# Sin City



## Mark (Mar 10, 2005)

Sin City

Deep bench.  Thoughts?


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## Dark Jezter (Mar 11, 2005)

Isn't it a little early for this poll?  The movie is still a good three weeks away from being released.

Still, the trailers look cool, so I'll probably be going to see it.


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## Stone Angel (Mar 11, 2005)

All I know is I have looked forward to this for awhile, two of my favorite action genre directors ever. Plus it looks to have  a good cast.


The Seraph of Earth and Stone


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## GlassJaw (Mar 11, 2005)

Well I'd give the trailer a 10.


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Mar 11, 2005)

I'd give the trailer and a the two TV spots I've seen a 10. Love the style...but yeah, too early for the movie.


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## Bobitron (Mar 11, 2005)

Looks awesome from the trailers and some press I've read about the production. I give the new longer trailer a ten, and the shorter original one a nine. I'm glad they are doing Yellow Bastard, it was one of my favorites from the comics. I'll vote above once I see the movie in a few weeks


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## Mark (Mar 11, 2005)

Dark Jezter said:
			
		

> Isn't it a little early for this poll?  The movie is still a good three weeks away from being released.




Always looking to hear the scoop and we've got a few people on these boards with early access to viewings.  Problem is, the early scoop threads often get buried (along with much of the useful information) when a second person pops in and starts a second thread on the same movie, but with a "rate this movie" poll.  Thought I'd have it all covered with just one thread this time.


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## Truth Seeker (Mar 11, 2005)

Mark said:
			
		

> Always looking to hear the scoop and we've got a few people on these boards with early access to viewings. Problem is, the early scoop threads often get buried (along with much of the useful information) when a second person pops in and starts a second thread on the same movie, but with a "rate this movie" poll. Thought I'd have it all covered with just one thread this time.




Smart ...and I will give this upcoming movie...a whooping 20...can't be like everyone else here and  give it just a '10'


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## Mark (Mar 11, 2005)

The lovely Jaime King was on Conan O'Brien tonight to begin the plugging of Sin City.  She revealed that she has a number of "fairies" tattooed on her body because she likes all things "mystical and magical" like "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter".  They showed a photo of her and Sin City co-stars Jessica Alba and Rosario Dawson, the three of whom had just returned from Comicon.  She mentioned, also, that she felt a bit sorry for her two co-stars during the filming of the movie, because although she didn't get to wear much herself, as a costume, poor Rosario is dressed in little more than skimpy chains and Jessica has to wear chaps while doing a dance scene and twirling a lasso.  What a crying shame...


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## takyris (Mar 11, 2005)

I must be the only person unimpressed after seeing the trailer.  Everything I've read in the interviews, everything I've seen in the articles... it just screams out that everyone in the movie confused the word GRAPHIC with the word STYLISH, and is really into adolescent titillation to boot.  Maybe this touches upon Frank Miller issues or something, I don't know.  I'm under no illusions that this is anything other than my own opinion, but everything I've seen of Miller's reeks of "Looklooklook, it's dark and brooding, and the hero has numerous antihero elements, and there's nasty violence!!!  How cool is that?"  And that's fine, but other issues, like character development, pacing, dialogue... that sort of trumps cool broodiness in my book.  

Mind you, I was also unimpressed with the Matrix and Equilibrium, so I'm obviously a hard sell on cool broodiness in absence of all other relevant redeeming values. 

I'm not casting a vote here, because I don't intend to see the movie, based on what I've seen so far.  But it IS a poll, not a share-the-love thread, so I didn't feel that posting was inappropriate.

As always, opinions will vary.  Anyone who is entertained by the movie should feel proud for spending their entertainment dollars wisely on something that worked for them.


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## Mark (Mar 11, 2005)

_(Not worth it)_


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## Arnwyn (Mar 11, 2005)

Is it just me, or are these "Rate x" threads appearing earlier and earlier...?

Weird.


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## reanjr (Mar 12, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> I must be the only person unimpressed after seeing the trailer.




I think the defining element in the production of this film is that it is the first time a comic book has ever been truly adapted as a movie.  The film is designed to show every frame of the original graphic novel in a manner as exacting as possible.  This lends the movie an amazing visual style that has never been done before.  The only thing I can think of off hand which even hinted at this style was Shyamalan's Unbreakable.  Though it was only during a couple of scenes, those scenes just jumped out at you as breathtaking camera work.


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## Ranger REG (Mar 12, 2005)

Are you sure they're going to use the original graphic novel's panels? Didn't realize the artist already had Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba in foresight.


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## Milkman Dan (Mar 13, 2005)

What boggles my mind is that it cost only $40,000,000.  Yes, that might sound like a lot to us mere mortals, but it's peanuts when doing a movie with such a cast.  Especially when you consider that some of them probably don't get up in the morning unless they're paid several millions.  (Kidding.)


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## Endur (Mar 13, 2005)

*No Comic Panels in Movies*

I hope they didn't use comic panels in this movie.  Thats been done many times and its always been a failure.

The Hulk tried that a year or two ago, and we know what happened.

Spidey Super Stories (on the electric company) tried that, and we know how well that went over.

Numerous other "forgettable" movies in the 70's and 80's tried following the comic panel approach.


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## Rotogar (Mar 14, 2005)

*Comic -> Movie*



			
				reanjr said:
			
		

> I think the defining element in the production of this film is that it is the first time a comic book has ever been truly adapted as a movie.  The film is designed to show every frame of the original graphic novel in a manner as exacting as possible.




I would put the original Crow (w/ Brandon Lee) in this category as well.

And, (in response to other posts), we are not talking about putting borders up on the screen and making the movie *look* like a comic book.  We are talking about taking the graphic layout of the actual panels themselves and translating *that* directly up onto the screen - sans borders and such.

And I am so excited about this!  Of course, I've been a Sin City fan since Marv first hit the pavement in that first GN.


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## Mystery Man (Mar 14, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> it just screams out that everyone in the movie confused the word GRAPHIC with the word STYLISH, and is really into adolescent titillation to boot.




I for one can't wait to be titillated. Titillate me!!!


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## JoeGKushner (Mar 14, 2005)

Rotogar said:
			
		

> I would put the original Crow (w/ Brandon Lee) in this category as well.




Not trying to sound rude, but did you read the original Crow comic series? While there are some element overlaps, the two are NOTHING alike. In the comic for instance, you're never really sure if 'the Crow' is alive or dead, demented or supernatural. He's so hopped up on drugs that the reader is lead to assume that's why he's still alive and kicking.


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## Thotas (Mar 15, 2005)

Wow, thought I was the only one that hated "The Matrix".

But I'd never lump Frank Miller's "Sin City" with it.  I have "The Customer is Always Right" hanging on my frig door, stuck with magnets.  I don't just want advance tickets to the movie on April 1st, I want to know when the DVD is coming out!


