Sin City

Johann,

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If the movie doesn't work for you then just say it.

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I have said it. We're discussing why.

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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.

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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.

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The colors are the most glaring difference.

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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.

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.

"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.

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

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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

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.)

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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

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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.

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!

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...

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.

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.

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)

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.

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". ;)

[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.

And Chris please edit your review.

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