnity'. cain (pulp) was a stated influence on camus (literature). so yes the pulp/literature debate *is* stale, but it was *you* who raised it.

Never read the book. I was pretty clearly talking about the movie, though.

Look, this is not a big divisive issue, I don't think, but you came out swinging. What the fuck, dude?

I loved Gilmore Girl's eyes.

well... hmm. No, you're right. There's something very basically human exposed in this style, which is why the style endures and why I like it so much. But these are not morality tales, or even conventional narratives. Jocelyn says that we get no background on the characters, which is true, but I think that's rather purposeful. We're not supposed to care about them, not in the usual way, and we're not supposed to even want to know what they're like apart from nasty and brutal and noble in some slantways way. They're caracatures of humans -- it's all very cartoonish. Is there something to be learned from them? I dunno, maybe, but I think that's the wrong question.

what the hell does Josh Hartnett's chracter do?

he metes out JUSTICE! HURRAH!

first i think the porn argument is kinda stretched out and disingenuous. especially the whole "the story is just a skeleton to hang the visuals etc" on. i mean when did we start privileging plot so much that anything that doesn't put it in the front seat equals porn?! i mean you could say the same thing about my dinner with andre: the story is just a skeletal construct on which to hang an exciting experience shared by two people!

also i think calling sin city "parody" falls pretty short of the mark. there's a pretty big difference between what this movie does and say what scary movie does. if anything i think the word here is pastiche. it's definitely comic but i don't think it's correct to describe this movie as a comedy straight up.

also i do agree with much of what drew says but what other male fantasy can you think of that presents castration as a positive character choice in SEVERAL instances?

He's a hitman. The first girl hired him to kill her (hence "I will cash her check tomorrow morning"); the girls of Old Town hired him to kill Gilmore Girl.

Another thing I loved about this movie is how there's enough detail there to fill in the backstory but you really have to pay attention to catch it.

s1ocki OTM re: "pastiche".

Wow, I didn't catch that at all, I thought he just said, "I'll cash THE check tomorrow morning" (as in someone unknown to us hired him to kill her). That's a more interesting setup though.

I don't think that backstory would have helped much. Backstory is kind of redundant for all of the protagonists (Owen, Rourke, Willis) in this movie anyway - since they're all pretty clearly playing the same character - who is not even a character so much as a type - a type that goes back at least to Bogart and Raymond Chandler. You don't really need any familiarity with Frank Miller's work or even need to pay much attention to the backstory to know exactly where these guys are coming from and how they'll behave in any situation. I guess you can call that an exercise in "pure style" and celebrate it, but it tends to sap the movie of its resonance and emotional vitality over the long haul, especially after the visual excitement wears off.

I didn't say that, and wouldn't. It's all art. This movie is sho 'nuff art.

OTFM

I took this to mean "her check" as in the money I will be paid by the person hiring me to kill her, not the money SHE paid me to kill her. That seems a bit contrived even for Frank Miller.

I enjoyed the movie a lot, I'm fully with the people in the "it's entertaining and pretty and a little silly" camp. You have to figure Mickey Rourke danced a jig when he was called about this role, I think he brought the right tone of voice to the (over the top cheesy) internal monologue.

I would quibble with the word "substantial" here. I don't really see the differences you noted. None of these guys is amoral or an out-and-out sociopath. They all subscribe to rather austere codes of honor or morality or whatever you want to call it, except when it comes to killing and maiming bad guys. But they're all troubled by the fallen world they inhabit, they all valorously stand up for and defend women (even if the film is careful to provide us with "strong" women to balance the scales) as a matter of principle, they all believe in some rudimentary justice (even the Rourke character wouldn't kill the head baddie until he was convinced that he was guilty of something, and the Owen character tried to stop the carful of sleazeballs from getting killed by the hookers because despite being creeps they hadn't killed anyone themselves).

And I don't really buy the argument that the lack of believable characters was intentional in this movie. This movie was all about the internal lives of its main characters - from the thoughts playing in their heads to their conflicted morality to their bouts of indigestion and assorted ailments. Why spend so much time trying to get us inside the heads of these characters if they're not supposed to be believable human beings?