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## Dark Jezter (Mar 15, 2005)

Mark said:
			
		

> _(Not worth it)_



 Timeless law of internet message boards:  Any time a lot of people are excited over an anticipated new movie, comic, novel, video game, etc.  somebody will inevitably arrive to tell everybody how unimpressed they are with it.


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## takyris (Mar 15, 2005)

Inevitably. 

But to be fair, this is a "rate", not a discussion forum.  Unlike some, I won't trot on over to a "how much does ___ rock?" thread to bash ____ unless the thread is actually asking for feedback from both sides and not simply a "praise ____" thread.

Which this wasn't.  Which is why I posted.

If anyone would like to harangue me for not liking the Matrix or Equilibrium (or Underworld, too -- feel free to harangue me for not liking Underworld), we can take it to another thread.


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## Viking Bastard (Mar 15, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> ...but everything I've seen of Miller's reeks of "Looklooklook, it's dark and brooding, and the hero has numerous antihero elements, and there's nasty violence!!! How cool is that?"



Well, that's kinda the point.

Playing with the cliches. With purty art.


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## Klaus (Mar 15, 2005)

JoeGKushner said:
			
		

> Not trying to sound rude, but did you read the original Crow comic series? While there are some element overlaps, the two are NOTHING alike. In the comic for instance, you're never really sure if 'the Crow' is alive or dead, demented or supernatural. He's so hopped up on drugs that the reader is lead to assume that's why he's still alive and kicking.



 Up to the point in the comic where the Crow gets shot at by multiple thugs and just keeps on fighting.

But true, the movie (while very good) wasn't overly faithful to the comic. Eric Draven's girlfriend fate was far worse in the comic, and there isn't near enough katana action in the movie. And IIRC, the crow actually spoke to the Crow.


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## Rotogar (Mar 15, 2005)

*GN <-> Screen*



			
				JoeGKushner said:
			
		

> Not trying to sound rude, but did you read the original Crow comic series? While there are some element overlaps, the two are NOTHING alike. In the comic for instance, you're never really sure if 'the Crow' is alive or dead, demented or supernatural. He's so hopped up on drugs that the reader is lead to assume that's why he's still alive and kicking.




Yup!  Proud owner of the original issues and a couple of versions of the graphic novels.

I never made the claim that the movie tried to be a completely faithful adaptation of the story from the comic.  As has been pointed out, it wasn't.  What I did say was that there was a very noticable attempt to translate many of the comic panels directly to the screen.  I did a huge report on it back when I was in film school.  Two video screens, one showing the movie, the second showing scanned pages of the graphic novel.  It's like the film makers cut up the graphic novel, rearraigned it to fit their revised story and shot that.  That was my contention.

And the same thing is going to happen to Sin City.  They are already merging the storylines from several of the graphic novels (with Frank Miller's participation and permission).


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## Mark (Mar 15, 2005)

Dark Jezter said:
			
		

> Timeless law of internet message boards:  Any time a lot of people are excited over an anticipated new movie, comic, novel, video game, etc.  somebody will inevitably arrive to tell everybody how unimpressed they are with it.




Yup.



			
				takyris said:
			
		

> Inevitably.




_You've been on double-secret probation since the beginning of the semester..._


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## EricNoah (Mar 15, 2005)

I will say the trailer caught my attention, though I have no idea what the movie is.  Even after watching the trailer I still don't really know...


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## Fast Learner (Mar 18, 2005)

NO SPOILERS:

I caught it at a screening this morning, and was absolutely blown away. Though I haven't read the graphic novels, the whole thing absolutely and utterly comes across like a (long) graphic novel brought to life. There are no "panels" in the bad sense, but there are lots of shots, stuff with shadow and facial wrinkles and that kind of thing that absolutely scream "graphic novel" while fitting perfectly into the overall film.

I gave it a 9. There were a few awkward moments, a couple of times where the scene went on too long and a couple of times where the action jumped just a bit too much to easily follow, but overall it was simply amazing.

It is _very_ gory, lots and lots of blood, though the bulk of it, interestingly, isn't red (a fanstastic stylistic choice). There was puh-lenty of titillation, and while at the beginning it seemed a bit funky (there are extended scenes with bare women's breasts in the first 15 minutes), after a while it felt like it really fit well, and when you'd see yet another fabulous body in an incredibly provocative pose, it blended seamlessly with everything else.

The three stories fit together very nicely, interweaving with style. Tarantino's influence was obvious (he's listed as "Special Guest Director," and I can easily guess which section he helped with or even directed), but it was a combination of his and Rodriguez's style together that, surprisingly, meshed so well with the noir setting.

Color use, or more specifically the general lack thereof, was really awesome. All of the actors were great, really great. I don't like Mickey Rourke -- I actually quite dislike him -- but he was freaking _fantastic_ here as Marv, one of the main characters. Lots of makeup, but stunning.

And for those who have mentioned concern that Jessica Alba might not look so great as a blonde: _va-va-frickin-VOOM!_ Man, she was stunningly pretty and sexy, and I don't actually like her very much. I really look forward to the DVD for some freeze-frame fun. Wow.

So, to sum: incredibly stylish, shockingly (but entertainingly) gory, hip-grindingly sexy, fascinating stories, and one hell of a ride. Highly recommended for anyone who likes those things in a film. (aka major fanboy material)


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## Flyspeck23 (Mar 18, 2005)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> I caught it at a screening this morning, and was absolutely blown away. Though I haven't read the graphic novels, the whole thing absolutely and utterly comes across like a (long) graphic novel brought to life. There are no "panels" in the bad sense, but there are lots of shots, stuff with shadow and facial wrinkles and that kind of thing that absolutely scream "graphic novel" while fitting perfectly into the overall film.




Similar to _Unbreakable_?

Oh, and spoilers please. Seeing that at least some people on this board have read the Sin City graphic novels it wouldn't even be _real_ spoilers, would it?


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## Fast Learner (Mar 18, 2005)

NO SPOILERS:

Much moreso than _Unbreakable_, maybe because the bulk of the film is black and white (though it's very rich black and white... kinda hard to explain, really... sort of a sepia-tone kinda thing, or along the lines of a duotone, if you're familiar with that), and the light and shadow work is much stronger (a la noir films), so combined with some great camera work, the feeling of a graphic novel is much stronger. The scene in _Unbreakable_ where (_Unbreakable spoiler_) 



Spoiler



the hero is standing in the train station, hands wide, "feeling" for trouble


 is kind of similar, but the full-coloredness of that film makes it seem more three-dimensional.

An interesting effect is that the automobile chases were clearly computer generated... in a way that seemed to intentionally make them look computer-generated (gravity "problems"), so in a sense it even more seems less "real," in a way that manages to keep the graphic novel tone.

I don't know what I'd even spoil, really. I mean, describing the plot is one of the least interesting things you can read in a review, imo, and i fyou know which 3 stories the film is based on and you've read the books, there's no point in it anyway. 

