Sin City [Archive] - FilmLeaf - Journal of Cinema

hengcs

04-04-2005, 10:15 PM

The movie will likely entertain those who like comics, violence, or just the technicalities of movie making. ;) I am less certain that our parents or grandparents will like the violence depicted. hiaks hiaks ...

What I like?
-- My favorite scenes are unfortunately the beginning and end: with Josh Hartnett. It really looks cool. Simple, short, and effective.
-- Definitely the visual sequences. Yes, I like the art direction/choreography of some scenes: WOW!
-- In fact, it was wise to present the movie in black and white, with occasional color to accentuate certain items/messages. Besides being more faithful to the comic, the black and white also prevents it from coming across as too gross and bloody!
-- Now the plot ...
(i) the "story" or rather opening and ending scenes with Josh Hartnett is COOL ... ;) ... I like it
(ii) the story with Mickey Rourke is average ... it poses some questions about looks, sex and love, but the meaning (if any at all) is easily overlooked ...
(iii) the story with Bruce Willis, in my humble opinion, is the most meaningful, not without its violence and crudeness ...
(iv) the story with Clive Owen is average ... if you insist on finding a message ... it is about love, loyalty and betrayal ... to different groups of people
-- Overall, the entire cast is good! BOTH the men and women ...
-- The editing and pacing also help make the movie more compelling: the audience are not bored, and would be keen to know what happens next or at the end ...

While the following are NOT necessarily criticisms, some people may find it non ideal or problematic:
-- Some of the violence are indeed gross! It is really not for everyone. Sorry, but I would definitely NOT let my kids watch!!! oops ... please do NOT scold me if you are a teenager ... I am often lost ... ha ha ha
-- The movie comes across as a few separate stories, with some overlap of characters, as opposed to a well conceived connection.
-- The time sequence is not sequential, so at times, one may be puzzled.
-- How will a character die? It is unclear what some of their resistance or vulnerablities are (except for the character Marv). For the rest, at times, you think they have died or will die ... but they did not ... at other times, you think they will not die ... but they had just died ...
-- In order to be faithful to the comic, there is a lot of voice over (and narration), so that the audience understands the THOUGHTS of the characters. In a way, it simplifies the job of any director who tries to convert a written work to a movie ...

Minor notes about casting:
-- Before watching, I didn't know that Elijah Wood is in it. hee hee ... One would think that he will never get another role after Lord of the Rings (because of fixed mindset). His role in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind was okay. Yet, without needing to act (with little expression), he looked the part in Sin City.
-- Hmmm ... nothing against Bruce Willis ... But he always seem to play the dejected but self righteous person ... did he ask to be in the role?! ... ha ha ha ...

Should you watch it?
Hmmm ... just for "entertainment" ... oops ... what a choice of word ... but definitely for its technicalities ... hiaks hiaks ... if you try to find some meaning to the story ... hmmm ... well, there are if you want to think about it ... I have mentioned some above ... nonetheless, it could be easily overlooked with the excessive violence and sex ... hee hee
;)

tabuno

04-04-2005, 10:16 PM

This movie is more than a fantastic adaptation of a graphic novel into live action film, at its core it contains a strong macho ethic that includes a piercing belief in the respectability and dignity of women. The interplay between violence, revenge for a principle with a heart is hard at work here. For me, it's more than violence for violence sake.

stevetseitz

04-05-2005, 03:21 AM

You take an intriguing concept (a dark, original graphic novel) and some fantastic visuals and throw in some big names (Willis, Tarantino, Elijah Wood) and what do you get?

A great big piece of junk!

First off, anyone who claims to have enjoyed this film is lying through their teeth. It's one of those situations in which the critics are too scared to pan it because it's "different" and they don't want to be seen as passe.

The acting is over-the-top bad, the dialogue is corny and the delivery is pathetic. Powers Boothe, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen? Come on! Can you have a LAMER cast? Owen couldn't even act in those BMW shorts.

I would laud the visuals and cinematography but the storyboards given on a silver platter. They were done by a legendary artist. All you have to do is translate the beautiful Frank Miller panels into a world of motion and you're done. Oh, you might want to get some decent actors and freshen the corny script up a bit.

The lack of understanding of what good film-noir is (by all involved) is truly mind boggling. The anti-hero of film noir is neither a superhuman comic book hero nor a sociopathic sicko. A true anti-hero of film noir is a flawed, vulnerable, tough as nails reflection of an everyman. He makes decisions based on reason and logic.

Even as a "comic-book" film it's a failure. Viewers were far better served by Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, Richard Donner. (O.K. so their source material was better.) I'm not disparaging Frank Miller or his work. I loved his stuff as a kid, but film is a more sophisticated medium.
As Harrison Ford chided George Lucas at one point "You can write that shit, but you can't actually SAY that shit!"

This film is inept on almost all levels including sub par editing, directing, acting, and writing.

Without any sense of realism, there is no grittiness or real pain. The lame adolescent attempts at humor only accentuate this. Instead of having the stones to go completely over the top a la early Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi we get something Ed Wood might have made in the era of CG. Instead of a legitimate adaptation of the graphic novel we get is a slickly repackaged "Dick Tracy" meets "Dark City".

Johann

04-05-2005, 10:22 AM

This film has gone over Steve's head. (surprise surprise)
It's not about the actors and I sense that you resent this film for some unknown reason. Perhaps it's because you haven't recognized & deciphered it's code.

It's an unmitigated instant classic and fathoms away from a "failure".

It's more than merely different. It's blindingly original, and if you cannot see it and drop a knee, then that's your game.

Fantastic visuals, eh? Wow you can at least admit that.

To say that the filmmakers don't know what film noir is is the highest insult I can think of. Steve is quite the self-appointed judge.

Not only do they know it, they've taken that colossal awareness & respect and turned it into something that is better than noir:
other-worldly noir. A new phrase can be coined now: SIN CITY NOIR.

Just think if James Cagney was in this film, or if Bogart played Hartigan. Mickey Rourke is the best thing about this film, and anyone who claims that these filmmakers don't have "stones" are lying thru their teeth.

Rodriguez directed Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn, two of the baddest, sexiest films ever made. He and QT are a dynamic duo. But with Miller as a teammate they are absolutely unstoppable. A force to be reckoned with, and people like Steve are always at the ready with hurtful comments about things they know squat about.
Give me a 50- page essay on film noir- you're an expert it seems.
No wait, don't. I know your talking out your ass.

These filmmakers have stones to GIVE AWAY.

This movie is a ballistic missile saturated with everything from iron-clad intensity to poetic pump-action Pulp Fiction.

If you can't see it then you suffer from something called
Mentalia Crippilia

tabuno

04-05-2005, 08:34 PM

Over the top yes! Cliche dialogue yes! Two dimensional characters yes! But this is what graphic novels are! Sin City represents a gorgeous translation of static two dimensional panels into a living, breathing series of three dimensional representations on a two-dimensional surface using real actors not painted, drawn figures. It is just because perhaps the movie is so "bad" that it is so "good." One needs to evaluate this movie on the basis of its source material not on some theatrical performance directorial standard for Lord of the Rings or Batman.

While I can't say that Sin City was perfect and even the best, for it me it represents a significant and qualitative advancement in this graphic, cartoon genre.

I also don't believe that for film noir to work that the main flawed character operates essentially out of "reason and logic." Instead there is a more complex internal turmoil that involves principles, ethics, morals, passions, emotions. Reason and logic are for CSI junkies or even perhaps detective, mystery thrillers.

HorseradishTree

04-05-2005, 10:12 PM

Originally posted by stevetseitz

I'm not disparaging Frank Miller or his work. I loved his stuff as a kid, but film is a more sophisticated medium.

I really take offense to that. I hold all art forms in the same regard. Comics shouldn't be shunned simply because they have a pulp past or because they're supposedly geared towards kids. Sequential art is just as sophisticated as a painting or novel.

stevetseitz

04-05-2005, 11:17 PM

>>It's not about the actors<<

Hmmm. a film not being about the actors. Let's look at that statement. The main medium by which the plot is advanced and the "message" is disseminated is the actors. Saying this movie is a "classic" because of great visuals, despite the actors, is like going to a play for the saying the sets. Watch the deleted scene on "Get Shorty" for Gene Hackman's soliloquy on acting vs. direction.

>>It's blindingly original,<<

In what way is it original? Other comic films have done everything this movie has more successfully. Once again, different does not equal good. I can show you a hundred movies that are "different" that are simply awful.

>>Just think if James Cagney was in this film, or if Bogart played Hartigan. <<

They would have scoffed at the script.

>>Mickey Rourke is the best thing about this film<<

Ummmm, you just said Mickey Rourke was the best thing about this film. I rest my case.

Not quite:

>>Rodriguez directed Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn, two of the baddest, sexiest films ever made.<<

"From Dusk Till Dawn" was crap. It was a B-movie with a budget and a cast. "Sin City" didn't even have the cast.

As for the film going "over my head" I doubt it. I have seen everything Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, Bunuel, and Fellini have directed along with scores of other films. I have also seem shocking films just as violent and horrific but when it is treated as pulp comic fodder it comes off as infantile and pointless.

I simply refuse to ignore poor writing, cheesy dialogue and lame attempts at humor.

If you want great film noir go watch "Out of the Past", "T-men" or even "Miller's Crossing".

This film is a just fanboy's dream: It totally objectifies women, it allows them to fantasize about violence they can't possibly imagine, it has no anchor in reality so any so-called "noir-ish" aspects are totally crippled.

This is a reponse to Horseradishtree:

>>I really take offense to that. I hold all art forms in the same regard. Comics shouldn't be shunned simply because they have a pulp past or because they're supposedly geared towards kids. Sequential art is just as sophisticated as a painting or novel.<<

You are serious? Archie and Jughead are as sophisticated as "The Brothers Karamozov"? Please.

I admit comics can be high art and every once in a while an artist or writer sublimates comics into a more important work. I loved "Kingdom Come" by Alex Ross and Walt Simonson's take on "Thor" for example. But to say that an average issue of "Power Man and Iron Fist" is as complex as Picasso's "Guernica" is a bit of a stretch.

tabuno

04-06-2005, 12:53 AM

One of my few complaints about Sin City was its somewhat distracting approach towards editing three different storylines together. The first storyline seemed way too short, unexpectedly so, so that the transition from one to another was curt and disjointed. As an alternative, I've been re-watching "2 Days in the Valley" (1996) where three disparate plots are eventually woven into a single whole very neatly regarding the murder of a wife's husband, two vice squad officers, a selfish young rich kid and his "servant," a pair of assassins, a nurse and a playwriter who is intent on suicide. The evolution and the sophisticated way this was accomplished if had been done with Sin City would have measurably improved the pacing and the transitions in the movie markedly I believe.

Johann

04-06-2005, 09:21 AM

I love debating Steve.

Of course actors breathe life into the story, but in SIN FUCKING CITY they are not as important as the visuals, which is the MAIN MEDIUM IN COMIC BOOKS.
It stands to reason that a film version would place primacy on the storyboards, which you've already admitted were beautiful by Miller.

Other comic films have done it more sucessfully?
I've seen 'em all bubba, and I strongly disagree.

Raimi? Talk about formulaic!
I agree Donner's Superman is a masterpiece, but you can't compare it to something like Sin City. Apples and watermelons...

Duh, of course it has no base in reality- it's pulp fiction genius!

Try a little suspension of belief: it helps stop the movie from going over your head.

I am overwhelmingly convinced your reaction is knee-jerk. You haven't given the film a chance in my opinion.
I know you'll see this film one late night in the future and say
"holy shit this is genius. What the hell was I thinking?"

Best comic book adaptation to date.

And I'm not even a fan of the graphic novels- I much prefer Batman and Superman.
The technical achievement cannot be understated.

Johann

04-06-2005, 11:59 AM

Another thing: Poor writing? cheesy? lame?

What the hell did you expect from this film before you went in?
Had you heard of Sin City?
Had you read the novels?

And to say you're not disparaging Frank Miller while saying "poor writing" is an unforgivable contradicting insult.

He wrote it, boss- so you ARE disparaging Mr. Miller and his work.
No way out of that one Steve. You owe Frank a massive apology.
You loved him as a kid. Film is a sophisticated medium.
What a crock of shit.
So you're saying Frank Miller has no business dealing with celluloid. "Stick to the funny books Frank".

I think he'd unload on you if he heard that.

And your mind-reading, presumptuous, arrogant comments about Cagney & Bogie are laughably trite and lowbrow.
Cagney always took risks and this film could have been one if he lived in another time..

stevetseitz

04-06-2005, 03:04 PM

>>Other comic films have done it more sucessfully?
I've seen 'em all bubba, and I strongly disagree.<<

I think Tim Burton's "Batman" better walked the tightrope of reality and camp. The emphasis on dark art deco with a fantastic cast puts it over the top.

I liked both "Spider Man" films. I think Raimi did a great job. I bet most of the posters here would agree that they were good films.

>>Try a little suspension of belief: it helps stop the movie from going over your head.<<

Suspension of disbelief is a two way street. It's partly the job of the viewer and partly the job of the auteur. They have to give you something to hold on to. I didn't care about any of the characters in the film. They didn't inspire any emotion. To me it was cold and mathematical and very boring.

>> Another thing: Poor writing? cheesy? lame?<<

Without a doubt.

>>What the hell did you expect from this film before you went in?
Had you heard of Sin City?
Had you read the novels?<<

Yeah, and somehow I was expecting the dialogue to work. Maybe it was poor delivery. It didn't work. You seem desperate to make this film out to be a "masterpiece". It wasn't.

The voice-over narration didn't work either. In fact, Harrison Ford's voice-over narration in "Bladerunner" was better and the director's cut ditched that. That shows how tricky it is to get it right.

