DUDE, SIN CITY WAS GREAT!

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THEY PULLED IT OFF! We had a great time! Guns & tittays & old cars & hot chicks & cool music & interior monologues & rear-projection & killer ninja hookers & more guns!

The pacing was off on a coupla places, but i thought the rest of the flick flowed quite well. Plus, it was hilarious to hear the "(Not Quite) Peter Gunn Theme" play thru-out.

kingfish van pickles (Kingfish), Saturday, 2 April 2005 06:05 (twenty years ago)

anybody notice the refs to other comics? One hooker was dressed like Wonder Woman, and one of Jackie's lackies(in the kitchen scene) is wearing a t-shirt with a "Give Me Liberty" (one of Miller's other series) symbol on it.

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...

kingfish van pickles (Kingfish), Saturday, 2 April 2005 06:07 (twenty years ago)

I just saw it this afternoon and I am so happy I could do cartwheels. It's about time someone did a comic book justice. It's one hell of a movie, and I loved every glorious, rain-soaked minute of it. And might I say I had no idea Rosario Dawson was THAT hot.

VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 3 April 2005 00:08 (twenty years ago)

Oh, and praise the lord & pass the peas: Mickey Rourke is BACK!!!

VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 3 April 2005 00:09 (twenty years ago)

Saw it today and it was Frank Miller Heaven. If only Miller's daredevil had been done this way.

Jay Vee (Manon_70), Sunday, 3 April 2005 01:32 (twenty years ago)

Mickey Rourke's plastic surgery already had him closer to Marv than I realized: http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com/archives/000344.html

Curious George Finds the Ether Bottle (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 3 April 2005 01:57 (twenty years ago)

I know. So long, Motorcycle Boy.

VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 3 April 2005 02:06 (twenty years ago)

It's about time someone did a comic book justice. I agree. Very powerful film. Still reeling from it. There must be more to say, but here's a stab--as it were.

EComplex (EComplex), Sunday, 3 April 2005 05:48 (twenty years ago)

I always maintained that a good comic book can be, and often is, screen-ready. Most of the adaptations keep the look and ditch the plot, or keep the plot, and ditch the framing etc. That's why "Sin City" is, and will be, so unique. Each scene looked like a page. "Hellboy" had a little of that, without the meat on the bones...but "Sin City" pulled it off, and well.

VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 3 April 2005 06:24 (twenty years ago)

One hooker was dressed like Wonder Woman

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

hstencil (hstencil), Sunday, 3 April 2005 06:47 (twenty years ago)

o like you've never seen that before

j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 3 April 2005 06:49 (twenty years ago)

dude, that costs extra.

hstencil (hstencil), Sunday, 3 April 2005 06:55 (twenty years ago)

I also had no idea Mickey Rourke had done that to himself. What the hell.

sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Sunday, 3 April 2005 07:00 (twenty years ago)

SUCH A BORING FILM

I love Brittany Murphy, though.

Airtube (nordicskilla), Sunday, 3 April 2005 07:15 (twenty years ago)

"boring"???

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Sunday, 3 April 2005 11:09 (twenty years ago)

'boning'

Probably catch it next weekend here.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 3 April 2005 12:44 (twenty years ago)

I enjoyed all the little moments that reminded me Rodriguez used Miller's framing. Miho on the rooftop, the axe in the bad guy's head at the farm, etc. My favorite was right after Marv said "You can scream now" — the shot of the guards coming up the spiral staircase. That could have been shot a different way or left out altogether, but RR took the time to set up that view from above and get the shot, less than a second in the finished film. Nice.

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.

Curious George Finds the Ether Bottle (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 3 April 2005 13:14 (twenty years ago)

"boring"???

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.

Airtube (nordicskilla), Sunday, 3 April 2005 19:51 (twenty years ago)

Oh, and Rosario Dawson was criminally bad in this movie! I almost couldn't watch her she was so embarassing.

Airtube (nordicskilla), Sunday, 3 April 2005 19:53 (twenty years ago)

D'oh, I just noticed this thread- here's what I posted on the other Sin City thread but clearly I should have posted it here- sorry to be repetitive and cross post etc. . . .

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".

Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Sunday, 3 April 2005 20:01 (twenty years ago)

Yawn...

WowYoureSoSensitive, Sunday, 3 April 2005 20:25 (twenty years ago)

Well, that compelling and articulate argument sure put me in my place.

Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Sunday, 3 April 2005 20:29 (twenty years ago)

Drew, you have articulated why i did not enjoy this movie so much better than I ever could.

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.

Airtube (nordicskilla), Sunday, 3 April 2005 20:30 (twenty years ago)

happily my friend and i had like exactly the same reaction to this film--not dissimilar to drew's and adam's.

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Sunday, 3 April 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)

I haven't seen it yet but "Tekken fighters as dressed by Hot Topic" describes the current state-of-the-art in prostie wear pretty accurately, actually. From what I've read.

Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Sunday, 3 April 2005 20:58 (twenty years ago)

haha

Airtube (nordicskilla), Sunday, 3 April 2005 20:58 (twenty years ago)

good thing it's from what you read. the hoze on that Nightline special were so unathentic; dressed in schoolmarm outfits and whatnot.

kingfish van pickles (Kingfish), Sunday, 3 April 2005 21:01 (twenty years ago)

Why don't prostitutes be rocking those awesome Victorian styles no more?

Airtube (nordicskilla), Sunday, 3 April 2005 21:04 (twenty years ago)

easy access, baby.

hstencil (hstencil), Sunday, 3 April 2005 21:09 (twenty years ago)

(jack the ripper)

latebloomer: AKA Sir Teddy Ruxpin, Former Scientologist (latebloomer), Sunday, 3 April 2005 21:12 (twenty years ago)

Schoolmarm prostitutes? I guess it's a niche.

Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Sunday, 3 April 2005 21:15 (twenty years ago)

the victorian prostitute look was basically "be out after dark"

f--gg (gcannon), Sunday, 3 April 2005 21:20 (twenty years ago)

"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."

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.

Austin Still (Austin, Still), Sunday, 3 April 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

drew OTM about how they succeeded in bringing the comic to the screen so well. And his long description after that of what comic books are like was OTM too, i guess (if a tad elementary.).

scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 3 April 2005 22:04 (twenty years ago)

Enlighten me further please . . . Was it symbolic castration when the lesbian parole officer had her hand amputated by the cannibal serial killer? I mean as a lesbian (who prances around seminude for the enjoyment of her straight male buddy, naturally) she has kind of refused the phallus, so was this some sort of natural punishment by the narrative for abjuring the seuxal attentions of tough guys like Marv? Do enlighten me on the finer points as I toil in benighted ignorance and seem to missing out on the less than elementary components of Frank Miller's sunlike, blinding brilliance.

Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Sunday, 3 April 2005 22:13 (twenty years ago)

WHATS UP DOC
A LINE FROM SIN CITY THE MOVIE

j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 3 April 2005 22:31 (twenty years ago)

i didn't say it was brilliant. i said your description of what a lot of comic books are like and what their cliches are was on the money. if someone had never read a comic book, maybe it would be enlightening to them.

scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 3 April 2005 22:45 (twenty years ago)

It's just elementary to anyone who already knows these things AND enjoys
the genre. It's not that Drew is wrong, it's just that that line of conversation is always raised as though it's never been raised before, and is tantamount to backing a fan into a corner & demanding to know what could possibly be enjoyable about it. It's like chicks asking guys why they dig porn.

VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 3 April 2005 23:15 (twenty years ago)

Ok, good points, sorry to be on a high horse on a thread that's about why people like this movie. I think porn is a useful point of comparison here- because porn works best when it unapologetically pursues a "self indulgent" fantasy scenario to its limit. That's what Sin City does, and that's why Sin City works on its own terms. . . . if you aren't turned on by artifact X (artwork or porn, whatever) and coldly analyze it, you can be "right" and yet miss the point of why people who do enjoy it enjoy it.

Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Sunday, 3 April 2005 23:27 (twenty years ago)

The best thing Frank Miller's written, that I've read {i am not a Millerophile) is Batman: Year One. I haven't seen Sin City yet. Going on Tuesday with the ladyfriend, and I'm pretty psyched. I haven't read the comics, though she has and is a fan. It looks GREAT visually. And I don't (and can't) expect much from it in terms of depth; it's an action movie, and a comic book movie. I imagine I'll enjoy it quite a bit.