BTW, Elijah Wood is _extremely_ creepy as a bad guy, and Del Toro's makeup changes him in a subtle but extremely effective way. And I still think Brittany Murphy is a lousy actress, and don't know why she gets parts: she certainly has the weakest performance in the movie.


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## Flyspeck23 (Mar 18, 2005)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> I don't know what I'd even spoil, really. I mean, describing the plot is one of the least interesting things you can read in a review, imo, and i fyou know which 3 stories the film is based on and you've read the books, there's no point in it anyway.



Sure. But what about changes? What's in and what isn't?



> BTW, Elijah Wood is _extremely_ creepy as a bad guy, and Del Toro's makeup changes him in a subtle but extremely effective way. And I still think Brittany Murphy is a lousy actress, and don't know why she gets parts: she certainly has the weakest performance in the movie.



Elijah Wood already looked creepy in the trailer, even though he was only shown half a second...


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## Bobitron (Mar 18, 2005)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> And I still think Brittany Murphy is a lousy actress, and don't know why she gets parts: she certainly has the weakest performance in the movie.




I still can't believe she was selected alongside the rest of this cast. I haven't seen a single thing she was even passable in.


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## Mark (Mar 24, 2005)

Bobitron said:
			
		

> I still can't believe she was selected alongside the rest of this cast. I haven't seen a single thing she was even passable in.




Clueless


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## Fast Learner (Mar 24, 2005)

Ooh, great point, Mark! I actually liked her in that (and loved Alicia Silverstone in it). Hmm, ok, I guess I have to take her off of my "always bad" list and put her on my "very nearly always bad" list.


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## Mark (Mar 24, 2005)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> Ooh, great point, Mark! I actually liked her in that (and loved Alicia Silverstone in it). Hmm, ok, I guess I have to take her off of my "always bad" list and put her on my "very nearly always bad" list.




There was a while when I had assumed it was Bitty Shram in Clueless.  Murphy has also aquitted herself well with her voice work on King of the Hill as Luanne Platter (and Joseph Gribble!).  I think she is at that awkward age, like Jenna Elfman and Téa Leoni both experienced (about half a dozen and a dozen years back now, respectively), where the quality comedic female leads are few and far between and wind up going to women who will vamp it up more, like Alicia Silverstone (does pouty), Drew Barrymore (has no problem acting as a slut, but comes with her own production company), or Kate Hudson (over-rated, IMO, but connected).  Like Leoni and Elfman, Patricia Arquette's star was on the rise in the early nineties and she's only now reamerging on the small screen after a string of poor scripts or critically-questionable movie choices.  This could wind up being Murphy's fate, but I think we'll see Murphy find a way around it all (I think she's smarter than most), and keeping busy in the meantime.  It's unfortunate that to keep busy and cashing paychecks she'll have to damage her potential reputation by taking some crappy scripts and roles along the way.  Only time will tell and we'll have to see if the late-nineties female mega-stars who garnered the really big paychecks for their box office draws re-invest that cake (ALA Barrymore, who admittedly can do so good, potentially).  It may well be that the door has been shut for so long on screen writers who can turn in a good female lead character that it's too tough to turn around.


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## Fast Learner (Mar 24, 2005)

I agree with your general concept, good points, all. However, I will note that her role in _Sin City_ was a pretty good one, and definitely could have been performed much, much better. It is a somewhat one-dimensional role, but so are most of the roles in the film, and imo anyway, she just didn't pull it off.


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## John Crichton (Mar 24, 2005)

Mark said:
			
		

> Clueless



 You know, it's not nice to call others names.

Oh, wait...

Er, I like movies.


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## jonesy (Mar 24, 2005)

John Crichton said:
			
		

> Er, I like movies.



Paul Javal: "There's nothing like the movies. Usually when you see women, they're dressed. But put them in a movie, and you see their backsides."


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## jonesy (Mar 25, 2005)

While browsing the Rotten Tomatoes forum I came across this Inside Look on the making of the movie.


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## Angel Tarragon (Mar 27, 2005)

You know in the preview for this movie I could have sworn that I saw Hellboy in the background......


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## Mark (Mar 28, 2005)

Frukathka said:
			
		

> You know in the preview for this movie I could have sworn that I saw Hellboy in the background......




Could that have been Mickey Rouke's character?


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## takyris (Mar 28, 2005)

So now that I'm up in Canada and have working television again, I've been catching up on a lot of late-night shows, and have seen Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, and Benicio Del Toro plugging Sin City.  I've gotten to see clips each time.  The three clips I've seen are:



Spoiler



1) Bruce Willis enters the bar, Brittany Murphy talks in slow motion, and then we pan to Jessica Alba twirling a lasso while the line "She grew up. She filled out" is delivered.

2) Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson arguing in the street about a possible gang war, and then Clive Own lunges in to kiss her, and then he orders a car.  Box top, good engine.

3) Benicio Del Toro hitting on Brittany Murphy as she walks and he drives, and then his goons talk him into drawing a gun on her, and she says something coy, again slowed-down weirdly, and then some samurai girl throws an enormous shuriken.



So that's what I've seen.

And I've come to the conclusion that I am so very not the target audience for this movie, and not in the way I originally thought.

Originally I was being an old sissy and complaining about the graphic violence, which is really a turnoff for me these days. This is paradoxical, because I love good fight choreography, but I really don't like graphic violence. I think it's possible to have one without the other, and I think that the latter is often used when they can't get the former, and that's disappointing for me.

(For the record: Haven't seen Kill Bill. Looked at the commercials, went "She can't hold a sword," and figured it was going to be splash, rather than flash. Asked a friend who saw it later if I should see it anyway, if I'd been wrong about my assessment.  He said, "Nope, after awhile, she's just chopping away, and it's not really that well done, fight-wise. It's only worth seeing if you want to see the blood spray in a cool way."  So there we go.)

But having seen these clips, which didn't have any graphic violence in them, I realize that my issues with this movie are so very personal that it would be an exercise in self-abuse to go see it. It boils down to the following:

1) I'm a big fan of dialogue and writing
2) I'm not impressed by setting

I imagine I'll get flayed, but from the clips I saw, the dialogue in this movie sounds awful. That's not a slam on Frank Miller. That's not even really a slam on Rodriguez, although it possibly should be. This is a movie adapted from a graphic novel, and if I had to guess, I'd guess that they're being really really true to the dialogue (and caption-text voice-overs) from the graphic novels. Which is a wonderful kind of homage, a great project of transformation, and a fantastic way to create a movie that'll impress the people who loved the graphic novel and the people who don't care about dialogue, while turning off everyone else.