>>And to say you're not disparaging Frank Miller while saying "poor writing" is an unforgivable contradicting insult.<<

It's a different medium and the movie would have worked better without the cheesy, film-noir wanna-be writing style.

>>So you're saying Frank Miller has no business dealing with celluloid.<<

There are a LOT of people who have no business dealing with celluloid. It doesn't mean you aren't a great artist. Ever see any of Andy Warhol's films? John Steinbeck was a great novelist but that doesn't automatically make him a great film director. Wynton Marsalis is a great musician but I don't know that he could write a graphic novel.

>>"Stick to the funny books Frank".<<

You got it.

>>Cagney always took risks and this film could have been one if he lived in another time<<

Cagney was a great actor and wouldn't have pissed on this script to put it out if it were on fire.

stevetseitz

04-06-2005, 03:06 PM

Oh, and did you just admit in another post that you were sloshed when you saw this movie?

That explains a lot! ;)

In the future, if you want to truly critique a film, I suggest you maintain control of all your faculties and not get hammered while waiting for it to start.

HorseradishTree

04-06-2005, 07:38 PM

Originally posted by stevetseitz

You are serious? Archie and Jughead are as sophisticated as "The Brothers Karamozov"? Please.

I admit comics can be high art and every once in a while an artist or writer sublimates comics into a more important work. I loved "Kingdom Come" by Alex Ross and Walt Simonson's take on "Thor" for example. But to say that an average issue of "Power Man and Iron Fist" is as complex as Picasso's "Guernica" is a bit of a stretch.

That's so unfair. I wouldn't call Guernica an average piece. Compare the complexity of Watchmen to the painting, and then you've got a more fair competition.

tabuno

04-06-2005, 11:53 PM

stevetseitz

"I think Tim Burton's "Batman" better walked the tightrope of reality and camp. The emphasis on dark art deco with a fantastic cast puts it over the top."

tab: when I saw Sin City I was amazed at how I felt that I was experiencing a graphic novel come to life. There's a Star Trek: The New Generation episode where some of the crew is caught in some poor rendition of a poor pulp novel in a casino with all the campy language. With Sin City, instead of just trying to make the graphic novel become somewhat sanitized into human form, Sin City is content to retain the graphic novel form and draw the audience into its world not ours. By requiring Sin City the movie to submit to our reality is letting our standards our experiences become mundane. That camp of Sin City was what I wanted to experience not reality and I got it, felt it, saw it, heard it. Like Lost In Translation were are observers going for a ride in their world be it Japan or some made up world (Who Framed Roger Rabbit).

"I liked both "Spider Man" films. I think Raimi did a great job. I bet most of the posters here would agree that they were good films."

tab: I enjoyed both Spider Man films and in fact Spider Man 2 made my list of all time favorite movies.

"Try a little suspension of belief: it helps stop the movie from going over your head. Suspension of disbelief is a two way street. It's partly the job of the viewer and partly the job of the auteur. They have to give you something to hold on to. I didn't care about any of the characters in the film. They didn't inspire any emotion. To me it was cold and mathematical and very boring."

tab: I was truly captivated by Bruce Willis' performance and character, I was full of emotion as this strong man is risking his life on principle for a girl. In Japan, such actions are considered heroic and honorable. There was a campy emotional, over-acting that seemed to capture the graphic novel spirit and tone. For some the violence overshadowed character and sympathy but for me, the whole emphasis on strong women defending themselves againts the supposedly much more corrupt, power-seeking males, particularly hookers, and the men that sacrificed themselves for them really meant something to me.

"Yeah, and somehow I was expecting the dialogue to work. Maybe it was poor delivery. It didn't work. You seem desperate to make this film out to be a "masterpiece". It wasn't. The voice-over narration didn't work either. In fact, Harrison Ford's voice-over narration in "Bladerunner" was better and the director's cut ditched that. That shows how tricky it is to get it right. "

tab: I for one enjoyed Harrison Ford's voice-over narration in "Bladerunner" (preferred over the director's cut) because it offered the audience a mental backdrop that just can't be experienced visually. And with Sin City, the intellectual component, the explanation, the verbal setting is all important for me in film noir. I enjoyed the dialogue because it fit exactly what I expect from this graphic novel medium (to try to alter it would destroy the source material and make the movie into something it's not and wasn't supposed to be).

"It's a different medium and the movie would have worked better without the cheesy, film-noir wanna-be writing style."

tab: Perhaps we're talking about the differences between the transition that occurred in table tennis from hard rubber paddles to soft rubber rackets; perhaps the change from silent to talky movies, from black and white to color. Adaptation of a graphic novel to the movie medium requires the cheesy, film-noir to deny it would be to alter a fundamental component of this movie and make Sin City into a movie that's not an adaptation, a mainstream movie for the general public masses who expect another Spiderman or Batman movie. The movie works just because it is cheesy and film-noir. Bladerunner was film noir. Comics are sometimes cheesy. I assume some of the classic ones are also cheesy.

stevetseitz

04-07-2005, 03:59 AM

>>Compare the complexity of Watchmen to the painting, and then you've got a more fair competition.<<

O.K. but even the most respectful comic lover must admit adults who like comics are a small, fringe group. Movies are experienced by a far larger audience. Cinema is an art form that can combine all other art forms: Music, Dance, visual composition, literature, etc.

The graphic novel by comparison is much smaller in scope. It's not as if you can turn one into another and not have to fill in some blanks.

>>With Sin City, instead of just trying to make the graphic novel become somewhat sanitized into human form, Sin City is content to retain the graphic novel form and draw the audience into its world not ours.<<

Tab: This is the best argument I've heard in favor of the film and with a better cast I think it could have worked.

>>the whole emphasis on strong women defending themselves againts the supposedly much more corrupt, power-seeking males, particularly hookers, and the men that sacrificed themselves for them really meant something to me.<<

I hardly consider women who submit to men sexually for money "strong"? I was under the impression that they were being used and exploited (often in horrific fashion). The "women with guns" theme seems to be one of Tarantino's fetishes. I don't think the use of violence by the women in this film celebrates the strength of women by any stretch. In fact, it lowers them to the level of the animalistic males depicted by the movie. Also it's hardly complimentary when the women seem to be getting bailed constantly by the more proficient men.

>> And with Sin City, the intellectual component, the explanation, the verbal setting is all important for me in film noir. I enjoyed the dialogue because it fit exactly what I expect from this graphic novel medium (to try to alter it would destroy the source material and make the movie into something it's not and wasn't supposed to be).<<

Alteration is not always a bad thing. Many original scripts are re-written countless times before we see a final product on the screen. In a seperate example, look at Matheson's novel "I Am Legend". In the Boris Sagal film version "The Omega Man", the vampirism of the original novel is almost nonexistent replaced by infection by biological warfare. But the film still succeeds. The important thing isn't to be a slave to the original work when you are supposed to be creating a new work of art yourself. Many of Michelangelo's sculptures are derived from classic Greek pieces, but his innovation and "alteration" helped create and entirely new era of artistic achievement.

Johann

04-07-2005, 08:41 AM

I'll just let everything Steve said stand on it's own.
It's priceless.

There's no need for me to get up in his grill anymore- he's as lost now as he was when he went in the theatre to see Sin City.

I've made my case for the film. Take it or leave it.

Johann

04-07-2005, 08:58 AM

Chris is right: I'm not leaving any room for discussion.

The reason is simple. No one sees this film as I see it here on these boards.

I'll discuss the film when I read something from somebody with a solid understanding of what this film is all about.

It was executed with dynamic flourishes. It's a deeply manly movie. It makes no apologies for what it is, and neither do I.

P.S. Steve- don't be jealous that I can drink like a fish and still crank out bullseye remarks while you crank out paranoid verbal D. while sober.

Keep your own counsel and grant others theirs...
Who said that?!

stevetseitz

04-07-2005, 02:31 PM

>>he's as lost now as he was when he went in the theatre to see Sin City.<<

Yeah, you're right. Maybe I should have gotten hammered and I would have liked it better.

>>The reason is simple. No one sees this film as I see it here on these boards.<<

Ohhh! I see. It's a film above all our heads. Only your true genius can grasp it. Right. Oh, and the booze helps too right?

>> It's a deeply manly movie.<<

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! You realize that, for the most part, it's the goofy guys who don't shower and have never kissed a girl who are obsessed with comics. Anyone who thinks violence, killing and exploiting women is "manly" has no idea what a man is, son.

I don't mean to offend anyone (or imply that you are one of these insulated comic-nerds) but it's time to be honest and keep it real.

You liked it. I didn't. I can leave it at that and don't feel the need to cajole, coerce or try to convince you of my opinion.

tabuno

04-07-2005, 11:23 PM

stevetseitz "I hardly consider women who submit to men sexually for money "strong"? I was under the impression that they were being used and exploited (often in horrific fashion). The "women with guns" theme seems to be one of Tarantino's fetishes. I don't think the use of violence by the women in this film celebrates the strength of women by any stretch. In fact, it lowers them to the level of the animalistic males depicted by the movie. Also it's hardly complimentary when the women seem to be getting bailed constantly by the more proficient men."

tab: In Sin City, the women are not necessarily submitting to men for money, in fact it's actually the other way around (they have no pimps). It seems that the women are doing what they want to do and its the men submitting to the women using money in order to get some. If I recall the movie, the women in the end actually do the bailing out themselves. Finally, there is a good point here about women lowering themselves to animalistic males. Interesting, it's in Charlie's Angels (the movies) the audience is offered a good feminine version of male behavior without having to lower themselves. They don't have to resort to guns in order to do their stuff, instead they use skill, artistry, and talent not mindless male powerful weapons.

stevetseitz "Alteration is not always a bad thing. Many original scripts are re-written countless times before we see a final product on the screen. In a seperate example, look at Matheson's novel "I Am Legend". In the Boris Sagal film version "The Omega Man", the vampirism of the original novel is almost nonexistent replaced by infection by biological warfare. But the film still succeeds. The important thing isn't to be a slave to the original work when you are supposed to be creating a new work of art yourself. Many of Michelangelo's sculptures are derived from classic Greek pieces, but his innovation and "alteration" helped create and entirely new era of artistic achievement."

tab: My belief in voice-over in regards to both Sin City and Bladerunner remains and the particular alteration of elminating a voice-over from a film noir is like eliminating one of the fascinating elements that almost defines the genre. Instead of alteration one risks the possibility of eliminating the very essence making an adaptation into something that's unrecognizable, mutating it into something that it was purportedly not supposed to happen.

Chris Knipp

04-08-2005, 12:44 AM

[These comments refer chiefly to the Steve Seitz/Johann exchanges.]

I'm confused by some of these posts. If comic book fans are sweaty immature misfits, but anyone who fails to appreciate Sin City as a masterpiece is a total moron, where do the rest of us -- who wash, are reasonably intelligent, but are underwhelmed by the movie -- where do we fit in? Johann brooks no criticism, and Mr. Seitz starts off by saying the result of Miller's and Rodriguez's collaboration is a "piece of junk."

A little more moderation on both the pro and con sides would have made this Sin City discussion a bit more accessible for those who haven't yet seen the movie or don't have such a violent opinion about it. A thread that descends into invective is out of control and benefits nobody.

I saw the movie in NYC Tuesday. I agree with a lot of the things said in praise of it. The visuals, anybody will agree, are powerful and stylistically unified, and Rodriguez has done a remarkable job of tranferrring Miller's imagery into a movie using real human actors. This may be Rodriguez's best work to date. That means less when I say it than it may when some others do, though, because I have not been a big fan of his up to now. But in a lot of ways this is an accomplished piece of work.

But unfortunately there is a lack of nuance in Sin City that seems related to the fact that, though Rodriguez was blending together three Miller comic book stories, he was pretty slavish in following individual page-by page sequences and dialogue. The violence of a film with three-dimensional imagery and live actors has a different effect in a film from things that were originally conceived as lines on a page. One has the feeling of being bludgeoned over and over, and the story line, which again works well in a comic book, tends to seem exceptionally simple on film. Consequently overall it seems to be a somewhat misguided effort.

Movies and comics are two separate mediums, each valid in its own right, each having qualities the other lacks. Above all the experience of reading a comic book and watching a movie are different, mentally and physically. I think there are in fact certain key elements in Miller's drawings that Rodriguez has failed to capture. He has used too many closeups and not enough of those distant, sharply angular images so typical of the comic book vision.

I should add that although I rarely read "adult" comic books today, as a child I read comics so intensely at times I got sick. I learned a lot about evil from comics, and also a lot about the classics. And I have perused the Sin City comic books and read through individual sequences to compare them with the movie.

stevetseitz

04-08-2005, 03:07 AM

O.K. I'll buy the moderation viewpoint.

I have already conceded to Tabuno that I felt the film would have been, in my estimation, a better film if it had a better cast. I think that would have been a sort of "cure-all".

Great actors can find creative ways of delivering lines that can seem out of place when delivered by average actors.

Please also note that I wrote most of my review out prior to posting so I had not read any reviews (positive or negative) of the film.

My intention was not to be contradictory or confrontational. I spoke from the heart about a film that I had actually looked forward to seeing.

Johann

04-08-2005, 08:15 AM

Originally posted by stevetseitz

My intention was not to be contradictory or confrontational. I spoke from the heart about a film that I had actually looked forward to seeing.

That's funny, so did I.

And as I said before I have no problem being elite on this one.

This is one film where I will not be swayed in any way.
Any and all complaints are referred to the rotating file because as a person who appreciates and is crystal clear on what Rodriguez, QT and Miller have pulled off I simply cannot entertain any claims that they failed.

Whoever says they failed have not come to the film on it's own terms.
That's the bottom line.

It's genius. A cornicopia of genius.