This is still bugging me. This is almost the opposite of what I said. I didn't say it was invalid because it wasn't conventional, or whatever. Which is also why the accusation of rockism rubbed me the wrong way -- it implies that I was complaining that pulp isn't good, or isn't good enough, or isn't good in the right way, which is all complete bullshit.

It's pulp. It's walking and talking in a mannered way, affecting behavior which has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world. It has no moral whatsoever, no bearing on the human condition at all. If it did, they'd call it literature.

and here's the thing for me: pulp isn't trying to be "naturalistic"; within literature that's associated with stories about relatively prosaic things, not vamps and guns and crime, not so much, anyway. but just because it's mannered, that doesn't mean it has no bearing on the human condition, it's more that it's treatment of the world is unconventional: it does not give us rounded characters. but sometimes i think this lack of roundedness is actually *more* of a protest against the world than the naturalistic ken loach-type movies, whose protest is much more prosaic and gives us rounded characters 'despite it all'. comics give us the fucked-up products of a dehumanizing world. (i think. i mean, i've never actually read one.)

xpost

None of these guys is amoral or an out-and-out sociopath.

Rourke's character had to take medication to keep himself from hallucinating that all kinds of evil was out to get him and that the only solution was to pre-emptively kill it in order to protect himself; that was the reason why he wanted confirmation before going after the head baddie, not because he felt bad about killing him. Owen's character didn't want the hookers to kill Del Toro's gang because he wanted to off them himself (ie, the entire reason why he went after them in the first place, remember the whole "unless I get them now, they're going to fuck someone up and then come back after Shellie" bit?), not because he was trying to protect them.

I took this to mean "her check" as in the money I will be paid by the person hiring me to kill her, not the money SHE paid me to kill her.

She seemed awfully familiar with him and accepting of why he was there, though, completely at contrast with Gilmore Girl's look of abject terror when he said her name in the elevator.

READ ONE COMIC

Maybe he started out that way, but what about the whole, "This feels wrong, they may be scumbags but they haven't killed anyone yet" bit from him?

Well, I think the truth is probably somewhere in between. I'm understating the importance, and you're overstating it. It has *something* to do with the human condition, yes, and I take that back about it having no bearing etc. Then again, I don't read a comic like Sin City or... ugh... Preacher, fer chrissakes, and think, "Wow, the world sure is a terrible place in which the little guy can't get a break and etc." The plots and style and characters are way too fucked to allow it to be absorbed on that level.

isn't the main audience like 18-24 year-olds tho? (of course 24 year olds can be no-hopers. but do we want to see bruce willis snogging the ladies much? no.)

THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP

jesus christ almighty people
jesus christ almighty

Pedophile rapists = bad
Innocent little schoolgirls = good
Serial killer = bad
Vigilante who imposes "justice" = good

There's nothing threatening to normative moral schemes about these assignments of praise and blame. If you want to seek out art work that truly has the balls to utterly violate normative ethics, you'll need to seek out stronger stuff, such as De Sade, Dennis Cooper's Frisk or the extended lipsmacking descriptions of child torture and murder in writers like Peter Sotos (who has done time in prison for child pornography). When measured against the yardstick of people who are truly uncompromising in their pursuit of an artistic vision in which there is no moral compass whatsoever, Miller's superhero-with-a-"dark"-side plotlines are revealed for what they are: standard issue good against evil stories lightly dressed up in a pseudo-"edgy" vinaigrette. We shouldn't give him credit for a nihilism he simply isn't capable of.

This is absurdly reductionist and akin to criticizing a log cabin for being flammable.

Hollywood is an industry. It makes things that are going to sell. As such it's neither good nor evil. If I am guilty of personifying Hollywood as a kind of agent in order to quickly sketch a point on a discussion board, fair enough, bust my chops about it. But what I impute to Hollwood in my objection upthread is only a cynical, knowing ability to massage its target audience's insecurities and desires. That target audience is a heterosexual male one, and this fantasy narrative (as a comic book AND as a film) sticks to the program. It would be commercial suicide for it not to, but I am still free to call a spade a spade, and I regard plotlines in which gorgeous 18 year old girls throw themselves at grizzled gnarly older men as wish fulfillment / consolation. To someone with no investment in this fantasy and therefore no indulgent bias to "roll with it", it reeks of impotence and anxiety and overcompensation. I am saying that this is true of the original narrative; the economics that enable it to be made into a feature film demonstrate the popularity of this fantasy- so its translation into film is a de facto ratification of the fantasy on a purely instrumental "it will sell" level. This doesn't make Rodriguez a jerk or talentless- I did say that I enjoyed the film as an experience. But when I hold it up to the light and analyze it I see the same old structures and strategies.