In a graphic novel, every inch of space counts, and how you spend that space focuses the entirety of your story. Dialogue literally gets in the way of setting in a graphic novel -- if someone's pithy comeback takes two lines instead of one, that's less space in the panel to show the world that line is being delivered in. And if someone's line of dialogue takes one line and a teensy bit, then you have decisions about how to shrink the dialogue box, what to reveal behind it, and so forth. I'm sure comics experts can provide more formal terms for all this stuff, but it's there, whatever it is. And if you pop those lines over into a movie, you need to account for that by modifying the lines. You've lost the space constraint and gained the time constraint -- in a graphic novel, if you're good enough, you can get away with having somebody deliver an extremely long and coherent line of dialogue (or internal monologue) that, realistically, couldn't actually have been verbalized in the time that elapses in that caption (ie, Spider-man having a five-line internal monologue about how he needs to figure out Doc Ock's weakness while dodging arm attacks). It can be done badly, of course -- any element in any medium can be done badly -- but it's something that you have more freedom with in a graphic novel, the flow of time in your panels and particularly the dialogue in there.

In a movie, time generally passes at a 1:1 ratio, with a few bullet-time or gratuitous slow-mo allowances per movie for directors playing with the rules (and not counting movies whose premise is "Guy can slow down time"). A director bringing in dialogue from a graphic novel needs to be aware of the fact that you can have longer lines than the graphic novel's writer was able to get away with in some places because the dialogue isn't getting in the way of the world (and can even give the director time to show that world more while the dialogue is taking place), but is going to have to trim other areas because of the new time constraints. Based purely on those few clips, I'm guessing that Rodriguez opted to be as faithful to the original material as possible, and that in doing so, he's actually going to do a disservice to the material. It's going to please the people who wanted a literal porting of the dialogue, but not the people who were most impressed by the spirit that the dialogue in the graphic novels conveyed. (And a whole lotta people who don't really care about dialogue as long as it doesn't get in their way are going to judge the movie on other merits, and this is hugely irrelevant for them.)

As for setting... that's just me. In real life, I get lost all the time because I honestly just don't care about the physical nature of the world and its geography and appearance that much. I rarely get much out of visiting visual tourist attractions like natural parks -- I can appreciate the serenity, but the appearance -- the setting, if you will -- doesn't do it for me. In the same way that I'm hugely impressed or turned off by dialogue, and will praise or condemn a movie based on its dialogue when other people were noticing other stuff, I am really really not ever going to notice the setting. And my impression of Sin City is that this is a movie where massive attention was paid to the setting, and that's supposed to be a selling point, possibly one of its highest selling points. So that's just me, and that's all that it is, and from the clips, it looks like they had a vision, and that's great for them, and after the most recent clip, my wife turned to me and said, "That's gonna be like Sky Captain, isn't it? Great visuals, cool effects, and really bad writing?"

Which is a shame. I honestly don't know whether you can have it all in one movie -- I can point to movies I like, but that just says that I liked the dialogue and writing and that the setting wasn't so bad that it got in my way -- and someone who loves setting and could care less about dialogue could have the exact opposite opinion and be just as justified in having it. And then there'll be the people who don't like a particular movie because of some pet peeve, or because it didn't do something that they wanted it to do, and that's also valid for them, but is different. *The Incredibles*, maybe. I haven't heard many complaints about that movie that weren't personal ("I just don't like superheroes as a genre") or I-wish-they'd-done-this-instead ("I don't want to see a mid-life crisis movie, I want to see a whole movie where young Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl fight crime!").

Beyond my opinions about the dialogue and my personal sign-off on the setting, I was annoyed at the blocking, or choreography of movements, or whatever you'd call the physical direction of the actors -- another thing that looked like a deliberate attempt to match Miller's style, which would be great except that Miller was working with pictures that don't generally move, and actors almost always move on a regular basis. The embrace I saw looked like bad pulp acting or the "two people making out" trope from a late-night television show. The shuriken was thrown with all the grace and finesse of a woman whose parents didn't let her play sports as a girl, resulting in the "throwing like a girl" stereotype which is really just "throwing like someone who never played baseball, softball, or football".  It looked like awkward movements to get to really cool still shots -- the embrace ended in a good still shot, and I imagine the shuriken-throw would have, too.  But again, it looked like a failure to successfully port over the *spirit* of what made the graphic novels so popular.

Anyway. I look forward to hearing what people who have seen the movie eventually say. And again, there is nothing wrong with liking a movie for its setting and not being as huge on dialogue. There's nothing wrong with liking the dialogue because you liked the dialogue in the graphic novel. There's nothing wrong with having no experience with the graphic novel, considering yourself a dialogue snob, and saying that this was rockin' dialogue, and the clips just took stuff badly out of context. I don't think that this is a movie that was phoned in lazily by people who didn't care. I think people really put a lot of love and effort into this, and, as I said, I think it's going to be a complete miss for me.


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## Mark (Mar 29, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> Anyway. I look forward to hearing what people who have seen the movie eventually say.




You, too?


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## Fast Learner (Mar 29, 2005)

I saw it, and did say.

Your #3 spoilier is incorrect. That's not Brittany Murphy, it's Alexis Bledel, of Gilmore Girls fame. Who looks pretty hot, which is disturbing to this old man.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Mar 30, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> I must be the only person unimpressed after seeing the trailer.



Oddly... I was impressed by the first trailer, and deflated by the second.  Not sure why.  I've not read the graphic novel, so I had no pre-existing prejudices in that regard, but was actively turned off by the title.  Screams "I'm going to be gratuitous in every manner possible!!!" I think.  Probably why I never looked twice at the graphic novels.

In any case, I loved the visual style in the first trailer, but something ineffable about the second didn't sit right with me.  Haven't spent much time trying to figure it out.

As an aside, I've got to point one thing out here...


			
				takyris said:
			
		

> ...long analysis of why movies are different from graphic novels applied to _Sin City_...



I'd love to see this type of analysis done on why movies are different from books... and have it applied to the standard _The Lord of the Rings_ arguements that get tossed around these parts.

Just sayin'


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## nakia (Mar 30, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> This is a movie adapted from a graphic novel, and if I had to guess, I'd guess that they're being really really true to the dialogue (and caption-text voice-overs) from the graphic novels. Which is a wonderful kind of homage, a great project of transformation, and a fantastic way to create a movie that'll impress the people who loved the graphic novel and the people who don't care about dialogue, while turning off everyone else.




I think your analysis is spot on, takryis, and it made me think about films v. graphic novels in a way I had not thought of before.

I am viewing Sin City as an experiment -- an attempt to put a graphic novel on screen whole cloth.  Not just tell the same story as faithfully as possible on screen, but actually put the graphic novel on screen, which is why it has been shot digitally and looks the way it does.  This experiment may fail miserably, precisely for the reasons takryis describes.  Each medium has different conventions, strengths, and weaknesses.  What works very well in one medium (a type of dialogue in graphic novels) may not work at all in another (the graphic novel dialogue style may seem stilted and trite on film).  But it's a bold experiment nonetheless.  And, since it is a bold experiment involving one of my favorite comics, I am going to see it.

An instersting aside, one relevant here, I think, is that Frank Miller became known for altering the conventions of dialogue in comics.  He became noted for having "voice overs" that did not appear in word balloons and were placed outside of the actual comic panels.  In one of the Sin City comics, he has a word -- one word -- take up two pages in a "centerfold." I was floored by this, both at its use stylistically and its use in the context of the story.  I mean, what writer/artist wants to use two whole pages on a single word?