If you did not "like" the film, if it did not fit into your mindset of what is good cinema or good comic book cinema, fine.

But to criticize the filmmakers, who've made something cooler than the Matrix imo, is just dumb.

I can buy not liking the movie, I can buy "it's not my style, not my thing". I can buy "overwhelming".

What I won't buy is "lame", "poor writing and poor acting" or "unoriginal". Anyone who says that has got severe perception deficits.

Sorry, but you gotta come to the film on it's own terms.
Only then can you criticize justifiably.

"Think of what a work of art demands of it's audience"
-Peter Greenaway

Chris Knipp

04-08-2005, 11:16 AM

It would never be my intention, of course, to say that Sin City is "lame". Also "poor acting and poor directing" and "unoriginal" are simplistic, pointless criticisms. We can't have a discussion if we hurl epithets or are derogatory. I'm glad Mr. Seitz has 'bought the moderation viewpoint,' because he's my ally in this debate.

Johann writes, though: This is one film where I will not be swayed in any way.

That means there is no discussion. But you are the prime defender/advocate/eulogist of the movie, so it would be a shame if you could not bend enough to influence others. It's not effective, or interesting in a discussion, to keep repeating the same assertion over and over. As you know, a primary debating technique is to concede points to members of the opposition; that's how you win their confidence. I don't see how "cornucopia of genius" influences anybody. It's just an assertion; an effusion. Examples, specifics, are what we need. Let's get into the details. I know you know the details better than anybody else here, because you love this film and are ready to see it multiple times. I'm here to learn. If you pursuade me to love Sin City and teach me how to appreciate it more, then I'd count myself lucky and consider this thread a boon to me.

I am not out to demolish Sin City. The first words of my journal entry right after viewing it are: "This movie is beautiful, stylish, and ingenious..."

I wouldn't say "poor writing and poor acting" , so I don't agree that the casting is wrong and that different casting would have made the movie much better. First of all it's an impressive cast, and second, directing is obviously an equally essential element.

It is always my aim to come to a film on its own terms.

I'll write a review of the movie shortly and post it on this thread. I don't know if that will add anything to the debate, but it will put together my ideas and impressions, also "from the heart."

stevetseitz

04-08-2005, 02:06 PM

>>But to criticize the filmmakers, who've made something cooler than the Matrix imo, is just dumb.<<

What exactly does that mean, "cooler"? "The Matrix" was groundbreaking in many ways and set a new standard for the sci-fiction that was to come after it. Like "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Star Wars" and "Blade Runner". Audiences simply wouldn't accept inferior products anymore. "Sin City" does nothing of this magnitude and is appeals mainly to a fringe group. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Spider Man sequel is better (and does more at the box office)

>>I can buy not liking the movie, I can buy "it's not my style, not my thing". I can buy "overwhelming".<<

No, not overwhelming. UNDERwhelming. Like I said before good visuals, but that is only one element in the overall experience of a motion picture. A weak cast, cheesy dialogue and adolescent attempts at humor.

>>What I won't buy is "lame", "poor writing and poor acting" or "unoriginal". Anyone who says that has got severe perception deficits.<<

You seem to be convinced that your opinion is the only "right" one and, frankly, that is a very immature way to go through life. Subjective interpretation is something you'll have to deal with.

>>Sorry, but you gotta come to the film on it's own terms.
Only then can you criticize justifiably.<<

I'll criticize bad film-making any time I see it. If I expect more from a director, a writer, or the actors I'll always be vocal in my disapproval. Oh, and it's always "justified".

Chris Knipp

04-08-2005, 04:45 PM

I would not evaluate the maturity level of anybody on this site. I was trying to make that suggestion earlier: let's avoid personal attacks in defending our positions pro or con, or in between, on this movie, please.

I understood "overwhelming." I did find it "overwhelming," not in a positive sense. In fact I can't quite see "underwhelming." Sin City packs a wallop.

I guess when you have to define a term like "cool," then it loses any purpose. I can see that the Matrix is heavier-handed than Sin City, and in that sense less cool. But I still have problems with the movie which I am going to air more thoroughly when I get a good enough stretch of free time to write a review.

stevetseitz

04-08-2005, 05:24 PM

As far as Sin City packing a "wallop". It didn't do anything for me.

When it started I was really excited by the visuals and thought the intro was excellent. I was ready for a fantastic film. By the end, I was yawning and looking at my watch. There is only so many similar action scenes I can watch and characters I had no emotional connection with. The shock attempts weren't shocking and the acting, particularly by Clive Owen, was just plain bad. Talk about wooden. The gritting your teeth look only goes so far.

At least I got to see the Star Wars Episode III trailer.

Chris Knipp

04-09-2005, 01:16 AM

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ, FRANK MILLER:
SIN CITY

A REVIEW

Nasty violence, with a 'cool' look

By Chris Knipp

Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (for which he gives graphic novelist Frank Miller co-director credit) is a beautiful, stylish, and ingenious adaptation, but even for a filmed comic book it's violent to the point of being brain-dead. One thinks longingly of the pleasing teenage romantic darkness of that brooding revenge fantasy, The Crow, both Alex Proyas' version and Tim Pope's sequel. There's revenge in both, but Sin City's revenge is so heavily laced with confused morality that it gives no satisfaction. If you want ingenious ultra-violence, try Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, where the violence is saved up and released so that it has a shocking elegance and a punch. If you want teenage adventure with the same look (at a time when such techniques seemed fresh and new) -- stylized black and white with touches of color -- try Coppola's Rumble Fish. Despite its nice look and its heavy overproduction using all the latest technical tricks, Sin City pales in comparison with all these.

In fact the only movies Sin City stands up well against, ultimately, are Rodriguez's other ones. This is his most complex and probably his best effort: here, he has bolstered his usually thin content by slavishly following Miller's cartoon books and linking up three of them so we've got a little cluster of characters and stories, although whether the stories are really interwoven or just stuck together is sometimes hard to say. Little is discernably added to the stories by Rodriguez; at times he follows dialogue and image as if the books were his storyboards. The effect is of a waxworks rather than a new permutation.

A comic book/graphic novel is one thing and a movie is another. This distinction seems to be more and more lost. But on the one hand, you can have an effect like the Superman, Batman, or Spiderman movies, where the cartoon images are fleshed out with (at best) good, live actors and special effects. But since the first Superman movie computer generated digital imaging has become so hypertrophied that the value of using human actors sometimes increasingly becomes questionable. Look at a movie like Polar Express in which humans are deliberately made over to look like mummified dolls. What's the point?

On the other hand, you have a movie that becomes a comic strip, like Richard Linklater's marvelous, twittering, Waking Life. Any imaginative animation may have this quality, though digital animation, with its glossy roundness, loses the pleasing flatness of real cartoons, which are hollow and two dimensional, and either made out of black lines or filled in with flat Ben Day dot color. (Waking Life has the quality of hand drawing in every frame, because Bob Sabiston designed all the images that way.)

Sin City exists in neither world but rather in some Neverland where the actors are made to seem unreal with prosthetics and costumes and CGI but the drawn quality also has been lost. The stress (as in The Crow) is on atmosphere and scene; but there isn't the deep brooding depressed longing, the angst-ridden adolescent resentful mood that distinguishes the Crow movies and makes their moodiness really involving and unified.

Part of the "fun" of the rather joyless horror fest that Sin City becomes when fleshed out as a movie, as opposed to the stylized and stylish black and white images of Miller's books, with their dry, artificial quality (in the books, there's plenty of white; in the movie, the prevailing color is a gloppy gray, characteristic of a very different kind of comic book drawing), is spotting the various well known actors. Typically, Bruce Willis (Hartigan) looks just like Bruce Willis (has he ever donned any disguise other than a small hairpiece?). Clive Owen as Dwight looks like Clive Owen too, only more handsome, and also sadly more ordinary without his English accent. It may take you a while to recognize Benicio del Toro in the very evil Jackie Boy, and he hardly has the lazy, teasing speech mannerisms of del Toro: but is that an improvement? Are these actors making comic book characters larger than life, or are they just disappearing into them? Unlike these is the Yellow Bastard, the final evil manifestation of the evil politician's depraved son (played by Nick Stahl, who always looks sallow and nasty), because he looks like the Golem--an animatron with a yellow head. Perhaps the only actor who really rises to the occasion is Mickey Rourke, who's no stranger to deep cover as an actor and whose pugilistically battered face has been completely made over.

But what are all these people doing? I'd really rather not say, if you don't mind. Probably when I was twelve I would have loved this movie. One of my favorite things to watch in movies back then was torture, smashed thumbs, eyes gouged out, bodies broken on the rack: I loved all that, because it meant nothing to me; it wasn't real. Now I know that this kind of stuff really happens all the time, and I don't want to see it. But this is a movie for boys, because here, again, as for me at twelve, none of it means anything; none of it is real. There's some pain over a little girl who is threatened with nastiness, but for the rest whether a guy has a hammer in his back or a knife sticking out of his brow matters not at all.

The girls are the best part, for sure. They're as tough and macho as the guys, and a lot better looking. But whether a whore in skimpy leather packing heat is an example of woman's liberation is not something worth debating. Cool? Yes, very cool, if you're fifteen, or forty-five going on twelve.

As has been pointed out, Rodriguez's literal reconstitution of these graphic novels is hardly as original as the graphic novels themselves, despite the technical innovations, and those novels themselves had less originality than the film noir they grew out of. The images of Sin City remain striking and often beautiful, but I think there are in fact certain key elements in Miller's drawings that Rodriguez has failed to capture. He has used too many closeups and not enough of those wonderful distant, sharply angular images so typical of comic book vision. Did those themselves grow out of the work of people like Greg Toland, Orson Welles' cameraman for Citizen Kane? Probably.

tabuno

04-09-2005, 11:27 PM

When I think of violence on the movie screen, Sin City doesn't come to mind immediately. Instead, one of the more talked about prolonged scenes that comes to mind is the 30 or 45 minutes of the first part of Saving Private Ryan. What seemed to make this scene so compelling, so much an item of discussion was the apparent in your face killing, the body parts, the ocean turning red, the sound of bullets seeming to come out of the theater speakers. The plot and meaning of this scene? There wasn't any. This scene was based on the experience not the verbal language of the soldiers.

What comes to mind with Sin City was the transformation of a graphic, comic book novel into a virtual reality, coming to life with flesh and blood human being actors. The plot? Some critics have placed Alien as among the best movies of its science fiction genre. The plot? Very simple. The execution well done. So too with Sin City, the plot very simple. The execution competently if not well done (the various storylines were not well edited together). In the case of Alien, the dialogue, script, and acting was directed towards realism. In the case of Sin City, the dialogue, script, and was directed towards fantastic, imaginary world of 50s, gangster comics.

stevetseitz

04-10-2005, 03:56 AM

>> one of the more talked about prolonged scenes that comes to mind is the 30 or 45 minutes of the first part of Saving Private Ryan. What seemed to make this scene so compelling, so much an item of discussion was the apparent in your face killing, the body parts, the ocean turning red, the sound of bullets seeming to come out of the theater speakers. The plot and meaning of this scene? There wasn't any.<<

Anyone who has faced the business end of a german machine gun might disagree that there was "no meaning" to the taking of the beach during the Normandy invasion. It shouldn't take a WWII vet or a historian to know what the plot was. It was the liberation of France and it was the starting point for an invasion of the of the European continent to defeat the forces of evil that had taken over there.

Spielberg's genius in filming the scene "combat photographer style" complete with unbelievable directional sound effects and gut-wrenching visuals tapped into a primal fear any man has when faced with combat.

Just as powerful as "Saving Private Ryan", and a better overall film in my book, is "The Longest Day". I also recommend taking in the DVD version of "Band of Brothers" as a whole. It's a non-fiction companion piece that's every bit as powerful as either "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Longest Day".

That scene had me so tense in the theater that I had to be told to let go of the armrests.

Another similar scene (copied countless times since it first came out) was the first Strirling battle scene in "Braveheart". Again, those who viewed this scene were mesmerized and stunned. The violence felt real. The pain genuine. The sacrifices costly. Admittedly these scenes have the advantage of being based on true historical battles.

But let's take another violent scene. The final shootout in "Unforgiven", Clint Eastwood's western masterpiece. It is fictional and quite violent but it had authenticity because it's characters had been established and a sense of realism pervaded each scene preceding it.

tabuno

04-10-2005, 02:15 PM

How does one experience graphic novel violence? Would it be really an adaptation of the genre if it were to be replete with the deeper, subtle context of behavioral, psychological turmoil? Would the realism of the scene be improved if somehow comic book characters became alive? What would they think? How would they act? Graphic novels by their very nature probe into more risky, darker, seamier sides of the human psyche where the lines of good and evil are sometimes drawn in vivid black and white, good and evil.

Sometimes, the meaning of war is fought in terms of liberty and oppression, sometimes it appears meaningless. I've talked to a number of women who shake their heads at man's violence and the apparent senselessness of it. The feminine nurturing instinct seems to have been permanently mangled and the growth of humanity seems to have never really gotten out of the chemcial brew of anger and fighting.

Instead for me Sin City transforms the issue of principle, sacrifice into basic fundamental emotional ethics between indescriminate killing and killing and sacrificing one's self for innocence, goodness, a noble characteristics that even for me sometimes war movies seem to overlook.

There is one animated scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 [spoiler] that perhaps depicts the more horrid experiences of criminal gangster violence and what it can do to an innocent child, a child who however turns bad and dies in the end (a somewhat ambiguous moral lesson).