Scott, they did make a Dennis Cooper movie, and it sucked. It had some good music by Lee Ranaldo, tho . . .

This is actually one of the reasons why I avoided the comic books. The movie seemed to be much more tongue-in-cheek in execution, which mitigated the reprehensible portions quite a bit for me (for example, the way women are treated in the story is completely ludicrous and wrong; any woman who speaks out quickly gets subjugated by a man and beaten up/killed).

One strange thing I noticed was that I kept wanting to check my watch to see when it would be over, but I never actually did. I think the same thing happened for me with Requiem for a Dream.

[xpost] mmm, sounds delicious!! I'll have to check it out. Thanks Scott!

I am not denying wish-fulfillment as a driving factor in this movie; I am arguing that Bruce Willis kissing Jessica Alba did not cause the studio to greenlight this movie when you already have scads and scads and scads of titties and macho mayhem running around in the other 125 minutes of the movie.

Right, but the fact of it's execution remains - tongue in cheek or not. Again, I would have liked this movie more if some of the "meat" was off-screen.

I would have liked the movie more if Miller hadn't created a society where women can't exist without degrading themselves. As testosterone-driven adolescent power fantasies go, this was really one of the most visually-arresting and best-presented that I've encountered.

i did the same thing, spencer, well actually i just couldn't SEE my watch because the screen was always so DARK that there was no reflected light by which to see it. so when i finally did check it i was convinced i had sat in the theater for like 3 1/2 hours but it turned out to be less than 2. but the movie felt really really long to me, probably because the extreme similarities in the 3 or 4 segments made me feel a lot like i was sitting through the same story several times.

ok so "sin city" = hal hartley's "flirt". not quite.

also, it was cute to hear the 45-different variations on the "Not the Art of Noise's Version of 'The Peter Gunn Theme'"

Jessica Alba was most convincing when twirling the rope.

Thanks to Dan's phrasing here, something just occurred to me which my viewing this weekend may justify, but does this all mean that Sin City is at heart John Woo directing Showgirls?

The film is even more of a cartoon than the original comic is. Miller's original drawings work as caricatures, but the comic medium grants suspension of disbelief, I completely entered into those stories. You can't do that with the film, with absolutely implausible prosthetic makeup on physical actors -- you're self-consciously watching a 'comic'. The film lets you get off the hook in a way the comic doesn't, you can laugh off every murder. I'm not surprised many people prefer that approach to that of the original comic. I had a lot of fun watching, but felt more than a little odd and removed afterwards. There was more to the original than laughing it up at a slow pan across an army of hookers all firing off sub-machine guns.

xpost the scene with Hartigan and Nancy is obviously meant to make you feel uncomfortable.

The Old Town segment was pretty good (the Del Toro/Clive Owen scene in the car was fantastic), I suspect most of it was directed by Tarantino as the actors felt like they were on the same stage responding to each other, it actually approximated a noir feel lacking in the rest, the CGI was incorporated wel with the characters. (And outside of Brittney Murphy semi-begging for Owen's forgiveness was lighter on the woman-hating.)

I wasn't disgusted or put off by the violence (vs. Ishi The Killer, which I couldn't stomach), it was just stupid and sadistic, violence to show that Rodriguez is into violence. I felt numbed by watching person after person get shot or smashed (until I was creeped out by Willis/Alba).

I pray this live-actors CGI-sets phenomenon doesn't take off, or that someone like Tarantino (who won't let the gimmickry completely overrun the film) will do one 'the right way.'