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## takyris (Mar 30, 2005)

Canis: Definitely true, re:movies and books. I had a great time watching the Lord of the Rings movies, though, and it'd been awhile since I'd read the books, so I'm probably not the right person to do that. I also get accused of trying to be too cinematic in my own writing (ie, people saying "This would make a great movie, but I'm having trouble reading it as written down like this") in a few cases, which likely stems from the fact that when I write, I pretty much envision a movie and write the novelization of the movie in my head.  So I'm probably not going to be in touch with the differences. 

(Although I've recently discovered that movies seem to be better at heist capers than books -- a book based on The Sting has to stay in the viewpoint of a character who doesn't know about the big end-twist, stick with camera-eye viewpoint (ie, writing without saying what anyone is thinking), or lie about what a character is thinking in order to achieve the big twist at the end, since it's clear that both Newman and Redford were in on it. In a movie, you don't have to say what people are thinking, but most books are written from the viewpoint of the hero, which means that the hero can't surprise the reader with something he's been planning the whole time unless the author does some backflips to come up with a "Aha, it was implanted subliminally" twist or something.)

Nakia: Thanks -- I think it's a great experiment, too, but it's an experiment that really cranks up things that aren't selling points for me. That said, it's doing really really well on RottenTomatoes at the moment, so I could be completely full of it. Week two will be the telling point, I think -- it's had enough good press and enough critical praise that I suspect it'll have a good week one.


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## Victim (Mar 30, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> (Although I've recently discovered that movies seem to be better at heist capers than books -- a book based on The Sting has to stay in the viewpoint of a character who doesn't know about the big end-twist, stick with camera-eye viewpoint (ie, writing without saying what anyone is thinking), or lie about what a character is thinking in order to achieve the big twist at the end, since it's clear that both Newman and Redford were in on it. In a movie, you don't have to say what people are thinking, but most books are written from the viewpoint of the hero, which means that the hero can't surprise the reader with something he's been planning the whole time unless the author does some backflips to come up with a "Aha, it was implanted subliminally" twist or something.)




Well, if you change viewpoint characters, then you have a bit more options for not showing what characters are thinking.


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## takyris (Mar 30, 2005)

Definitely. That's what I'm trying to do in a heist caper I'm trying to write. But it's tougher than it would be in a movie, and it tends to feel forced. As, I imagine, anything does, unless you're really good at it. The easiest way to to it, really, is camera-eye, but camera-eye also feels really forced and awkward unless you're really good at it.

So I try to get really good at it. We'll see how that works out for me.


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## barsoomcore (Mar 30, 2005)

takyris: you seem to be saying that movies have more dialog than comic books.

That's flat-out wrong. Sorry, man, but it is. I mean, read comic books much? Look at the action/word ratio an average comic book: Spidey dodges a punch, Doc Ock says, "I've got you now, you miserable arachnid!", Spidey sees debris tumbling towards onlookers and thinks, "Those innocent bystanders! I've got to save them, but how do I keep this maniac off me?", and says, "You four-armed baboon!"

That doesn't sound like an out-of-line comic book panel to me. Obviously it changes from panel to panel and artist/writer to artist/writer, but trying to reproduce that in a movie would be impossible. You could never fit that much dialog (external or internal) into the space of time covered by the punch, not without being all tricky, at any rate.

I would say the Spiderman movies had LESS dialog than your average comic book, not more.

So I just can't accept your argument about all this. If you don't like Miller's dialogue, that's fine, but I just do not accept the assertion that movies have more dialogue than comic books and thus comic book dialogue doesn't translate to film.

It seems like you're making very very large assumptions about both the nature of the comic books and the nature of the film, and using those assumptions to rather extremely interpret the trailers, and using that interpretation to dismiss it. You seem to have gone a long way from the available evidence in order to reach your judgement.

Again, if you just didn't like the trailer, that's fine. I don't share your opinion on throwing star posture (or Uma's grip, which was certainly one that I would approve of in a junior student. It's how I was taught how to hold a katana. Her hasso-no-kamae was wrong (when she and Elle are squaring off), but everyone's is. Nice ko-gasumi, though (when she's watching her surrounding enemies in the reflections in her blade)), and I just don't believe you can judge dialogue based on out-of-context clips (for the most part; I mean, how do you judge a line like "I know."? (thinking of Han Solo, there -- GREAT line, but only in context)), but that's me.

I for one am hoping Rodriguez finally lives up to his promise and delivers the film I've been waiting for him to deliver. I think he's immensely talented but dreadfully sloppy, and I just really want him to give me a film that feels like he took the time to do it right.


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## Fast Learner (Mar 31, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> I imagine I'll get flayed, but from the clips I saw, the dialogue in this movie sounds awful. That's not a slam on Frank Miller. That's not even really a slam on Rodriguez, although it possibly should be. This is a movie adapted from a graphic novel, and if I had to guess, I'd guess that they're being really really true to the dialogue (and caption-text voice-overs) from the graphic novels. Which is a wonderful kind of homage, a great project of transformation, and a fantastic way to create a movie that'll impress the people who loved the graphic novel and the people who don't care about dialogue, while turning off everyone else.



I'm not going to flay you, but I don't understand why, say, you're completely ignoring my review above. You know, the one where I said that *I've never read the graphic novels* and yet somehow *think it's a great film*.

You're postulating from extremely limited information. You may not know me from Adam, but it still seems weird to completely ignore the opinions of someone who had the precise opposite experience of what you're suggesting.

I've never read or seen a Frank MIller anything. The movie was amazing.


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Mar 31, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> ...and I just don't believe you can judge dialogue based on out-of-context clips (for the most part; I mean, how do you judge a line like "I know."? (thinking of Han Solo, there -- GREAT line, but only in context)), but that's me.




A very good recent(well, fairly recent) example of this is the Bourne Supremecy trailer. Anyone remember that? We see the lady on the phone, screaming at everyone and eventually someone yells, "Where is he?!"

In the trailer, his response is, "Right next to you." and it feels like its cut off because of the quickness with which he's talking.

But in the movie, those two scenes are split up by at least thirty seconds, and he never answers the "where is he?!". Instead, he says "She's right next to you" about a girl he's mentioned a moment earlier.

Completely different context, and blew me away when I saw the movie as I had honestly been expecting what the trailer showed.


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## takyris (Mar 31, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> takyris: you seem to be saying that movies have more dialog than comic books.
> 
> That's flat-out wrong.




I agree, which is why I didn't say that. I said, with a lot of other bonus words, that graphic novels are constrained by space, and movies are constrained by time, with respect to their dialogue, and that difference necessitates a different flow.  I didn't say which had more, because I don't know which has more, and I suspect it depends on the genre and the writers in each case.