Ian John50n (orion), Sunday, 3 April 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

i've always enjoyed sin city comics in the same way i like chick comics, similar cartoonish bleakness, better art/design in sin city comics, better plots in chick comics. trying to say anything about comics or noir in general based on either is a bit ludicrous. i enjoyed the movie despite itself, except for some bad acting everything i didn't like i was familiar with from the comics and some things that were boring cliche in the comic were fun ridiculous cliche in the movie. the movie was much much more ridiculous (or at least the process of making it a movie, having people say what amster called on this thread or the other that 'looney tunes dialogue' out loud, brought the corniness/ridiculousness to the fore) than the comic, punctured the pofaced 'seriousness' of miller's schtick. i also really like that a movie with nudity in it is number one in america and really really really really like that a movie in which the hero kills a priest and a cardinal and the audience roots for it is number one the weekend the pope dies.

j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 3 April 2005 23:40 (twenty years ago)

haha!

s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 3 April 2005 23:43 (twenty years ago)

"amster" makes me sound like a light beer!

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.

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:20 (twenty years ago)

the closest porn i can think of that remotely compares to this is andrew blake in that there's that po faced self seriousness gets in the way there too but even it doesn't really compare really so um what porn is the standard of comparison here exactly?

j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:25 (twenty years ago)

see the other thread... i don't mean, again, that the film literally resembled pornography (well, occasionally it did) but that it's appeal struck me as pornographic in a deeper sense.

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:27 (twenty years ago)

what porn did it resemble?

j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:27 (twenty years ago)

hi geir

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

sorry i just see on both of these threads people tossing out these comparisons to other mediums followed up by people admitting they don't actually know anything about the medium (and hence can't explain what they mean by the comparison) and expecting to be congratulated on pulling analogies out of their ass. why?

j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:34 (twenty years ago)

i am confused by this one part in the NYT sin city review

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

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:36 (twenty years ago)

and?

j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 4 April 2005 01:39 (twenty years ago)

Well, at least until she needed to be rescued from Yellow Bastard by Hartigan (who led Yellow Bastard to her).

xpost

nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:33 (twenty years ago)

I love that guy's flip fake email addy there. HE'S A CRITIC, SO SHUT UP DAN.

nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:34 (twenty years ago)

I was gonna say, did you sleep through the second half of That Yellow Bastard?

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:35 (twenty years ago)

plus she is all "you save me so i fuck you" with willis

ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:35 (twenty years ago)

NANCY: Ever since I was eleven I've wanted to give you my tender underripe skins, Hartigan!
HARTIGAN/AUDIENCE: EW!

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:47 (twenty years ago)

HARTIGAN: Well, actually that might be nice...
AUDIENCE: EW!!!!
HARTIGAN: You're right, Audience. As penance I will allow my old ass to be hanged naked from a ceiling fan.
AUDIENCE: FUCK YOU, OLD MAN.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:54 (twenty years ago)

I just found out today that Gilmore Girl is half-Mexican/half-Argentine in "real life". For some reason I'm astounded.

Jay Vee (Manon_70), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:57 (twenty years ago)

right. what about rory? could she be considered one of the more self sufficient ones?

kelsey (kelstarry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:59 (twenty years ago)

Rory was afraid her mom was going to find out she was a hooker, plus she screwed the hookers over because the mob was going to kill her mom. She's maybe the least self-sufficient person in the entire movie; her every action is dictated by the whims of someone else.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:01 (twenty years ago)

i found this: "Miho is the defender of Old Town, and the one woman the girls of Old Town call upon to get rid of troublesome people, like cops, criminals, and abusive johns. Miho doesn't care for racial slurs (like being called a "Jap bitch/whore") and will "play" with her target if such terms are used when referring to her."

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

ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:03 (twenty years ago)

I was thinking that people would be able to make the "'having a job' is not the same thing as 'not being able to influence your own destiny without help'" inference without it being explicitly stated. I'm extremely gratified that Ryan found source material that backs up this inference.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)

All the characters need help!

The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:15 (twenty years ago)

i don't know. rory deviated from the norm of the hookers . . . and while her choices weren't as morally courageous, she still thought for herself. granted, she still a wuss.
i can't tell if i'm playing devil's advocate or if i really think this is true, by the way.
xpost.

kelsey (kelstarry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:17 (twenty years ago)

Rory was afraid her mom was going to find out she was a hooker, plus she screwed the hookers over because the mob was going to kill her mom.