Chris Knipp

04-10-2005, 02:47 PM

(Posted by tabuno:)
How would they act? Graphic novels by their very nature probe into more risky, darker, seamier sides of the human psyche where the lines of good and evil are sometimes drawn in vivid black and white, good and evil.
That is all very nice, and I very much appreciate your willingness to think through what's involved, but what you say here is still a rather vague generalization drawn up to justify Sin City. Graphic novels do lots of things. It seems to me that Miller and Rodriguez have transformed Miller's rather elegant drawings into murky but glistening grunge. What works in the more schematic and abstract world of a drawn book becomes a confused mess in this new celluloid transformation.

Mr Seitz makes a good point: The Longest Day is far better treatment of the subject than Saving Private Ryan, though the opening sequence of the latter is impressive, to say the least.

Needless to say, while battles in real wars may be "meaningless" in some larger philosophical sense, they are highly meaningful in historical and human terms, especially the Normandy landing. To compare the shennanigans in Sin City with the that phase of WWII is frivolous. I have not seen Band of Brothers. It sounded too rah-rah nationalistic for my taste, but it may be a good treatment of the war.

Anthony Lane in The New Yorker writes in his review of Sin City,
(April 11, 2005:)
"We have, it is clear, reached the lively dead end of a process that was initiated by a fretful Martin Scorsese and inflamed, with less embarrassed glee, by Tarantino: the process of knowing everything about violence and nothing about suffering." Because of realism and a sense of context, great war movies do convey that sense of suffering. The white wounds and splattered powdery blood in Sin City are sickening without seeming real. Like a video game, the film disgusts (while it may not move or excite) a sensitive person because it is without real affect yet what it represents reference acts that in real life are horrible. It is not necessary to have the simplification of a graphic novel to have a sense of clearcut good and evil. Quite the contrary: a true moral awareness is always informed by richness of context rather than simplification.

As illustration as I have done sometimes before I would like to mention the German 1960 movie Die Brücke, The Bridge, which depicts sequences of horrible violence and the suffering of German youths (one sees a few of them in The Downfall) -- drawn into service as the Nazi cause became desperate toward the end of WWII -- within a well-established human context--because each of the young soldiers has been intruduced with his family and his milieu early in the film. The reality of Die Brücke is complex -- the young people have various motives, some of them are idealistic and all of them are desperate; the aims for which they are fighting are dubious but they do not know that -- as in all war; the truth that emerges most strongly is that war is cruel and wrong. This is a very simple moral lesson, but it is presented within a real and disturbingly rich human context.

HorseradishTree

04-10-2005, 04:28 PM

Sorry to go back so far, but I was gone for a while.

Originally posted by stevetseitz
>>Compare the complexity of Watchmen to the painting, and then you've got a more fair competition.<<

O.K. but even the most respectful comic lover must admit adults who like comics are a small, fringe group. Movies are experienced by a far larger audience. Cinema is an art form that can combine all other art forms: Music, Dance, visual composition, literature, etc.

The graphic novel by comparison is much smaller in scope. It's not as if you can turn one into another and not have to fill in some blanks.

Ok, now I can agree with you. However, I don't think that because cinema has a larger scope means that it's a more "sophisticated" medium. I may like movies better than comics (not to say that they're far behind in preference), but this fanboy's got to stick with his instincts. You kind of have to understand where I'm coming from: just a 16-year-old film buff with an occasional affinity for his "whiffs!!" and "bams!".

tabuno

04-10-2005, 07:18 PM

Chris Knipp: "The white wounds and splattered powdery blood in Sin City are sickening without seeming real."

I can't imagine that any graphic novel adapted to the big screen would be very successfully transformed if it became "real." World War II was real. Sin City is imaginary. The blood on the comic strip page or book is imaginary. The whole I idea is to allow the fantastic images to be unreal so that the graphic violence can become more emotionally tolerable. I would hate to think if such graphic violence were to be portrayed as realism - it would be ghastly. Sin City actually cut away many times, leaving the outcome to violence to the audience's imagination. Sin City focuses on characters not the massive onslaught of war. The audience is allowed to concentrate on individuals and their fight for good and die trying. Simple but pure.

Johann

04-11-2005, 08:06 AM

I seem to be the only champion of this film here.
It's difficult to enunciate exactly how I feel about Sin City.
I have failed, not the filmmakers.

It's hard to exclaim "genius" without someone coming out of the woodwork slamming you for loving senseless, shocking violence
with no consideration for suffering, like Mr. Lane.

Well last time I checked this was entertainment, and people seem to have missed that.

Coming to the film as I do, with a life of comics reading and about 15 years of solid cinema knowledge/appreciation, I see the passion and craftsmanship in digital moviemaking and I am incredibly impressed.

I can't fathom how anyone- whether they like the film or not- cannot see/feel the kinetic triple-joint concentrated effort that was put into making it. No seems to acknowledge the accomplishment and the sheer thrill this movie provides.

I haven't even talked about the plots, which I'll do when I've seen the film a few more times (as Chris predicted).

I'm trying to make clear that for a fan of comic books and a fan of the movies, this film is welcomed with open extended arms, and I'm sure the filmmakers knew they were creating something special.

I do not advocate senseless pointless violence and this film is replete with it. I expected it- I saw Desperado & Kill Bill. I do not advocate turning women into soulless objects for man's whims. I expected it from this film.
It's called Sin City. What did you think you were gonna see?
I expected something more violent actually, and I would have still loved it.

It's a vacation to slimeville kids. It's escapist entertainment at it's finest.

It's not a Jane Austen novel nor is it Coronation Street.
It's Sin City, a masterpiece that doesn't need me to emphasize it.

It stands alone- for now and forever.

Chris Knipp

04-11-2005, 10:52 AM

I seem to be the only champion of this film here....

Coming to the film as I do, with a life of comics reading and about 15 years of solid cinema knowledge/appreciation, I see the passion and craftsmanship in digital moviemaking and I am incredibly impressed.

I can't fathom how anyone- whether they like the film or not- cannot see/feel the kinetic triple-joint concentrated effort that was put into making it. No seems to acknowledge the accomplishment and the sheer thrill this movie provides.
First of all, you're not the only champion, I'm sure, and tabuno has spoken eloquently in Sin City's favor on this thread.

Your remark about the "kinetic triple-joint concentrated effort" (I don't know exactly what that means, but I like the phrase; it's worthy of your own genius and eloquence) reminds me of a story about the English man of letters, Samuel Johnson. He was at his friend Mrs. Thrale's where a chamber concert involving a violin was in progress and making a wry face that clearly showed his displeasure. "But Dr. Johnson, Sir," Mrs. Thrale said, "do you not realize this piece is very difficult?"

"Difficult, Madam?" Johnson replied. "I wish it were impossible!"

One can appreciate that very many unsuccessful or unadmirable efforts have behind them tremendous effort; and the technical know-how applied to a film is no guarantee of its quality. You mention Tarantino's Kill Bill. Those two films too are derivative efforts, but they are derived from a lot of sources, rather than transferred from one to another medium like Sin City, and Tarantino has added a lot of his own original touches to them, most notably his inimitable dialogue. Can you quote me any quotable quotes from Sin City?

Well last time I checked this was entertainment, and people seem to have missed that. Yeah, but I didn't find it entertaining. That's the whole trouble. It was work for me to get through it. I'm sincerely sorry. I'm not just being a bad sport; I'm being true to my gut reaction, which I always try to be.

It's not a Jane Austen novel nor is it Coronation Street. I know, and I didn't expect it to be, and I loved the Kill Bills, and I don't think I have any particular knee-jerk negative reaction to violence. Violence, like a lot of other nasty things, works real well in the movies, and I appreciate that.

Whenever there's a transfer/adaptation it's very important to consider the result on its own, but it's extremely important from the cinephile point of view to consider the relatinoship between the original and the adaptation. Since you have "a livetime of comics reading" behind you, can you talk more about the Miller graphic novels Sin City is adapted from and the relationship between them and the movie? I always want to know: Is the adaptation as good as the original? Better? The same? But it must be different. How's it different? How have the filmmakers made creative choices in making the transfer? Where may they have fallen down, or lost some of the qualities of the original? Where have they added marvelloous (or alternatively questionable) new elements? These are things I want to know. I tried to make some comments on that in my review, based on recently seeing the movie and perusing the books, but I'm sure you are better qualified to do it.

Johann

04-11-2005, 11:19 AM

This may be a case of repeat viewings as a must.

Tabuno has made some excellent points in favor of the film.
My *narrow-minded* attitude is total fan-boy-plants-his-flag.
I make no apologies.

Some lines that just roll off the tongue:

Marv (Mickey Rourke): There's no settling down.
This ain't no bar-room brawl.
It's gonna be blood for blood and by the gallons.
It's the old days. The bad days. The all-or-nothing days.
THEY'RE BACK.

one of the best scenes in the movie:

PRIEST: "...ask yourself if that corpse of a slut is worth dying for"
MARV: "Worth dying for". BLAM! {shoots priest}
"Worth killing for". BLAM!
"Worth going to hell for". BLAM!
" Amen".

Now that's just sheer manly movie machismo. Remember how romantic Clarence was in True Romance when he shot that fucker Drexel in the nutsac? Same stuff, gents.

It's just cold, cool calculated killin'. By a lughead played to the T by Mr. Rourke, whose career has been pocked with crap but proves that anyone can come back from the acting dead.
(with the right representation of course).

Your request for more persuasion (more making a case for the film) is duly noted, and I will come back with a final diatribe (maybe the longest thing I've typed at this Holy Cyber Station) that will hopefully bring everything into sharper focus for you AND me.

and yes, the film is 100% faithful to the novels (with a tiny few exceptions)

Chris Knipp

04-11-2005, 12:52 PM

I enjoy all this detail from you and am glad more is to come. The fan-boy-stakes-his-flag declarations have to be expanded into real information and exposition if we're going to have a discussion about this and if you're going to make your case, and I'm sure there is a case. This is not a negligible movie. And you can quote me on that.

The old-days-are-back line was used by Lane:

(The New Yorker, 'The Current Cinema,' "Feelings: Sin 'Sin City' and 'A HOle in My Heart', by Anthony Lane,' April 11, 2005)
"It's the old days," Marve muses. "They're back." I hate to say this, Marv, but for some of ut they never went away. Lane's alluding to his argument that
"the youthful, iron-skinned audience at whom the film is aimed will trumpet their belief [you're trumpenting, Johann, aren't you?] that 'Sin City' offers something new," whereas graphic novels themselves "are soaked to the bone in a style that was brought to refinement by film noir." Etc. A point that I stole for my own review's comments.

The only thing I want to recommend you consider working up into something a tad more convincing (and detailed) in your next salvo is this:
and yes, the film is 100% faithful to the novels (with a tiny few exceptions) That doesn't cut it, old boy. We know it's faithful, but it's another medium, and that's what you have to consider. I made a brief comment on the angles, all the angular high-up 'shots' used in the comics (as also in many other comics' imagery back into the Forties), a look that is rarely seen in the movie; it relies too much on closeups, perhaps to show off all those CGI alterations and all the fancy makeup. Is a movie the same as a comic book or a graphic novel? Is Lane right to say comix stole from noir, without commenting on the differnces in the mediums?

tabuno

04-11-2005, 08:42 PM

Johann - Add me to your Sin City column (except for the confusing editing, merging of separate storylines, I'm with you).

stevetseitz

04-12-2005, 01:07 AM

If the the graphic novel borrowed from film noir in the first place then why re-make the movie as a film noir at all? Once again it's a matter of the lack of creativity in Hollywood.

Movies with far better writing "Miller's Crossing", "Out of the Past", "The Lion in Winter".

Watched non-director's cut of "Bladerunner" on the sci-fi channel the other day. Man, the voice-over REALLY wasn't necessary. The filmaker's added it only to kow-tow to the studio who thought the unsophisticated audiences would be lost.

Good voice over work is tricky and while some lines in "Sin City" were good, others fell flat. The trick in art is to know that sometimes less is more.

tabuno

04-12-2005, 02:28 AM

I really enjoy most voice-overs because it is impossible to really appreciate some of the mental musings that really fill in details that would be cumbersome or obviously fake if somehow transposed into the movie itself. Maybe I enjoy voice-overs because it reminds of the looking at the storybook pictures while my mother read to me each night. Somehow, voice-overs are not a detriment to me personally, I enjoy the multi-sensory experience of sight, sound, and narrative allowing my brain to synthesize both the experience on the screen and a linguistical discussion that really pierces the surface textures of the acting on the screen. I much preferred the original threatrical release of Bladerunner - a true American (ending) type movie goer, I guess. Sometimes it's nice to sit back and enjoy a movie without having to think, think, analyze all the time. Sometimes being spoon-fed is a vacation-like, entertainment dream - to sit back, experience, and enjoy without having to have one's mind in hyperdrive all the time. For me, sometimes this type of movie is the best and most memorable kind...because it allows one to experience the depth of the emotional, intellectual turmoil instead of trying to use one's imagination losing out on just the experience itself. That's why cartoons, stories, novels sometimes are fascinating, but at the same time frustrating too.

stevetseitz

04-12-2005, 03:32 PM

>>the youthful, iron-skinned audience<<

I found this comment to be very true. There is a lot of de-sensitization that is found in today's audiences. Even light comedies made today will contain at least one "shock" moment where the film will try and gross out the audience, raise some eyebrows and with any luck get some free publicity.

The hair gel in "Something about Mary" comes to mind. It doesn't always work. Look at the so-awful-it's-funny "The Sweetest Thing". They were obviously going for gross out moments and shock laughter but it failed miserably. Any humor in that film is unintended.

The same goes for violent films. Directors and writers are under a constant pressure to "take it to the next step". To an audience that has seen "Pulp Fiction", a movie like "Goodfellas" may not shock or titilate as intended.

The best films find a balance between new ground and tradition. It's not unlike jazz. You can't truly improvise and create until you can play the standard flawlessly straight. You must have a grasp of the fundamentals.