> It seems like you're making very very large assumptions about both the nature of the comic books and the nature of the film, and using those assumptions to rather extremely interpret the trailers, and using that interpretation to dismiss it. You seem to have gone a long way from the available evidence in order to reach your judgement.




With the caveat of the point above, that I didn't say (or didn't intend to say, although I'm open to having my own quotes thrown back at me) one of those large assumptions you've inferred, I'll agree with you that I haven't seen the entire movie.  Of course, this turns it into one of those ridiculous "I'm not empowered to judge whether I like a movie until I go spend two-plus hours in a theater watching a movie that I could have told you from the trailer that I wasn't going to like" arguments.  Maybe I'm just horribly misguided for believing that if the advertisers, who are trying their best to show me the cool stuff, show me something that doesn't make me want to go see the movie, then the movie isn't going to work for me.

Deep Blue Sea or whatever? The movie with the intelligent sharks? I watched the commercial and thought the shark effects looked stupid. That was their selling point -- cool shark effects -- and it looked like bad CG in the commercial. Has anyone here seen Deep Blue Sea?  Were the shark effects amazingly kickass except for the few clips I saw in the commercials?  Have I been led astray by my prejudice at judging the movie based on the ads the people trying to get me to see the movie showed me?

And I *was* interested in hearing what people said once they'd seen it.

Which brings me to Fast Learner: Dude, I don't know if you imagined me cackling evilly as I spurned your review or what, but really, seriously, I wasn't just mouthing off and ignoring your post.  Seriously.  I read it and everything. Even the big words.



			
				Fast Learner said:
			
		

> I caught it at a screening this morning, and was absolutely blown away. Though I haven't read the graphic novels, the whole thing absolutely and utterly comes across like a (long) graphic novel brought to life. There are no "panels" in the bad sense, but there are lots of shots, stuff with shadow and facial wrinkles and that kind of thing that absolutely scream "graphic novel" while fitting perfectly into the overall film.




Visual setting stuff, which I said was probably going to be really cool, while noted that it wasn't a selling point for me in particular.

Now, I could go through your comments piece by piece and say "Doesn't refer to the dialogue, doesn't refer to the dialogue, doesn't refer to the dialogue," over and over again, or we could just agree that your review never actually used the word *dialogue*, which was what, uh, my post was about.  So if you're going to get indignant:



> 'm not going to flay you, but I don't understand why, say, you're completely ignoring my review above. You know, the one where I said that I've never read the graphic novels and yet somehow think it's a great film.
> 
> You're postulating from extremely limited information. You may not know me from Adam, but it still seems weird to completely ignore the opinions of someone who had the precise opposite experience of what you're suggesting.
> 
> I've never read or seen a Frank MIller anything. The movie was amazing.




I don't know you from Adam -- which is not a slam on you, but I have no idea whether you're someone who can take or leave dialogue and judges a movie primarily by its setting, or whether you're a dialogue snob, or what. You didn't say what you were -- you didn't say what your standards for judging were.  I flat-out said what I was, and your review never mentioned the dialogue. The closest I got was you saying that the stories meshed well, which is good, and that the actors were good, although you actually referred to their sexiness more than their acting ability. That's not a slam on you, but if you made up a title for my post, it probably wouldn't be "I'm concerned that Sin City isn't going to be sexy enough, and nobody has proven to me that it will be".  

So honestly, I'd love to hear your feelings on the writing and dialogue, but your initial review didn't address any of what I was talking about.  Which is fine, given that I wrote my post after you wrote your review.  You have nothing to feel bad about on the review, but the reason I ignored your post is because your post didn't actually mention anything my post was talking about.  Yes, sexy women, cool violence, good setting -- I got the Fast Learner review. Feel free to add to it as you feel appropriate, since you have seen the movie. I am interested in your opinion. I am not particularly interested in apologizing for a post that you're trying to turn into a vindictive attack upon you and your ilk, because I'm not ignoring you. 



			
				Barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Again, if you just didn't like the trailer, that's fine. I don't share your opinion on throwing star posture (or Uma's grip, which was certainly one that I would approve of in a junior student. It's how I was taught how to hold a katana. Her hasso-no-kamae was wrong (when she and Elle are squaring off), but everyone's is. Nice ko-gasumi, though (when she's watching her surrounding enemies in the reflections in her blade)), and I just don't believe you can judge dialogue based on out-of-context clips (for the most part; I mean, how do you judge a line like "I know."? (thinking of Han Solo, there -- GREAT line, but only in context)), but that's me.




re:Uma's grip -- no clue. I wasn't judging it by its accuracy, since my martial art doesn't do formal sword work and I have no standard. I was judging it by whether the clips I saw looked cinematically cool and varied and inventive and fun and emotively real. They didn't, at least to me, but I'm a fight scene snob, and I'm notoriously hard to satisfy there. That's honestly not a one-upsmanship thing in terms of geeky "I am more picky than you". If her accuracy in the formal sword work hit your happy button, that's awesome. That's a deeper level than I can appreciate it on.

re:Throwing Star -- really?  When she does the big hold-over-the-head pose with it?  I'd rewind and look again if I hadn't already deleted it from my new-almost-Tivo satellite thingie, but it looked really really bad when I saw it, like she was holding her arm in a position that would be next to impossible to generate any real throwing force from, like a bad 60's martial arts pose that Mike Myers would strike before shouting "Judo Chop!" -- maybe good in the context of the movie, which was admittedly aiming for cinematism over reality, but it looked dated and fake, not cool and poseworthy.  But if I didn't see it right, I didn't see it right. That's certainly more objective and judgeable than some of the other stuff I mentioned.

As for dialogue-judging: I'm sure there have been good movies done wrong by advertising that doesn't put things in the right context. No doubt there. But when you see a movie ad that has an element that's important to you and that you think is stupid -- it could be the dialogue, the action, the setting, the humor, whatever -- do you say "Well, despite the fact that the one sample they just showed me looked stupid based on my personal standards of judgment, which do not create an objective standard but only measure my likely level of enjoyment based on factors that are important to me, I'm gonna give them a chance," and see the movie anyway? I'm asking specifically about a movie whose ads display lousyness in one area that is important to you. I've never argued that Sin City looked unsexy, unintense, or uncinematic in its setting.  Um, at least, I think I've never argued that. Anybody who is interested in seeing an intense, sexy movie with cool cinematography should get in line to see Sin City. No argument there. I just said that for me, the kicker is dialogue, and all the dialogue I saw looked bad.

If all the people who watch movies because they have awesome effects saw the trailer for a movie that had really really bad effects, would we say, "Look, you can't judge the effects just based on one shot! You have to see how they fit into the whole of the movie! Maybe that obviously bad-CG shark forms a meta-shark commentary on the nature of human perception once you're actually in the movie!"  And yet, dialogue is apparently impossible to judge from a trailer. If anything, I've been suckered into movies by dialogue that looked fast and witty in the trailer because the ad people clipped things shorter to pick up the pace a little bit, only to find a lot of ums and pauses in the movie that messed up the timing. I've heard great lines, gone into the theater, and come out annoyed because the three great lines in the entire movie were all in the ad, and the rest was lousy. I can't offhand think of a movie that looked to have lousy dialogue in the ads but proved to have great dialogue in the movie itself.  