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

s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:29 (twenty years ago)

The only a moment where she gives any indication that she isn't acting under duress is when she's walking down the street next to BdT's car as bait. Also, after the whole showdown, she checks in with her mom on the phone before meeting the Hitman in the elevator; her last words are a tremulous "I love you" which (IMO) gives much more weight to her doing what she was doing to save her mother.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:38 (twenty years ago)

i read that more as just an "i fucked up!" thing

s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:38 (twenty years ago)

like it doesn't necessarily (to me at least) imply that she did it to save her mother, just that her mother is important to her and constantly on her mind, which may explain why she reached for her as an excuse

s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:39 (twenty years ago)

Given the level of subtlety in the rest of the storytelling, I think that any indication that her reasons for betraying the hookers was a lie would have been signposted with big flashing neon titties.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:41 (twenty years ago)

hahaha!

The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:45 (twenty years ago)

You don't highlight anything with titties but titties, Dan.

Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 21:02 (twenty years ago)

tell that to frank miller

j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 21:04 (twenty years ago)

Hmmmmm.

The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 21:07 (twenty years ago)

this is mildly amusing

latebloomer: strawman knockdowner (latebloomer), Saturday, 16 April 2005 21:15 (twenty years ago)

I liked this, especially the Mickey Rourke story. The Clive Owen story fell a little flat to me, but it certainly wasn't boring.

polyphonic (polyphonic), Sunday, 17 April 2005 15:34 (twenty years ago)

kind of disappointed. i haven't read frank miller but actually this whole 'it's faithful to miller so don't be criticizing it on moral/aestheitc grounds' thing doesn't work, because the film is nothing like a comic strip. by definition it does not recreate frames. the spoken word is not the written. the musical is not the silent. the comic had to be converted into film codes.

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.

N_RQ, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:29 (twenty years ago)

this whole 'it's faithful to miller so don't be criticizing it on moral/aestheitc grounds' thing doesn't work

Except of course no one is saying this.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 12:12 (twenty years ago)

pretending like the pre-existing story doesn't exist (PARTICULARLY in this case, where one of the big media talking points of the movie is that it's a literal panel translation of the original stories from the comic books) is essentially a rhetorical trick to assign blame to the film for problems that might be inherent in the source material (ie, everything Drew and Am have complained about).
-- The Ghost of Dan Perry (djperr...), April 4th, 2005.

well, they're saying something like it.

N_RQ, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 12:26 (twenty years ago)

I'm saying that the problems with the movie are also problems with the comic book, not that they aren't problems that can't be talked about. They are defects/issues inherent in the stories that more than one person has blamed on Rodriguez.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 12:53 (twenty years ago)

yeah, that's fair enough, but because rodders had the option of doing whatever the fuck he liked, i think he can be blamed for some things. i think it's complex because the spoken lines 'are' the written lines and the film stills look like comic-book frames. but it is still a film, and things like pacing, line-readings -- basically the things which make it cinema -- are rr's responsibility.

N_RQ, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 12:59 (twenty years ago)

That's fair; I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who's gone through various levels of comic book immersion since the age of 12 (oh christ i'm old) and has built-in "voice" for comic book dialogue that "Sin City" matched remarkably well. Rodriguez can certainly be criticized for going the "literal translation" route, but once he made that decision I don't see how he could have changed anything he did in the movie to improve it while keeping it true to the feel of the source material; the entire series is about broad-brush caricature and cliche masturbation and stripping them out of the movie would have killed everything that made "Sin City" what it was beyond the visual style.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 13:17 (twenty years ago)

the world socialist website film critic had a "sky is falling" sort of review about this which i sort of agreed with

that said the gilmore girls girl is really hot in this

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 15:40 (twenty years ago)

everything that made "Sin City" what it was beyond the visual style.

hm...

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 15:40 (twenty years ago)

That's poorly-worded but basically I mean acting in the movie accurately captured my impression of the narrative style of the Sin City stories, much like the cinematography captured the visual style of the Sin City stories. I looked at the movie with those types of issues as baseline defaults and ascribed any presentation or narrative problems I had with it back to the source material.

The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 16:33 (twenty years ago)

ok, i think i agree with you then. although it begs the question of why the film was made. well, i know why the film was made, i'm just not sure i share the filmmakers' opinion that it was a particularly compelling reason.

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 16:34 (twenty years ago)

I think I would agree with someone if they said the morals of Sin City were backwards and misogynist, but then I just went to a movie theater and paid 6 dollars and watched a commercial for the new Star Wars before something called Sin City; I kind of expected the standard high-budget hollywood fare you can see in a billion action movies every year. The nudity just felt like part of the 'deal', part of the overall attempt to shock and provoke or whatever, along with the prostitutes, priest-killing, child rapist, Xtreme gore, cop-killing, et al. I can't remember if there were any curse words but I'm sure they were all over the place too. Not much of the offending devices used offended me, but at times it felt like a lot of it was calculated to induce reactions, and reading through a lot of the above posts it has.