Chris Knipp

04-13-2005, 02:23 AM

I agree that Anthony Lane is on the mark, but I think we're all iron-skinned, and that isn't entirely a bad thing because we're less prudish. But as I said in my review of Sin City, torture and horrible violence are present realities to me and to us all now (in the wake of the Iraq war and occupation and Abu Ghuraib) and it's hard to be indifferent to the indifferent doling out of violence when it's done with a deadening rhythm.

I'm 'afraid' (irony) that I missed the out-of-tune vulgarities of The Sweetest Thing (I didn't see it); an IMDb viewer described it as "a train wreck of a movie." I don't see a lot of the kind of movies you're alluding to. I did just see Guess Who, and I think it steered clear of grossness, although it is incredibly outspoken compared to the original Guess Who's Coming....etc. I thought the brief comments about white men's penises were very welcome, though I'm still wondering if she was supposed to be lying to impress her sister, or telling the truth as she saw it.

stevetseitz

04-13-2005, 03:33 AM

I have yet to see "Guess Who". I have a friend who recommended it but I'm luke-warm towards Ashton Kutcher. I'm still trying to figure out who's nephew or cousin he is to explain his sudden hollywood ubiquitousness.

Is it worth seeing?

The only reason I saw "The Sweetest Thing" was because my friend and his wife rented it and were so apalled/surprised that they made me watch it with them.

I did see a "guilty pleasure" movie over the weekend: "Sahara"

Now, here is a movie that wants to have fun, the cast
wants to have fun and the audience ends up having fun. Steve Zahn is hilarious. Matthew McConaughey handles the demands of his role quite well. Penelope Cruz brings her ever-present charm and beauty to a role which is notable for being one of the few action-adventure roles
written for a female in recent memory that is not obnoxious.

William H. Macy is great and the production values are high.

It's kind of a James Bond meets Indiana Jones film (I swear they used the same canyon from "Raiders of the Lost Ark") The villains are one dimensional, but who cares?

Chris Knipp

04-13-2005, 01:22 PM

Guess Who is not a must-see, that's for sure. I went to it to see Ashton and because it fit the timing of a friend who wanted to see a movie with me.

I love Ashton. I like cute guys, what can I say? I believe he's better than people say, but I'm prejudiced. I think, and it's been written also, that he's a much shrewder operator than the public realizes; he has his finger in many pies amd as his character says in Cheaper by the Dozen, he knows that his acting talent is not what gets him work.

I'll keep Sahara in mind as a possible fun movie, because another friend mentioned wanting to see it, though I don't like Macy.

tabuno

04-13-2005, 10:28 PM

Chris Knipp: "But as I said in my review of Sin City, torture and horrible violence are present realities to me and to us all now (in the wake of the Iraq war and occupation and Abu Ghuraib) and it's hard to be indifferent to the indifferent doling out of violence when it's done with a deadening rhythm."

Tab Uno: One could argue that the tragic deaths of thousands of American citizens and Iraqis have at its core a rather dubious purpose and that the billions of dollars of real taxpayer money and real maiming of U.S. soldiers has taken on a mind-numbing, deadening rhythm of its own. The whole sad global event is too large to comprehend, the real motives of the war trenched in mystery and conspiracy. Unlike War World II, doubts linger to the extent that the U.S. public does not know what to think. Are our war dead heros or pawns in a much larger sorry trajedy? Unlike the Sin City violence that is obviously fake, over the top, there is a consistent theme of decency and purpose, the singular sacrifice of one's own life for another human being or the rights of another person (it's not so clear in reality in Iraq). What's more deadening? What's more obvious in terms of moral principles and violence demonstrated in a lavish, stylish theatrical movie or the more murky reality of real death and lost limbs? By now the American public appears to become more deadened to the constant numbers of actual GIs dead - now down from 100 a month to 50 to 30 a month while on the screen violence and imaginary death seem to raise at least a louder more persistent debate than even the war itself at times.

"Sahara" is one of the best action-adventure movies out so far this year. It avoids over the top action, thrills and returns to a more serious and simple formula for its compelling storyline and cinematography while provided enough humor to keep the movie balanced.

stevetseitz

04-14-2005, 03:29 AM

>>One could argue that the tragic deaths of thousands of American citizens and Iraqis have at its core a rather dubious purpose<<

What there is no doubt about is that free and democratic societies have the highest standards of living, highest level of human rights, fewest number of democides and the least instances of military aggression towards their neighbors.

Regardless of our personal feelings about the conflict in Iraq, the history of the 2oth century shows that a democratic society is always preferable to a totalitarian regime.

While war is violent and innocent lives are lost, war is immeasurably better and less costly in terms of lives than a brutal, totalitarian regime like Saddam Hussein's.

In the 20th century all wars combined killed an estimated 40 million people. Absolutism killed a minimum of 170 million.

Absolutism is not only many times deadlier than war, but itself is the major factor causing war and other forms of violent conflict. It is a major cause of militarism. Indeed, absolutism, not war, is mankind's deadliest scourge of all.

Chris Knipp

04-14-2005, 11:00 AM

It wasn't my intention to start a discussion of modern history or US foreign policy. I was referring only to the difference between how a young teenage boy and an adult perceives violence; but even that was too general, because it's all a question of style and context. I found Sin City's violence leaden and difficult to sit through. That was my point. I can conceive that if I were 13 I might not. As tabuno quoted me, I said that "torture and horrible violence are present realities to me and to us all now". I only cited the Iraq war and Abu Ghuraib to show how they're present realities at this time. When I was 11 or 13 and enjoyed torture sequences or seeing somebody's head blown off in a movie, those sorts of events hadn't become realities to me yet. Though it's difficult to explain why other than to refer to the comic book context, Sin City seems for the most part best designed for the "youthful, iron-skinned" audience Anthony Lane refers to in the remarks I quoted earlier. But why wouldn't I say that about the two Kill Bills or Oldboy? All I can say is that those are clearly designed to appeal primarily to a more adult audience.

stevetseitz

04-14-2005, 02:04 PM

The present realities of war, torture and mayhem may take center stage at this time (due to media coverage, etc.) but violence has always been and, alas, appears as if it will always be with mankind.

When homo erectus first walked erect and started carrying stone tools circa 1,500,000 B.C. our ancestors were scarcely sentient it was about one million more years before we know they started controlling fire, building huts, driving herds of wild animals, using language, etc.

Even back then violence was a constant companion, the fossil record shows indications that our closest "near human" competitors Homo habilis, Australopithecus robustus, and Australopithecus boisei were wiped out.

Our age of relative peace and enlightenment is certainly the exception in human history and may just be a hiccup before another era of slaughter and carnage begins.

I think our art is a reflection of our culture and an empty, violent film like "Sin City" should be a cautionary indicator. I'm a fan of many violent action films and have enjoyed everything from "Spartacus" to "Unforgiven" to "Enter the Dragon". I simply found the quality of presentation lacking in "Sin City".

tabuno

04-14-2005, 10:48 PM

stevetseitz: "Sin City seems for the most part best designed for the "youthful, iron-skinned" audience Anthony Lane refers to in the remarks I quoted earlier. But why wouldn't I say that about the two Kill Bills or Oldboy? All I can say is that those are clearly designed to appeal primarily to a more adult audience."

tabuno: What you say here makes a lot of sense. If true, what becomes an important concern is whether the "youthful, iron-skinned" will be hardened and deadened to violence or will the honorable intentions of the heros in this movie break into the emotional hearts and sensitivities of such iron-skin?

Such a targeted audience would probably not be as apt to appreciate the subltety of "Kill Bill" which in of itself had some questionable ethics and ultimate motives involved (a mother killed in proximity to her daughter, a sympathetic assassin who had to witness the terrible murder of her father only to be killed herself).

oscar jubis

04-14-2005, 11:06 PM

You ascribed the quote to the wrong person, tab. It's Chris Knipp's.

cinemabon

04-19-2005, 11:40 AM

Chris Knipp you party pooper. I was reading this post from the start and was just enjoying the slugfest (?) when you had to come along and raise the bar. I did like your review. There can be not doubt of your intellectual prowess. But I'm on record as opposed to this kind of violence for entertainment, and we went round and round on Tarantino. No one liked the science fiction tale, "Sky Captain," told in a similar vein in front of blue screen. It, too, was highly stylized. The film noir aspect of this movie sounds intriguing, but I'll stick with less graphic interpretations, where the bad guy doubles over and drops to the ground. That's my idea of violence. I wonder sometimes how people can "enjoy" the vicarious experience of seeing someone beheaded. Now there's a visceral response, but then, its been done before.

stevetseitz

04-19-2005, 03:18 PM

>>No one liked the science fiction tale, "Sky Captain," told in a similar vein in front of blue screen. It, too, was highly stylized.<<

Highly stylized yes. Like you say, that doesn't make it neccesarily GOOD. "Streets of Fire" was highly stylized, so was the music video for "Take on Me" by Aha. If the visuals dominate the plot they must constantly innovate and keep us interested in what we are watching.

>>The film noir aspect of this movie sounds intriguing, but I'll stick with less graphic interpretations, where the bad guy doubles over and drops to the ground. That's my idea of violence. I wonder sometimes how people can "enjoy" the vicarious experience of seeing someone beheaded. Now there's a visceral response, but then, its been done before.<<

Violence in film has been with us since the earliest movies. The difference is that there is violence done to advance the plot and there is violence for violence sake. There is also violence that is truly shocking because it comes at us as a surprise and there is violence that simply deadens us to the reality of the characters on the screen.

Johann

04-19-2005, 07:21 PM

The first shot that indicates Sin City the film is on par with Sin City the comics is when Josh Hartnett kisses the woman he assassinates.

Sin City the comics are gorgeous exercises in black and white contrast. Throughout the film is the permeation of that contrast, and this should be remembered when comparing the film to the comics. I've read 4 Sin City graphic novels and own one: The Big Fat Kill. It was originally a 5-issue series in 1994. This one will be my main reference.

Sin City is Basin City, a Metropolis that seems like a cross between New York, L.A. and Transylvania. The roads seem like Tin Pan Alley, Mullholland Drive or the Borgo Pass, depending on what part of the story we're currently seeing. In "The Big Fat Kill" a good portion takes place in Old Town, whore heaven as it were, where "the ladies are the law". They've struck a deal with the cops, a truce, and they are left alone to police their area.

Marv (the honest lughead) is in all three parts and is the main star of The Hard Goodbye. It's all about his revenge for Goldie, his dame, and he doesn't know she's a whore. She's murdered, right next to him. He seeks help from his parole officer but to no avail. From the time Goldie is taken Marv goes downhill.
All the way to "Old Sparky".

What I love about this first segment of the film is Marv. He's the anchor of the piece, and just about every line he utters is truth (to him). Whether he's waxing about no remorse over killing hitmen or his hatred for modern cars that all look like electric shavers, I LOVE THIS CHARACTER. And I love Mickey Rourke's portrayal of this character. Rourke is an ex-boxer and has been playing badasses for a while- perfect casting choice. (Rourke is also a dog lover, so when he doesn't kill the wolf at the farm it's kinda true-to-life).

I also like how Rodriguez uses colors- the red dress of the opening shots, the beautiful tinting of the cars. And about the cars: another reason I love this movie is there is not a Ford Taurus or Saturn anywhere in sight. Just vintage rides like the T-Bird and the Chrysler and sweet machines like the Porsche, Jag and Ferrari. Manly movie.
I say again: MANLY MOVIE.

The characters in this film are from the underbelly. There is only brief mention of "real world" types such as the lawyer who gets his arm broken by Marv, the female Nazi judge banging her gavel, and policemen are very peripheral.
(Even if they get a fair amount of screen time).

I think because there is very little "real world" in the film people didn't like it. They had next to nothing to relate to. They couldn't "connect" with the characters. People go to movies hoping that they can live vicariously in some way through the characters. Not happening at Sin City. Aww. Too bad.

I love it so much. It's a film you have to totally submit to.

When you couple the Unreal-ness with the non-plausible stuff such as a swastika star chopping a hand clean off or Jackie-Boy's coming back to life in the cab of Dwight's dumping car, people just hate it. Comic book fans love it. Clive Barker fans love it. Frank Miller fans love it. Regular folks can't stand it.

In each of the three stories someone has a vendetta they've gotta settle.
It's revenge all the way.
Someone did someone wrong and now someone's gonna pay.

In 1: Marv's gotta get payback for Goldie.
In 2: Dwight's gotta get payback for the women of Old Town and Shellie.
In 3: Hartigan's gotta get payback for Nancy.

And they're all running simultaneously if you wanna get technical.

Another reason people hate this movie: no sunlight.
It's black. It's night. ALL THE TIME.
The ultimate nocturnal movie if you ask me. I was expecting to see Eric Draven walk by in an alley or Batman up on a steeple somewhere. It's dark and sinister and evil and angry and seedy and creepy and wierd and cool all at the same time.
Viewers feel even more cheated of realistic happenings because the film is so deeply ominous. Aww. Too bad.

The comics medium is perfect for the nighttime.
Because the viewers are denied daylight to balance out whatever it is they think they're missing, (and because the wacko people who populate this city are so alien to them) people are uncomfortable watching this film.
Like Chris, they were not entertained.

Gail could have been Madame Desgranges in the 120 Days of Sodom by Sade:

Her soul remained the repository of every vice and the most heinous crimes. Arson, patricide, incest, sodomy, tribadism, murder, empoisoning, rape, theft, abortion, and sacriledge. One could swear with absolute veracity that there was not one single crime in the world that this jade had not committed herself or arranged to have committed.

The tiny differences in books to film?

-Nancy is topless in the books. It would have killed some box-office if the film was rated NC-17

-Lines were dropped or compressed. (Such is translation)

-Page 30 of The Big Fat Kill was turned into a stunning sequence: Dwight's drop from the ledge.