There are, mind you, movies that I didn't think I'd go see in the trailers but ended up loving, but not for that reason.


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## jonesy (Mar 31, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> Deep Blue Sea or whatever? The movie with the intelligent sharks? I watched the commercial and thought the shark effects looked stupid. That was their selling point -- cool shark effects -- and it looked like bad CG in the commercial. Has anyone here seen Deep Blue Sea?  Were the shark effects amazingly kickass except for the few clips I saw in the commercials?  Have I been led astray by my prejudice at judging the movie based on the ads the people trying to get me to see the movie showed me?
> 
> And I *was* interested in hearing what people said once they'd seen it.



I originally went to see Deep Blue Sea because of Renny Harlin, and because I have a tendency to cut him a lot of slack; and because I actually do like his movies, even Driven (but perhaps not for the reasons you'd think).

The trailers did make Deep Blue Sea look really really dumb. Which is mostly accurate.

In the movie the sharks could have been done a lot better. They looked goofy on a couple of scenes where mechanical sharks would have been better.

But still, I liked the movie because it had a great flow (npi), there weren't any moments were I'd start checking the time left, and because it seemed like they had drawn straws to see who'd lose their life next. It's a dumb but fun movie.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Mar 31, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> Canis: Definitely true, re:movies and books. I had a great time watching the Lord of the Rings movies, though, and it'd been awhile since I'd read the books, so I'm probably not the right person to do that. I also get accused of trying to be too cinematic in my own writing (ie, people saying "This would make a great movie, but I'm having trouble reading it as written down like this") in a few cases, which likely stems from the fact that when I write, I pretty much envision a movie and write the novelization of the movie in my head.  So I'm probably not going to be in touch with the differences.



Fair enough.  And it wouldn't do much good anyway.  Even here, people's opinions on  movies of any stripe aren't really going to be influenced by a logical argument.  Besides, much of the "logic" we cling to depends greatly on our own point of view.  Witness the recent thread on Star Wars: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=124312

That thread had a series of conversations that went like this:

Conversant 1: "I like Star Wars."

Conversant 2: "Here are 73 logical reasons why that makes you a smacktard."

Irksome Greek chorus: "Smacktard!  Smacktard!  Smacktard!  Lucas sucks!"

Convesant 1: "Thank you for your analysis.  Here are 74 logical reasons why George Lucas is better than you."

Conversant 2: "No, no, thank you.  But here are *75* logical reasons George Lucas is a smacktard."

Irksome Greek chorus: "Smacktard!  Smacktard!  Smacktard!  pwned!"

Conversant 1: "I know you are, but what am I?"

Conversant 2: "A smacktard"

Irksome Greek chorus: "Smacktard!  Smacktard!  Smacktard!  I really want to direct."

Conversant 1: <sigh> "I like Star Wars"

But, to get back on topic... I too am usually a dialogue freak (a condition I relax for Star Wars movies).  And, on further review, I think that's what turned me off the second trailer.  It continued to promise an intriguing visual style without showing much of anything else.

Of course, trailers can be deceiving, and the visual style alone is probably enough to get me to part with my money when it comes to the university cinema, so I'll find out about the rest of it eventually.


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## Fast Learner (Mar 31, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> I don't know you from Adam -- which is not a slam on you, but I have no idea whether you're someone who can take or leave dialogue and judges a movie primarily by its setting, or whether you're a dialogue snob, or what. You didn't say what you were -- you didn't say what your standards for judging were.  I flat-out said what I was, and your review never mentioned the dialogue. The closest I got was you saying that the stories meshed well, which is good, and that the actors were good, although you actually referred to their sexiness more than their acting ability. That's not a slam on you, but if you made up a title for my post, it probably wouldn't be "I'm concerned that Sin City isn't going to be sexy enough, and nobody has proven to me that it will be".



I understand what you're saying about the dialogue. But what you said was "people who haven't read the comic won't like the movie." Then you went on to explain how the dialogue would ruin it for you. You didn't connect the two, that I could tell, and so I countered your first argument and ignored the second.

I still don't follow how your love of dialogue extrapolates into people unfamiliar with the graphic novels not liking the film.


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## takyris (Mar 31, 2005)

You say:



			
				Fast Learner said:
			
		

> I understand what you're saying about the dialogue. But what you said was "people who haven't read the comic won't like the movie."




What I said was:



			
				Me said:
			
		

> ...Which is a wonderful kind of homage, a great project of transformation, and a fantastic way to create a movie that'll impress the people who loved the graphic novel and the people who don't care about dialogue, while turning off everyone else.
> 
> ...
> 
> It's going to please the people who wanted a literal porting of the dialogue, but not the people who were most impressed by the spirit that the dialogue in the graphic novels conveyed. (And a whole lotta people who don't really care about dialogue as long as it doesn't get in their way are going to judge the movie on other merits, and this is hugely irrelevant for them.)




If I implied that nobody was going to like the movie except the diehard fans, then I apologize. My parse of the end of the first paragraph was that:

1) People who loved the graphic novel would likely love the movie
2) People who don’t care about dialogue (ie, it’s not a make-or-break for them) may or may not like the movie (although actually I said “will impress”, which is more positive, there, and then later changed my mind in the second paragraph and said that people who don’t care about dialogue will judge the movie on other merits, and that this discussion would be irrelevant for them)
3) Everyone else – defined by the negation of the first two arguments to be the people who did not read the graphic novel and who DO care about dialogue – will likely be unhappy.

In retrospect, this leaves out people who didn’t read the graphic novel but who like film noir, which I hadn’t considered at the time, but merits a category as well.

But I did not say, to my knowledge, that nobody who hadn't read the graphic novel would like the movie. I did say (and this is not 100% accurate, because someone will like the writing for some personal reason and someone will like the writing because they love film noir and enjoy seeing this stuff rehashed, two factors I didn't consider while initially writing this) that nobody who was coming to the movie fresh (ie, without loving the graphic novel) and considered dialogue one of their massive important make-or-break features in the enjoyment of a movie will enjoy this film.

My extrapolation that the movie wouldn't do well is flawed, however, since it's based on the premise that there are a lot of people out there for whom dialogue is important, and that's not necessarily true.  So it could do very well, or it could do very badly.  There's also the fact that dialogue badness is not a boolean -- there are levels of badness that will turn off increasing numbers of viewers as the badness gets worse -- which makes the issue more complex. It could be that the dialogue was bad enough to turn me off but not bad enough to turn off Average Joe, the person who likes good dialogue but doesn't mind mediocre dialogue and has to encounter really awful dialogue to find it a reason to dislike a movie.