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.

Adam Bruneau (oliver8bit), Thursday, 21 April 2005 01:55 (twenty years ago)

i sort of agree with amateurist and the world socialist website, but i don't want to. it's quite obvious that you cannot separate politics from aesthetics; but neither can you dissolve them into each other. my problem with the WSW basically goes thusly: the author is a major champion of manny farber, whose most famous essay is about the 'tough' american cinema of the 40s: walsch and hawks. neither of these directors look very tough now. but his appreciation of them has something in common with what people see in 'sin city', and 'the big sleep'is scarcely more morally responsible than 'sin city'. for the time, it contained excessive cruelty (the murder of... what's his name, in the office). certainly what farber likes is the hard-boiledness of it. 'sin city' is consciously in that tradition, isn't it?

N_RQ, Thursday, 21 April 2005 08:45 (twenty years ago)

three months pass...
I saw Sin City last night... Had a very mixed reaction to it. I didn't have the time to read the whole thread, but here are some thoughts about the movie:

*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...)

Tuomas (Tuomas), Saturday, 13 August 2005 09:56 (nineteen years ago)

*Like the first one, the third episode suffered from too fast pace. For example, the prison scenes, as cool as they looked, didn't feel as tortuous, because they were over so quick. To understand Hartigan's rage for spending eight years in prison they should've emphasized his sufferíng more.

*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.

Tuomas (Tuomas), Saturday, 13 August 2005 10:31 (nineteen years ago)

*Rodriguez' choice to dispense realism altogether as related to action, violence, etc was a two-edged sword. On the other hand it made completely clear that this is a fantasy, you aren't supposed to take it seriously (something which Miller never made as clear). But then again, it was at times kinda silly. Again: what works in a comic doesn't necessarily work onscreen. The violence and action in the comic gave the reader a sort of sense of reality taken to an impossible extreme, whereas in the film the weightless bodies and automobiles and all the splatters or blood felt cartoonish. Like it or not, one weighs the world of a film more closely with reality than one does the world of a comic, because films are more "real", even if they're fantasy.

*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.

Tuomas (Tuomas), Saturday, 13 August 2005 11:27 (nineteen years ago)

One question that came into my mind was, why don't they maked animated adaptations of comic books? Well, I guess I know why, besides Japan animation is still thought to be mainly for kids. The only recent example of an animated adaptation of a "serious" comic book I can think of is the Corto Maltese movie, and that one was pretty good. Sin City, if anything, was a "real" movie that wanted to be an animation. Making it one would've solved many of the stylistic problems in the film.

Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 14 August 2005 03:48 (nineteen years ago)

Sorry, I meant feature films. Besides anime, I can think of few animated features based on a comic: Fritz the Kat, the aforementioned Corto Maltese, a couple of Asterix films (not the live-action movies but the animated ones made in the seventies)... There's a Tintin animation too, I think, though I haven't seen it. But that's basically it.

Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 14 August 2005 05:47 (nineteen years ago)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/630305899X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Leeeeeeee (Leee), Sunday, 14 August 2005 06:38 (nineteen years ago)

Anyway, don't you think Sin City was crying to be an animation? Besides the live actors, it was mostly animated anyway. That would've taken away the distraction caused by Mickey Rourke's and the yellow guy's makeup, and the violence and action could've been as stylized as in the comic without looking a bit silly.

Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 14 August 2005 06:57 (nineteen years ago)

seven months pass...
meanwhile

'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.

kingfish da notorious teletabby (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 20 March 2006 17:00 (nineteen years ago)

"rogue hooker"

Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 20 March 2006 18:05 (nineteen years ago)

and the rest of the X-men were so disappointed when that happened.

kingfish da notorious teletabby (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 20 March 2006 18:05 (nineteen years ago)

this film reminded me why I gave up on Frank Miller around the time I left high school. its all just so goddamned silly and empty.

Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 20 March 2006 18:09 (nineteen years ago)

"rogue hooker"

LOOK OUT, SHE'S GONNA BLOOOOWWWWW!!!

pixel farmer (Rock Hardy), Monday, 20 March 2006 19:18 (nineteen years ago)

two years pass...

"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.

felicity, Friday, 18 April 2008 06:31 (seventeen years ago)


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