-Manute does not say "I'm an artist" in the book- Davis does.

-Stuka is shot through the chest and the NECK in the book with an arrow. Not his forehead.

-The guy who says to Shellie "My temper you don't have to worry about" is black in the book.

And that's about it. (At least in BFK). The film is absolutely faithful to the books. And then some. Frank must be happy. He MUST.

He was the Priest in the film by the way. Lovely scene. Perfect.

Miho's entrance and subsequent scenes were mute-perfect as well. The storyboard on page 51 is EXACTLY as it is in the film.
The scenes of her rescuing Dwight from the tarpits with the winch are also immaculately accurate. As I said, this film is 100% accurate in it's translation from page to screen. I could list many other examples, but why don't you get off your ass and read the Sin City tomes yourself?

The zooms, the rotating overhead shots, the choices of camera angles- all note-perfect.
The voice-overs are all excellent.
Bruce Willis has always had a great voice.
Mickey Rourke is the bomb at voice work. When he speaks you believe it. Same with Rutger Hauer.
Clive Owen has a good voice.
Michael-Clarke Duncan has an awesome, booming baritone.
and the best voice in the film is Benicio's. When he says "You wanna see what I got?" it's bone chilling.

I must also mention the asses.
We get some choice shots of the sinful derrieres of some hot women in this movie. At ass-level! Being a buttman myself, these brief tantalizing stilleto-fishnet-uzi shots are almost worth the price alone.
And in the novels the bums are rendered with just as much if not more curvaceous style.

Just thought I'd add that.

Speaking of Uzi's, what a kick-ass movie for gunplay!
The way Rosario holds her Uzi, shit!
Lock and load, mama!
And when Clive Owen unloads two Uzi's, one in each hand, he makes a strong case for taking over for Tom Jane as The Punisher. Fuckin awesome. I love Uzi's. Never got to fire one when I was a soldier. Anybody know where you can fire off some 30-round clips on this continent? Let me know.

I'll end with this opening screed from chapter 5 of The Big Fat Kill.
Maybe it'll make clear that this film is about who to fight, why to fight them, and WHERE to stage the rumble.

480 B.C.
King Leonidas of Sparta and his personal guard of 300 men ready themselves for battle. The fate of humanity is at stake.

Out of Persia thunders the mightiest military force ever assembled. The earth shudders with the impact of it's march. It drinks the rivers. Dry. It devours livestock like some angry, hungry God.

It pauses, poised to vanquish tiny Greece, to crush her impertinent invention of democracy and extinguish the only light of reason in the world.

The Spartans are outnumbered a hundred-thousand to one-- but Leonidas has chosen his battle site with care: the mountain pass called HOT GATES. Funnelled into this narrow corridor, the Persians find their numbers useless. The Spartans hold their ground just long enough for slumbering Greece to wake and rally her sons for war.

The hope of civilization is kept alive by Spartan Courage-- and a careful choice of where to fight.

tabuno

04-19-2005, 08:33 PM

A number of critics have raved over Kill Bill and its approach to violence, especially the Japanese restaurant scene where many get killed by Umi Thurman. A number of critics have raved over Bladerunner and its use of visual designs, almost shot in total darkness. Thus with Sin City, it too has violence that really isn't real, very stylized and not so much entertaining us with violence but with a sordid ritualized dance of death that is in many cases not graphically shown. The darkness in Sin City lends itself to the whole environment of Sin City just like Bladerunner and its depiction between the rich and the poor, where Sin City, however, was all just one big same City of darkness.

stevetseitz

04-19-2005, 10:34 PM

The darkness in Bladerunner was at least partially explained by climatic and pollution levels, in the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" I believe there was a catastrophe of some sort that killed a huge percentage of the natural animal population, thus the creation of replicant animals (and humans). It's been a LONG time since I read the book.

Also, when Deckard flies his vehicle to the police station we are given a glimpse of a gorgeous rays of sunlight. So, it's not some supernatural darkness that pervades the city at all hours.

In the film "Dark City", the others keep the inhabitants of their city is a stupor by keeping it an eternal night and using the natural human response to darkness, that is to curl up somewhere and sleep. Again we have a plausible explanation.

In "Sin City" we have a faux film-noir world which doesn't bother explaining anything (not neccessarily a bad thing) but the characters operate in such a cartoonish and over-the-top fashion that any descriptions that deal with reality such as "manly" do not accurately apply. It's sort of like saying Roger Rabbit had a "never say die" attitude.

If there is no risk, there is no suspense. If there is no cost to violence on the screen it has no emotional impact.

stevetseitz

04-19-2005, 10:37 PM

I bet you didn't fire your Uzi with one hand either. That kind of thing may play in a John Woo movie and it made sense in the original "Terminator" film because the android was so strong, but firing an automatic weapon with one hand is quite difficult not to mention you shots are all over the place.

tabuno

04-19-2005, 11:45 PM

stevetseitz: "The darkness in Bladerunner was at least partially explained by climatic and pollution levels, in the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" I believe there was a catastrophe of some sort that killed a huge percentage of the natural animal population, thus the creation of replicant animals (and humans). It's been a LONG time since I read the book."

tabuno: The actual and perhaps primary reason that Bladerunner appeared to be so dark may have been for a much more pragmatic but not very story/plot-oriented reason as steveseitz suggests

- based on an interview with Ridley Scott, director of Bladerunner he stated -

<<Well, the fact that we were shooting at night was certainly a helpful factor (managing to make the movie not look like a back lot). But Warner's back lot isn't that big. So if we hadn't filmed 'Blade Runner' at night, you would have been able to see beyond the margins of our sets to all those small hills which surround the Warner Brothers' studio. That's also the reason it's raining all the time in 'Blade Runner,' you know. To disguise the fact that we were shooting on a back lot...It does hlep lend a realistic quality to the story, yes. But really, a lot of the reason we finally settled on all that rain ad night shooting was to hide the sets. I was really paranoid that audiences would otice we were shooting on a back lot.">> Paul M. Sammon, ''Future Noir The Making of Blade Runner" New York: Harper Prism, 1996, pp. 378-9.

tabuno

04-19-2005, 11:58 PM

If any one saw any of the making of most the stunts seen in the movies nowadays, one would begin to realize how impossible most of them would be in real life. Thus, the audience all over the world have been seduced by the feasibility of the impossible. Even something as seemingly simple as Lara Croft's horseback ride and shooting at targets is an illusion.

At least with a Sin City, graphic novel, the audience isn't even supposed to believe in the realism of the actual behavior and action of the movie in real life. Instead, we are supposed to transport our reality into their world and feel their existance. Anyone who saw "The Purple Rose of Cairo" or "Last Action Hero" would understand the nature of movie characters and their world and the preposterious notion that we the audience must have some moral superiority over reality, instead having to inhabit their world. Who says we have any more validity in requiring movies to adhere to our real world physics and morality. Sometimes, it seems that it's the world of cinema that may have a higher moral claim to what ought to be (though when it comes to Sin City one could argue that it really isn't that pleasant a place, no matter how ethically principled the main heros are in the movie).

tabuno

04-20-2005, 12:26 AM

When one consider the merits of a movie, one indicator is its ability to promote discussion and its proclivity to focus attention on itself on whatever basis. A quick review of this website brings up the following observation:

The most number of replies for a single film:

190 - Fahrenheit 911
112 - Passion of Christ
104 - The Pianist
79 - Sin City
60 - Mean Girls
58 - Sideways
54 - Punch Drunk Love
54 - Lost in Translation
43 - The Hours
42 - Chicago
41 - One Hour Photo
39 - About Schmidt
37 - Bowling for Columbine
37 - Adaptations
36 - Swimming Pool
35 - Hero
34 - 28 Days Later
33 - Signs
32 - Kill Bill: Vol. 1
32 - Before Sunset
31 - Million Dollar Baby
30 - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
29 - Kill Bill: Vol. 2
29 - The Matrix Reloaded
29 - The Matrix
28 - The War of the Worlds (Spielberg)
28 - The House of Flying Daggers
27 - The Brown Bunny
26 - Solaris
25 - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
24 - Battle of Algiers
24 - Mulholland Drive
23 - City of God
22 - Frida
22 - Femme Fatale
22 - Alexander

Chris Knipp

04-20-2005, 12:30 AM

Your specific detail about the books and your sincere appreciation of all sorts of details gives an in-depth picture of what admiration for Sin City looks like, but as you might have suspected I still can't exactly get it; I can't see what you like so much other than the fact that you loved Miller's graphic novels and you love seeing them turned into a motion picture. But the thing is, I think one of the big drawbacks of your comments here is that you don't look at the basic aspects of the transfer which somebody has mentioned, namely that in the book you get a few freeze-frames and you imagine everything in between, and the "look" of the book pages and the "look" of this movie are of necessity totally different, despite the slavish (but as you show not exact) copying of book to film.
(Posted by Johann.)
The tiny differences in books to film?But are they so "tiny" though? If you love the books so much and the movie so much, shouldn't you do the two different media the honor of doing justice to the differences between them? All your examples are welcome for the real fan (which I'm obviously not--a real fan would not only love Sin City but would have thoroughly devoured and loved the Miller graphic novels too) but they overlook the main thing that bothered me or that I thought might explain why I didn't like the movie. It was not because of the things you say "regular folks can't stand" such as the fact that it's always nighttime (I've alluded to the fact that I really like the Crow movies), that "there's very little 'real world' in the film" and all the "non-plausible stuff" (I don't think those are a problem for me; I can enjoy fantasy and the surreal). It was because it was NOT so unreal after all, transferred to semi-real looking actors and semi-real looking film footage of objects moving in semi-real space, as opposed to the stylized graphic imagery of a comic book.

(Johann again.)
Manly movie.
I say again: MANLY MOVIE.Yes. Okay. Fine. . . .And that's because of the cars, then, "vintage rides" like a T-Bird Chrysler and s"weet machines" like the Porsche, Jag and Ferrari"?

Listen, Johann, I like cars. I've always liked them and I always will. I admit I drive a Honda now but I've had two MG's and I'd love to own a vintage Alfa and I love to look at vintage American cars too. I went out on the freeway Sunday afternoon and I saw a beautiful orange Lotus speeding along the highway and I bet I was as turned on as anybody on the road that day. But do cool cars really make a movie "manly"? How? What's manly to you? Are you sure a lingering fascination with cool cars isn't the boy in us rather than the man?

You're telling but not showing throughout your appreciation, preaching entirely for the choir. But we're having a pretty good ongoing debate over the movie in this thread and you do have the power, the conviction and the knowledge, to sway detractors or the unconverted into giving Sin City a second look.

I'm with you on one thing. I am not ever going to say "I didn't mind" Sin City. I'm either going to go on hating it, or I'm going to learn to love it. I don't think there's really a middle ground here nor do I think there should be. My reaction was too strong for me to agree with the way Oscar Jubis expressed his view of Sin City on his film journal thread:
(Originally posted by Oscar Jubis.)
I watched Sin City at the same theatre, this year's most written-about movie at filmwurld. I don't see the reason for so much love/hate. An adaptation from a graphic novel, a compendium of borrowings from the film noir and action genres, tough 'n sexy guys and gals no one cares about except to look at, structure a bit clever here and there, excellent production values (especially the lighting I thought), human element buried beneath nihilism, objectification, and cynicism. I don't mind all that much because the fact that it's so stylized and other-worldly creates a buffer. "Don't mind that much"? What's that all about -- "sincere" lack of reaction (but that's an oxymoron, isn't it? -- or merely a desire not to enter the fray? I can see a lot of reason for love/hate, and there wasn't enough of a buffer for me. To me, frankly there's always been something crude and direct about Rodriguez -- I've never really liked his filmmaking, though I could see its graphic directness -- and he's crude and direct here, despite the clever technological tricks and the metiulous restaging -- far too much so for there to be any kind of "buffer" for anybody who's really watching, in my humble opinion.

You don't hold anything back and that's what I like about you, and it's particuarly revealing when you end up by saying -- I don't know how seriously or how tongue-in-cheek -- that you'd like to know someplace where you can have the satisfying experience of firing an Uzi.

Steve Seitz has kept the anti- argument going in more detail than I have here, I'm only commenting specifically on your long post.

stevetseitz

04-20-2005, 01:22 AM

Regarding Ridley Scott being worried about the impression that Bladerunner was shot on Warner Brothers back lot.

Visually, the film is almost as impressive today as it was in 1982. Only a few matte paintings are unconvincing. I can't really believe Scott when he says he was worried about this. I suspect it's more a case of a director (with an ego) who remembers having to battle studio restraints. It's a way that he can exaggerate his obstacles and seemingly increase his glory. It's kind of like Spielberg complaining that the "shark" didn't work on "Jaws". All I can say is thank God it didn't work. The limitation forced Spielberg to craft a masterpiece out of a monster movie with skillful suspense and the concept of "less is more".

The novel is set in a post apocalyptic earth after "World War Terminus" and just perusing the first few pages of text we find mention of "fallout", "gray and beclouded" and "dust". The conditions were bad enough on earth that people were encouraged to emigrate to off-world colonies.

The superb cinematography was by Jordan Cronenweth who also shot the superb "State of Grace" and "U2:Rattle and Hum".