I flipped through the source for the Marv segment today and I think there are two scenes missing from the book in the movie; the rest of it is a literal word-for-word picture-for-picture translation, plus it really was shot to mirror the comic book as closely as humanly possible with live actors. Every single thing that has been complained about in the movie is a problem inherent in the source material. If your complaint is that Rodriguez stuck too closely to the source material then why not run with that as opposed to excusing Miller's sins (ha) and blaming all of the imagery and bothersome plot points on Rodriguez?

"Well, isn't that special."

They shot it all, and had to cut some for time. It'll all be on the DVD, though.

By the way, we never did get around to talking about those thong-clad asses. too little too late now...hope you're happy, party poopers.

I loved the movie, but yeah, ain't no 19-year-old trying to get with Bruce Willis.

I believe Tarantino only directed the scene in the car. FWIW.

I dunno; it's just a bit off. He relates to her completely as a child, as a daughter figure, throughout most of the film, so it's somewhat of an abrupt switch to accept. Plus, Bruce Willis is OLD. But it's noir, and if that sort of relationship is going to be acceptable anywhere, it's in this genre.

2. Will Josh Hartnett make a worthy beau for the recently dis-engaged Katie Holmes?

2. ABSOLUTELY.

Note: Bledel, Aoki, and some unknown to me blond on current cover of Nylon, in conjunction with Sin promotion, wearing next to no make up and appearing to have have seen better days, except for the blond who looks perky.

He looked creepy with his goatee at the end.

xpost - I really want to see Beauty Shop. I don't know if it will live up to the Barbershop standard, though.

also i just saw sahara and it is a very stupid movie.

haha who in sahara needs to fire their agent most?

For him, too! It's not like he fucks her. He's a bit creeped out by the whole thing as well. It's agape for him, clearly, not eros at all. He doesn't (fully) accept her invitation to what he knows is wrong. In fact, he dies instead. What's creepy?

OTM OTM OTM OTM OTM OTM OTM (I think I elaborated upthread)

Brittany surprised me...she was probably the most real she's been since Clueless, (and briefly in 8-Mile)...Hartnett was great, but I think that has a lot to do with limited screen time. Plus expressionlessness works for him, because HE IS EXPRESSIONLESS. Kinda like why Keanu rocked as Neo.

I dug Nick Stahl's performance too...he throws out that huge voice & he really gets your attention.

This is also my biggest criticism of the movie/source material. There were several points where it seemed like Miller was thinking, "A woman hasn't been slapped in the past ten minutes, better throw in a smack or two."

clive owen was good. murphy was good too. i liked the middle section best. the line about a car with a big trunk was the highlight of the whole movie. and miho and the elijah wood character should have fought at some point!

(xpost: SHHH NICK YOU ARE RUINING EVERYTHING)

This doesn't actually contradict my statement.

Is anyone self-sufficient in the movie???

The three protagonists are (Hartigan and Marv moreso than Clive Owen's character, admittedly), plus the crooked priest and his senator brother and Benicio Del Toro's character.

xpost

all of which suggests that she is on a level with the men in the movie.

it's never clear whether this is actually true or whether she's lying to rosario to make her choices seem more defensible.

it was good when it was funny, ie when it was auto-parodic. but it didn't feel that 'strange': all the digital jiggery-pokery went to far towards recreating a fairly conventional film. i wanted something more jagged and comic-booky.

Are people REALLY not seeing the intentional symmetry between Hartigan and Yellow Bastard (esp. wrt to the entire theme of child abuse that the vignette revolves around)?

i'm afraid i'm not. really liked the rourke chapter, was a bit put off by clive and benicio's centre-partings, but the willis/alba thing was a let down.

also: i wish the stories really had intertwined. in fact all you got was brief cameos of characters from one chapter in another.

Except of course no one is saying this.

well, they're saying something like it.

that said the gilmore girls girl is really hot in this

hm...

Anyways from a purely aesthetic point (which is mostly how i watched this, as well as from an action-movie-camp view) it was gorgeous. The music was kind of silly but i love love love the visual style, especially the silhouette scenes. And that bit with the kid with the glasses was spooky, I loved it.