Chris Knipp

04-20-2005, 01:44 AM

I don't know much about Blade Runner although I've watched it a number of times in various formats and like it a lot. It may not be a great film but it's classic and it's got fantastic sequences in it, in fact what isn't memorable in it? Everything. I love it. I thought that it was made rather on a shoestring, compared to a lot of stuff, and that might explain Scott's concern that it might not make a good impression. The details, the Geiger designed objects and façades, etc., are of course marvellous, but my understanding is that they were thrown together quickly. I don't think it's necessarily untrue what Scott says about the back lot and the hills, etc. Often shooting on a shoestring, or under relative constraints, is positive in accomplishing the effects of what Steve calls in a phrase I always like, Less Is More.

stevetseitz

04-20-2005, 03:26 AM

I'll concur Chris, I would also like to point out that a couple of my favorite movies were made in less than ideal circumstances. "Casablanca" was just one of many studio pictures being made in almost as "assembly line" fashion but the writers, actors and directors all elevated their efforts to make a classic.

"Touch of Evil" is a great movie but rumor has it Orson Welles didn't even want to make it. I'd like to note that this movie made use of overlapping dialogue over a decade before Altman's "M.A.S.H."

Johann

04-20-2005, 08:48 AM

I have never had a driver's license. I'm not a "car guy".
So what do I mean by "manly"? Can anybody see what I'm illustrating here?

Thanks for confirming my suspicions Chris. I am preaching to the choir. No, I'm preaching to the dissenters who missed the point of this film. I've already said: "How can I articulate".

Chris, the differences are tiny. Do you feel you missed out on something? Maybe you did: Dwight is naked in the novel when Shellie is talking to J.B. thru the door.

I'll even give 2 examples of when Rodriguez gaffed:

-When Miho "makes a Pez dispenser" out of Jackie-Boy her face is sprayed with blood. Within seconds, her face is clean- not a drop of sang anywhere.
-When Miho rescues Dwight they are both drenched in tar. But mere moments later Miho is clean again. WTF?

Also Chris, what pray tell do I have to do to illustrate that the film and books are one?

The differences are so minor as to be completely moot.
What do you want??
The colors are the most glaring difference.

Becky's blue eyes & the Cardinal's green, Dwight's sneakers,
the cab of Dwight's dump car is bathed in a kaliedescope of alternating christmas lights, Miho's unique color-coding and the white neon luminescense of Marv's facial bandaids, The Yellow Bastard, etc. etc.
If the movie doesn't work for you then just say it.

I highly admire Rodriguez now. He quit the Director's Guild because they wouldn't allow him to give Frank Miller a co-directing credit.

Amen Robby. Fuck those clowns who have no passion.

Chris Knipp

04-20-2005, 12:25 PM

Johann,

If the movie doesn't work for you then just say it. I have said it. We're discussing why.
Chris, the differences are tiny. Do you feel you missed out on something? Maybe you did: Dwight is naked in the novel when Shellie is talking to J.B. thru the door.We're talking about two different things here as I tried to clarify earlier. In a sense "the differences are tiny"as you say and in another sense the overall difference in feeling, look etc. is huge. I don't disagree with you about how Rodriguez closely follows Miller's stories and uses his drawings as the point of departure for his scenes. My review begins by noting that Rodriguez gives Miller joint billing for direction of Sin City. (Everybody knows he quit the Director's Guild over that so you didn't have to mention it; but it shows his slavish devotion to Miller, of course.) I said "Little is discernibly added to the stories by Rodriguez; at times he follows dialogue and image as if the books were his storyboards." Writers more informed than me, including you, have pointed out how closely the movie follows the books with their three interwoven, or perhaps patched together, story lines. Closely, very closely. But, while you are delighted to see the books you love transferred to the screen, I'm not. I said, "The effect is of a waxworks rather than a new permutation." This is where we are out of sync in this discussion.

If you transfer a comic book to a movie what are you doing? You're adapting to another medium, going from one visual medium to another very different kind of visual medium.

If we read a Jane Austen novel we're reading words that evoke scenes and dialogue but we can imagine them in our own way, and when it's made into a movie we get scenes and dialogue which don't conflict with any previous received imagery. But Miller's books have comic book or graphic novel images that are like artfully composed freeze-frames, and those gave Rodriguez his basic ideas, but he joined together the relatively very few images into three-dimensional imagery.

In doing this, he added tons of stuff, image-wise. I look at the books and I get one feeling; I look at the movie and I get another. This is because as I've said before, not only are the ways of composing the scenes different in the freeze-frame book images, but they're black and white drawings with a lot of white while in the movie the prevailing color seems to be gray (I called it "gloppy" because to me there's a greasy look to it) and the figures are puffy and three-dimensional instead of flat and elegantly drawn in line. But , because of all the computer imagery and the heavy duty makeup devices used in Sin City, the figures they don't look completely real as the figures in the Superman or Batman or Spiderman movies do. Nor do they have a pleasing artificiality such as you find in Waking Life or some animations. You've got something weirdly betwixt and between, somewhat like the computerized humans in Polar Express. This is what I was trying to say in my review.

You are delighted at how closely Rodriguez follows Miller's books. I see it as mindless and a creative failure.

The contrast between Miller's books and Rodriguez/Miller's movie may be clearer to me because I haven't practically memorized the books, and I'm not distracted by the close story-board following of plot, scene-sequence, and dialogue that you keep talking about and so I notice more how different watching the movie feels from looking at the books. A comic book/graphic novel is one thing and a movie is another. That's where I think there's a big difference. And when the transfer takes place, the comic book mindset becomes grating, the violence too horrible, the retribution too childish.

So when you say, "Also Chris, what pray tell do I have to do to illustrate that the film and books are one?" I'd have to answer, nothing, because you can't. They're one in one sense but totally different in another and we're talking about surface details vs. overall feeling and effect.
The colors are the most glaring difference. Well, that's a huge difference. The look is completely different. Maybe you're beginning to see what I mean? A movie is visual, and so is a graphic novel. If the look is so different, then the effect is different.

As for your never having possessed a driver's license, that may shed further light on your attitude toward cars and your finding them "manly." Women drive cars too though and I still don't know what you mean. I want to know. You mention being in the army but I assume you've never killed people either, which may help explain your eagerness to fire an Uzi.

stevetseitz

04-20-2005, 02:09 PM

I do understand the "manly" comment in terms of cars. I find that there are two kinds of car guys:

1. Those who simply love the design of certain cars.

2. Those who live and love to drive. These folks enter rallies. They think front wheel drive, automatic transmissions and traction control are abominations. They tinker with their cars and find the lack of reliability of their classics to be an endearing quality. They remove the seats of the car to clean the interior.

I have a buddy who is of the first type. He doesn't own a car. His wife does 99% of the driving but he is a designer and he has pictures of cars all over his home office and his office at work.

Another friend of the second type owns a 05' Jetta turbo as his main vehicle and an old Porsche 914/6, he watches racing on "Speedvision" in his spare time and loves to drive.

I believe it was Aristotle who said "moderation in all things." So I count myself as being squarely in the middle. I love the design of many cars: Ferrari 246 Dino, Porsche 550 Spyder, and the new Ford GT. But I love driving. Give me a manual tranny, rear wheel drive and a good power to weight ratio.

Chris Knipp

04-20-2005, 02:37 PM

"Manly" is a real dangerous word to use around here where I live in PC land, about as bad as using "gay" as a pejorative, which lately unfortunately a lot of kids may do. And it means about as much as "sexy" or "cool" in this context of debating the virtues and faults of a movie. That car bodies and driving cars is something men like to do is obvious and I too have always liked both to admire the designs and get out on the road especially a winding hilly road in a small sports car. Also to the point, little boys seem to particularly love to play with tiny car and truck models. This gets to the appeal of Sin City's themes to a certain audience but doesn't say much about its faults or merits. Generally I'd think a grown up person would more tend to get behind 'manliness' in the sense of being brave and stoical and decent rather than for the hardware he owns and operates.

oscar jubis

04-20-2005, 04:40 PM

Originally posted by stevetseitz
"Touch of Evil" is a great movie but rumor has it Orson Welles didn't even want to make it.

I'd also call it a great movie. Welles wanted to make this film very much but Universal fired him during post-production and released two "bastard" versions, one in the 50s and another in the 70s. Both violated Welles's vision of this film. Luckily, thanks to a 50+ page-long memo to Universal sent by the master, a proper version was finally assembled and restored for release in 1998. The whole story and the entire memo can be found here:www.wellesnet.com/touch_memo1.htm

stevetseitz

04-20-2005, 04:52 PM

Oscar...yes you are correct. I perhaps put that the wrong way. Welles didn't want to make the film the STUDIO wanted to make. I own the "director's cut" which includes the memo of which you speak on the, alas, archaic Laserdisc format.

Chris...I agree that "manliness" shouldn't be defined by our hardware but what we have on the inside. There has been a strong secular movement to redefine gender in the past decade and deny any innate differences between men and women. I think that can only be described as silly.

And it can't be denied that men love gadgets. Part of the James Bond appeal is his use of gadgets in every film. When I think of "manly" movies I think of of movies like "Lawrence of Arabia", "Seven Samurai", "Once upon a Time in the West", "Amistad", "It's a Wonderful Life", "The Searchers" and "Braveheart".

Uncle Argyle: "First I'll teach ya to use this (points to young Wallace's noggin)...then I'll teach ya to use this (brandishes his sword.)

HorseradishTree

04-20-2005, 09:35 PM

Originally posted by oscar jubis

I'd also call it a great movie. Welles wanted to make this film very much but Universal fired him during post-production and released two "bastard" versions, one in the 50s and another in the 70s. Both violated Welles's vision of this film. Luckily, thanks to a 50+ page-long memo to Universal sent by the master, a proper version was finally assembled and restored for release in 1998. The whole story and the entire memo can be found here:www.wellesnet.com/touch_memo1.htm

It was on TCM the other night, so I watched it a second time. I think it really means a lot when a story so ridiculous can be made into such a fantastic film.

Chris Knipp

04-21-2005, 12:06 AM

You've only watched it two times?

I think it was pretty great in the so-called "Bastard" versions too. Ah, the power of 20/20 hindsight! Poor us, who had to enjoy it without a 50-page memo!

Johann

04-21-2005, 11:38 AM

This dialogue has turned really banal.

The overall difference in feeling, look, etc. is not "huge".
Yes they are two different media.
Yes the film made the pictures "come alive".

What is this huge difference you're chasing?

Not in story. Not in characters. Not in lines. Not in integrity of the artwork. It's the colors and the use of well-known actors, plus music and outstanding camerawork and digital tweaking that "Frankenstein" the comic panels.

I thought these things were self-evident.
Apparently not.

When I speak of manliness, it's in terms of things that are associated with the term.
It is not a word I'm throwing out as a positive thing necessarily, but I am throwing it out as a perfectly valid point for loving a film.

I don't drive, and never will. ( I think I died in a car accident in another life). I will probably never own a Porsche or Jag, which I admire as enigineering and esthetic quality. But if anybody doesn't get what I mean when talking about manliness and cars and guns then you need to go back to Mars.

I DO want to fire an Uzi. No joke. And Steve- no shit you can't fire an Uzi in both hands. Only in the movies. You fire from the hip or tucked in tight to your shoulder.
I never said I wanna be The Punisher. I just wanna fire that cool gun. It's a guy thing. Manly. I don't wanna hurt anybody.
No killin'- I get that from the best esacapist movies like The Punisher and Sin City and Rambo.

People need to examine the graphic novels a little more closely before beaking off about the film.
I suspect Chris that you only thumbed thru a few. The graphic novels ARE templates for what Rodriguez did but if you cannot see the exact duplication save necessary expansion/compression that must occur, then you haven't examined the books close enough or watched the film enough.

I think because you are not entertained you are blocking yourself off from looking closer. You want me to convince you of it's merits.
You want me to explain why it deserves another look.

It's because it's a masterpiece. A real work of cinematic art.

You've said it's a failure and mindless.
I strongly, strongly disagree.
I can't climb in your skull and fix the wiring.
The film didn't work for you- that's all you have to say.

We agree to disagree...

Chris Knipp

04-21-2005, 02:23 PM

Banal? I'm sorry you feel that way. I have not called your remarks banal or anything else. I think we're both being sincere and owe each other respect..

Style, feeling, are everything in the arts. This is an art work. I don't recall calling it mindless and a failure, not in so many words. You may have interpreted what I said that way. I recognize that Sin City works very well for many -- so it's not a failure. "Mindless"? Well, I said the violence makes it seem to be "brain dead." That's not the same. It arrives brain dead. DOA. That doesn't mean there were no brains at work on it.

I suspect Chris that you only thumbed thru a few. The graphic novels ARE templates for what Rodriguez did but if you cannot see the exact duplication save necessary expansion/compression that must occur, then you haven't examined the books close enough or watched the film enough.

I looked at them pretty carefully and I'm a good observer because I am a visual artist. I also build on my past when I used to spend many hours with comic books when I was young.

I thought these things were self-evident.
Apparently not.

That assumption keeps coming back and is an obstacle to having any discussion or to your saying anything about the film.

The film doesn't work for you -- That's all you have to say.

This is an even more huge disagreement. I give reasons, I'm presenting arguments. I have more to say than "It doesn't work for me." There is always smore to say than "It doesn't work for me."

The "manliness" issue is extraneous to the main discussion of the merits of Sin City.

tabuno

04-21-2005, 10:07 PM

Chris Knipp: But, while you (Johann) are delighted to see the books you love transferred to the screen, I'm not. I said, "The effect is of a waxworks rather than a new permutation."

Tab Uno: Unlike "Polar Express" where the animated waiters were zombie-like humans without emotions or souls, I experienced the movie-version of Sin City not as waxworks but a vibrant, living, breathing 3-D presentation of a graphic novel. I felt emotions and felt the aliveness (unlike the zombie waiters). I felt a living, true connection between the brought to life graphic novel characters and recognized their pain and suffering, their honor and sacrifice (unlike the zombie waiters who seemed to all be the same, dancing with the same footstep, without expression). Sin City was for me an exciting, alternative "new permutation" from the flat surface and box by box presentation found on pages of a book. I would be interested what "waxworks" existed in Sin City...I found nobody in the movie fixed in any singular position unless they were dead, I saw people's mouths move, their bodies move with purpose and design, unless you saw another movie than I did. In fact I believe rather than waxworks, the characters were the direct opposite, an exaggeration and dramatically stereotypical bigger than life presentations of an alternative world, universe known almost exclusively found in graphic novels.

Chris Knipp: If we read a Jane Austen novel we're reading words that evoke scenes and dialogue but we can imagine them in our own way, and when it's made into a movie we get scenes and dialogue which don't conflict with any previous received imagery. But Miller's books have comic book or graphic novel images that are like artfully composed freeze-frames, and those gave Rodriguez his basic ideas, but he joined together the relatively very few images into three-dimensional imagery.

In doing this, he added tons of stuff, image-wise. I look at the books and I get one feeling; I look at the movie and I get another. This is because as I've said before, not only are the ways of composing the scenes different in the freeze-frame book images, but they're black and white drawings with a lot of white while in the movie the prevailing color seems to be gray (I called it "gloppy" because to me there's a greasy look to it) and the figures are puffy and three-dimensional instead of flat and elegantly drawn in line. But , because of all the computer imagery and the heavy duty makeup devices used in Sin City, the figures they don't look completely real as the figures in the Superman or Batman or Spiderman movies do. Nor do they have a pleasing artificiality such as you find in Waking Life or some animations. You've got something weirdly betwixt and between, somewhat like the computerized humans in Polar Express.

Tab Uno: I believe that the possibility is even greater for conflict between a novel/book and its transference to film than a graphic novel and its transference to film. In fact, the latter transference should in most cases have fewer conflicts whereas when the imagination must be used to fill in the words found in a book or novel the potential for the actual interpretation of that imagination is almost guaranteed to create conflict and both huge disappointment and only a few times satisfaction. In most cases, it seems that the film is usually not even close or as satisfactory as the source material of the original book.

I feel that the transference from book/novel to film the original source must be added to geometrically greater than the graphic novel to film. In other words, your belief that "tons of stuff image-wise" is more aptly used to described the novel to film transference not the graphic novel to film. Your idea that because Sin City characters don't look real is actually a negative in my mind, it is because these characters don't look real that this movie is powerful and more of a classic than Superman or Batman or Spiderman. Sin City retains the most important essence of its originals from the graphic novel instead of attempting to make the film into something completely alien from its source material. The stylization is crucial if the audience is to be able to cope and adjust with the violence with integrity and honor theme in this movie. Realism would destroy it.

tabuno

04-22-2005, 01:39 AM

Sin City ranks 9th in most number of views per movie site threads. The first four Fahrenheit, The Pianist, Bowling for Columbie, and The Passion of Christ were most likely viewed not so much for their film-making commentary rather than for their political, religious, or philosophy content. Sin City will eventually obtain more reviews as it is the most current film here:

3036 - Fahrenheit 911 (five threads together)
2475 - The Pianist (six threads together)
1897 - Bowling for Columbine (nine threads together)
1496 - The Passion of Christ (two threads together)
1462 - Lost In Translation (six threads together)
1411 - Punch Drunk Love (eight threads together)
1356 - The Hours (six threads together)
1245 - Sideways (two threads together)
1245 - Sin City (two threads)
1161 - About Schmidt (eight threads together)
1061 - Chicago (eight threads together)
948 - Alexander (two threads together)
872 - Hero (three threads together)
869 - Before Sunset
861 - The Brown Bunny
856 - Solaris (five threads together)
850 - 28 Days Later (eleven threads together)
820 - Mean Girls
784 - Signs (four threads together)
758 - My Big Fat Greek Wedding
748 - Kill Bill Vol. 1
741 - Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2 threads together)
729 - Adaptation (four threads together)
700 - Swimming Pool (three threads together)
679 - Capturing the Friedmans
678 - Dogville (three threads together)
673 - Eternal Sunshine (three threads together)
658 - The Fast Runner (four threads together)
622 - Frida (three threads together)
618 - Amelie (three threads together)
611 - Y Tu Mama Tambien (four threads together)
607 - Spirited Away (three threads together)
605 - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (4 threads together)
605 - Collateral (two threads together)
604 - The World
584 - The City of God
581 - Femme Fatale (two threads together)
574 - 8 Women (three threads together)
570 - One Hour Photo (four threads together)
568 - Elephant
566 - The Aviator
554 - Million Dollar Baby
532 - Metropolis
523 - The Matrix Reloaded
515 - The Kid Stays in the Picture
511 - Kill Bill Vol. 2
510 - The Life Aquatic (two threads together)
509 - A Mighty Wind (two threads together)

Chris Knipp

04-22-2005, 02:40 AM

Sin City's a "waxworks" in the sense that it memorializes (because it slavishly copies, as a waxwork sculpture slavishly duplicated a living or dead person) a previously existing piece of work, Miller's graphic novels. It's also a "waxworks" because of the gloppy gray colors and the heavy weightedness of the over-mainpulated and over-madeup actors, the over-produced quality. It's also a "waxworks" because the equally heavy brutality of the movie, which is a too-literal and too-much extended development of the violence of the books, which are just freeze-frames with a big "B O O M" over them, and which boffs and bashes us so much that it makes us feel brain-dead.

You have a point about there being more possibility for conflict between a book-to-movie adapation than in a comix-to-movie one, but my point was that in the latter case we already have a whole set of images, and the adaptation has to compete with them, whereas when you adapt Jane Austen, her novels have no actual illustrations to conflict with how the filmmaker realizes the story.

My point about the images in Sin City not looking real (which you agree with me on, but you completely misread my point) is that they look unreal, but they don't look unreal enough. Can't anybody out there conceive of a better adapation of the Miller books than Rodriguez's movie? I can imageine a stylish hand drawn animation of it that would be really terrific. Rodriguez's version is leaden; it's literal' it's humorless, and it's unimaginative. It's too worshipful. I'm not the only one to say that. Read some of the critics. You'll find that comment.

You certainly quoted me at length. Thank you.

stevetseitz

04-22-2005, 03:25 AM

I have a "gun-nut" buddy so I was lucky enough to get him to let me fire his Uzi, a friend's AK-47 and an SKS (a crappy chinese semi-auto) . The AK was the most fun. "Makes a distinctive sound."

I have also heard about a USA-1 fully auto shotgun. Not too much recoil. Talk about "manly". ;)

Johann

04-22-2005, 09:51 AM

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I don't recall calling it mindless and a failure, not in so many words. You may have interpreted what I said that way. I recognize that Sin City works very well for many -- so it's not a failure. "Mindless"? Well, I said the violence makes it seem to be "brain dead." That's not the same. It arrives brain dead. DOA.

"I see it as mindless and a creative failure".
Did you forget you typed those words?

Did you recall me saying it's not a Jane Austen novel?
It's a COMIC BOOK. This film does not need reams and reams of intellectual commentary to discuss it's pro's and con's.

We don't have to "dig deep" to have a clear discussion on this movie.

I don't understand people's positions here. This film appears to be a polarizer. Nothing wrong with that.

My arguments are all about escapist entertainment.
As I said, it's pretty self-evident what this film is.
If you don't like the unreal stylizations and wierd overall impact, fine. That's all that needs to be said. I forgive you.
We don't have to write essay upon essay here.
We don't have to search for meticulous subtexts and transmogrifications or superfluous stupendicies.
It's a fucking comic book film people.

Dance with it or move on with your life.

Johann

04-22-2005, 12:08 PM

And Chris please edit your review.

Frank Miller.
The man's name is FRANK MILLER.
Remember it.
He's a God.

Chris Knipp

04-22-2005, 12:45 PM

"I see it as mindless and a creative failure".
Did you forget you typed those words?I did. I can't remember every word I write in long threads. I overstated it there. Anyway, whether I said that or not, I wanted to qualify those ideas, and I didn't state it that way in my review, which is my best statement of what I think. "Mindless and a creative failure" are oversimplifications. Sorry also about the mistake on the author's name; I have corrected it. Funny you didn't tell me about it before. Are you just now reading my review carefully? You never responded to my references to Rumble Fish, Clockwork Orange, the Crow movies, and Waking Life or said how Sin City stacks up against them. I know it's from a comic book. But it's not a comic book as you say in this last post ("It's a COMIC BOOK. ").

I don't see where I ever have said we need to "to search for meticulous subtexts and transmogrifications or superfluous stupendicies." I just want to discuss the movie.

We don't have to "dig deep" to have a clear discussion on this movie.Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what you mean by "dig deep." If it means examining your arguments and presenting a coherent case, you do need to dig deep. If you mean "to search for meticulous subtexts and transfmogrifications or superfluous stupendicies," you don't. I want to have "a clear discussion" though: whatever it takes to do that.

If you're tired out and you don't want to discuss Sin City any more but just to opine I guess there's not much more we can say on this thread. I did appreciate your expanding your comments on the movie. I think there's more to say about any movie than "I liked it" or "I hated it," always. I should think if Sin City is as good as you say, it'd be worth debating, and there'd still be a lot more to bring up, but so be it.

I don't understand people's positions here. Then you're in a weak position. I understand your position. Why don't you understand mine? The value of these forums is to arrive at understandings. We don't have to agree with each other's opinions to understand them.

Johann

04-22-2005, 12:59 PM

Sin City stacks up well with the films you cite and towers over them. (although Clockwork Orange has real similarities)

It may have more in common with The Warriors or The Lost Boys or Total Recall.

But comparisons with other films do not feel right to me.
This film has an integrity of vision, a passion that screams at me that I have nothing but pagan idolatry for.

I cannot enunciate any more about this movie. It's been draining and frustrating for me.

I retire from this thread.

stevetseitz

04-22-2005, 02:34 PM

Jane Austen's "Sin City", now there is an idea.

Let's see, we'll make one of the whores of a slightly lower social class than the other whores (which will be a source of discomfort for her) and we'll have Clive Owen as a rich dandy about town who likes her the best, but of course he won't be able to simply reveal his true intentions without causing quite a stir.

trevor826

04-22-2005, 03:25 PM

This film hasn't been released in the UK yet but it's outstanding to see how quickly the posts have soared on this topic.

It seems a shame that not many films can draw this level of discussion or is Sin City really that special?

Cheers Trev.

stevetseitz

04-22-2005, 05:10 PM

Trevor:

As I said in a previous post it's visually very interesting and well done. But so was Aha's "Take on Me" video. The film has a weak cast, bad dialogue and poor delivery.

tabuno

04-23-2005, 02:58 AM

Chris Knipp ( 04-22-2005 01:40 AM) comments are a great example of his ability to directly respond to critical comments in a well developed and point-by-point manner that increases understanding, provides a substantive qualitative enhancement of intellectual thought. Somebody needs to nominate this person to Film Professor emeritus, at least some honorary degree behind his name on this website. It's really a honor to have somebody of his caliber take the time to actually meaninful respond to my ideas and thoughts. The internet can sure be a truly remarkable invention at times.

stevetseitz

04-23-2005, 07:15 AM

tabuno:

Too much polysyllabic elocution will invariably lead to discomfiture on the part of the reader which may lead to consternation and bewilderment.

Chris Knipp

04-23-2005, 12:47 PM

(Originally posted by trevor826.)
It seems a shame that not many films can draw this level of discussion or is Sin City really that special? I agree. But whenever there are passionate advocates and people with something to say who don't agree, a discussion happens. I think you can learn from any debate so long as people stick with it and keep their minds open and their tempers under control. It takes some patience sometimes to recognize that others may listen, but you're not likely to get them to agree. My interest is to have a good debate. The debate is of value in itself.

tabuno-- You're too kind, but thanks anyway.

stevetseitz

04-23-2005, 02:46 PM

"I will not debate you, Jerry."

Steve Buscemi, "Fargo"

Johann

05-17-2005, 01:46 PM

Cinema news that slakes my thirst:

Frank Miller is directing 2 (two!) back-to-back sequels to the best film of the year.

Make 'em all, Frank!

Here's my hope for part 1:

http://images.darkhorse.com/covers/med/s/sclll.jpg

cinemabon

01-31-2007, 01:26 PM

I feel some monumental numerical moment being the one hundreth post on this film. So I'll make it count.

They can create a cartoon about the Nazi's butchering Jews during World War II in the most stylistic fashion, filled with artful angles and splashes of contemporary art, but making it into a film doesn't make it right, or even morally correct; for "Sin City" is its equivalent. This brutal and downright vicious representation is filled with so much graphic violence as to become reprehensible. None of the violence in this film furthers the plot, other than to glorify its own existance.

And so, this generation, bombarded with extremely violent images in comics, video games, on television and in the movies... thinks very little when they see real people get beaten, cut, burned or shot. They've become desensitized to the ramifications of how such violence impacts the reasoning part of the mind, or the psychological impllications of repeated viewing.

"Sin City" isn't so much a graphic film filled with two dimensional characters spitting out terribly cliches from 1950's crime novels, as it an epitaph to a generation bored with wrestlers simply matching strength against each other. Instead, they want blood, gore, chairs to the head, and heads bashed senselessly till they're unconscious. This isn't boxing, the most brutal of sports. This is bloodlust, the kind found in arenas two thousand years ago, when the crowd called out for the head of the defeated, so they could look at it more closely, stuck up on a pole, as they exited the Colosseum.

When we shake our heads in wonder why 18 year old Marines enter the house of some innocent Iraqis they regard as the enemy, and slaughter them grinning as they pull the trigger... think of "Sin City".... think of "Wolfenstein." Think of who is the agressor and who is the victim. In coming to watch violence on this level, we are all vicitims and the next generation, guinea pigs for our lack of social reasoning along with antipathy for peace and understanding.