*The first episode: this was the biggest disapppointment. Marv is the most interesting character in the Sin City comics, and the first story probably made the biggest impact on anyone who read it at the time (after that, Sin City has been a case of diminishing returns), so he he should've gotten a better treatment. Mickey Rourke was perfect as Marv, and there's nothing wrong with how the story was presented visually, but it was simply too short! Rodriguez got through the whole intricate plot with a lightning pace, and there was simply no space to breath. For example, the scene where Marv walks through the rain took several pages in the comic, and really worked as a breather between all the action scenes, but in the movie it was over in two minutes. Similarly, much as liked the choice of casting Elijah Wood as the psycho cannibal, the scenes with him were so short his character have the same sort of creepy quality as in the comic. I have no idea why Rodriguez thought he could fit three Sin City stories in a two-hour movie: he should've filmed only two of them, or even better, just make a 90-minute film of the Marv story with significantly slower pace.

*The second episode: this was probably the strongest of the three episodes, which is kinda funny, because in comic form the other two are better. The story in this one was rather simple, which gave Rodriguez more space to focus on individual scenes. Dwight wasn't as memorable a protagonist as Marv or Hartigan, but it was the supporting cast that made the story. Benicio del Toro really shone here: the scene with Jackie-Boy and Dwight in the car was one of the movie's highlights. Miho is kinda irritatingly clichéd character in the comics, but she worked better on film, probably because she was shown less. The scene where Dwight was drowning into the tar pit was extremely effective, I loved the use of invert silhouettes, just like in the comic.

*The third episode: this was kind of a mixed bag. Right until the hanging scene the story worked well, but the final confrontation was kinda flat (this applies to the comic as well). Bruce Willis didn't look like a he was almost 70, as he was supposed to have been (in the beginning his character was "pushing sixty", and the he spent 8 years in prison). The decision to make the Yellow Bastard look exactly like in the comic was a wrong one. In a comic you can accept a "real" person turning into that, but in a film, even a film as stylized as this one, no way. I just kept staring at the guy's make up.

(More general comments to follow...)

*The film had too much inner monologue, even for a hyper-noir it was. Rodriguez seemed to have felt compelled to put every damn line Miller ever wrote on screen, which was a mistake. Inner monologue works better in a comic, because you can follow a comic in your pace - read the text, look at pictures, notice the juxtaposition between the two. Film, by it's very nature, dictates it's pace for the viewer; therefore, too much info in both visual and verbal form at the same time make a movie seem rushed. The monologue definitely added to the feeling of two much speed Sin City had. Again, the second episode was the strongest in this regard, because it had the least monologue.

*The colour schemes were used a bit too randomly. I would've expected them to carry sort of a significance, like with the yellow guy, but Rodriguez seemingly used them whenever he though it would be cool. I loved the idea that Goldie was the only person in the film to be shown in full colour though, and the scene in the prison where Marv mixes Wendy with Goldie was brilliant.

they do:

http://www.animatedbliss.com/images/DVD/Spawn/spawn_season-02.jpg

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'Sin City' Sequel Waiting for Jolie

Actress Rosario Dawson has confirmed reports Angelina Jolie will be signing on for the sequel to Sin City and production on the film is on hold while the star is pregnant. Jolie is currently expecting a baby with Brad Pitt, but is eager to co-star with Dawson, who will reprise her part as rogue hooker Gail in the movie. The Mr. And Mrs. Smith star is rumored to be playing the role of "A Dame To Kill For" in the next installment of the film. Dawson says, "The film's kind of been postponed because Robert (Rodriguez, the director) has been interested in Angelina Jolie for the lead. But she's very pregnant right now. So that's putting an understandable hold on the film." The second film will be based on Frank Miller's graphic novel stories "A Dame to Kill For" and "Lost, Lonely and Lethal," according to website, moviehole.net.

Ah, entertainment news; some of the best sourcing of any journalism anywhere.

LOOK OUT, SHE'S GONNA BLOOOOWWWWW!!!

"Rumble Fish" is on and the cinematography is such the better, original version of the adaptation of That Yellow Bastard. Only based on S.E. Hinton young adult book not a Frank Miller graphic novel. EVERYONE was in this movie. Also Klark Kent soundtrack tune.

I loved Robert Rodriguez's movie too.