That said, every negative Rotten Tomatoes article I've seen has included a reference to bad dialogue, and even some of the positive Rotten Tomatoes articles have mentioned the dialogue as not being a selling point of the movie. So it would seem that I'm not alone here. Week two of the box office will eventually decide whether the dialogue is bad enough that it turns off the average viewer, or just the folks with extremely high dialogue standards.

(Again, note: "High standards" is not my attempt to be a snob. That doesn't make me better. I have very low standards for setting -- it has to suck high holy heck for me to even notice. Heck, I have pretty mediocre standards for plot, given how often my friends come up with plotholes in movies while I just go, "Uh, I liked the fight scene, and they had good one-liners.")

Those are my quotes as I see them. If I said something else somewhere else, please let me know.


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## Fast Learner (Mar 31, 2005)

Now I understand you, thanks. I definitely read it differently.

The dialogue is very film noir, when there is dialogue. That is, taunting, sexy, descriptive of emotions (rather than the actors portraying them), and very to-the-point. In that last sense, it is also very much like a comic book/graphic novel, with the images telling most of the story and the words simply adding emphasis.

So I would absolutely agree that if enjoyment of a film hinges on good dialogue, this will not be the film for you. However, I think, however, that the vast bulk of the movie-going public doesn't really mind poor dialogue or a general lack of it if other parts of the film are sufficiently entertaining. I suspect your personal standards don't match as much of the general public as you might think.

Me, I love great dialogue. Most of my favorite movies and nearly all of my favorite television has great dialogue. But I don't need it to enjoy a movie.


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## Mark (Apr 1, 2005)

Just so this doesn't get lost if the second thread gets closed -



			
				Krug said:
			
		

> http://www.filmrot.com/images/sincity-comparisons/sincity.html




Thanks to Krug!


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## takyris (Apr 1, 2005)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> Now I understand you, thanks. I definitely read it differently.




Cool. Really wasn't gunning for you in my post. Sorry about the confusion -- I posted late, and it was a bit of a stream-of-consciousness thing.



> The dialogue is very film noir, when there is dialogue. That is, taunting, sexy, descriptive of emotions (rather than the actors portraying them), and very to-the-point. In that last sense, it is also very much like a comic book/graphic novel, with the images telling most of the story and the words simply adding emphasis.




Interesting.  That does give me some hope, because that's the kind of thing that really does need to gradually reel you in.  If it maintains the voice throughout, that might end up qualifying as good dialogue. 



> So I would absolutely agree that if enjoyment of a film hinges on good dialogue, this will not be the film for you. However, I think, however, that the vast bulk of the movie-going public doesn't really mind poor dialogue or a general lack of it if other parts of the film are sufficiently entertaining. I suspect your personal standards don't match as much of the general public as you might think.




Nonrandom side comment: How well did Sky Captain do?  That's as close to Sin City as I can imagine -- not in terms of genre, and not simply because it's CG-background, but because it's the most recent attempt to do a faithful modern-day recreation of a story style from the past -- in Sky Captain's case, the pulp serials.  Was it a hit or a flop or something in-between?  My wife and I watched it in a hotel room on our anniversary (in Canada, where I was interviewing for the job I now have, having dragged her up there from California with our then-two-month-old son when it was -25 Celsius at the hottest point in the day -- dang, I've got a supportive wife), and we agreed that it had beautiful visuals but was hampered by trying to remain true to its roots when the average audience member no longer holds the same values as the audience member at a time when the movies that it was trying to recreate were popular.  (Uh, that is to say -- modern audiences aren't as much into useless women who trip during the chase scene and deliver inane airhead dialogue, and the average viewer would much rather have watched Sky Captain and Frankie than Sky Captain and Polly, because Frankie was completely anachronistic for a pulp serial but a whole lot more interesting for a modern viewer.)

If Sky Captain did well despite what I saw as its flaws, then you're definitely right -- I utterly overestimated the degree to which audiences are gonna be picky about dialogue and writing.  If Sky Captain bombed, then I dunno -- people might surprise you.  If Sky Captain did so-so, well, that just leaves room for everyone to be right. 



> Me, I love great dialogue. Most of my favorite movies and nearly all of my favorite television has great dialogue. But I don't need it to enjoy a movie.




Yeah, there's a definite difference between "Able to appreciate good dialogue" and "Require good dialogue", and I'm sorry if I implied otherwise.  I'm in the "require good dialogue" camp -- if it's got beautiful fight scenes and cinematography, I'll usually cringe my way through the bad dialogue while waiting for the fights to start up again (Hello, dubbed Jackie Chan movies!), but that's about the best I can do.


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## Quasqueton (Apr 2, 2005)

Saw the movie this afternoon. A good solid piece. Would see it again (and will if I can get the time). There were bits of dialogue that sounded exactly like something out of a comic/graphic novel (I haven't read Sin City), but that actually enhanced the feel of the movie. It felt more like watching a graphic novel than watching a movie. 

Holy crap, but Marv could take damage. And I loved Hartigen. And I loved Dwight. All three "heroes" were great.

I liked a lot. Gave it a 9.

Quasqueton


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## Pants (Apr 2, 2005)

Eh.

Just got back from seeing it. Fantastic visual styles, some pretty interesting characters and some genuinely funny moments.  Nothing really gruesome, since the whole movie is over-the-top blood being sprayed in every direction, which comes off being somewhat corny at times. Now, I loved the Kill Bill movies, since they really seemed to embrace the corny blood-squirting everywhere style, but... Sin City just didn't.

Also, maybe it's just a nod towards the movie's noir roots, but a lot of the acting and dialogue was... either bad or just forced. The main characters were good, but a lot of the side characters had some really corny acting and dialogue. Not being very knowledgeable about noir, I'm wondering if that's just a staple of the genre.

Also, I've never read a Frank Miller comic, if that has anything to do with it.

I give it a 5/10.


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## Jeremy (Apr 2, 2005)

If you liked From Dusk til Dawn and Kill Bill, you'll likely like this.  Tough guy comic book anti-hero's murder their way to the truth in visceral fashion.

We had an appreciative crowd tonight that laughed and enjoyed the spectacle of it and winced along with everyone else at some of the downright painful things they think of.  But through out, the flippant humor is all the more funny in contrast to the stylized gore.

Me personally, I loved it.


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## ValamirCleaver (Apr 2, 2005)

*It delivers the goods*

Without a dobt this is best and most faithful comic to movie adaption I've ever seen. The visual style of the graphic novels is nailed down perfectly. Almost an exact panel to panel translation. You have to be extremely familliar with the source material to note the differences. Other than some slight omissions the dialog is faithful to the original material. Excellent translation of the action.

If you a fan of the graphic novels or film noir, you NEED to see this as soon as possible. If your neither of the above then you should probably pass on this. Most people probably won't get the point. I am impatiently awaiting the sequel.

Tom


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## Gomez (Apr 2, 2005)

I saw it last night. First off I have never read the Sin City graphic novel and I liked _Kill Bill_ and _Dust til Dawn_. I am a fan of film noir as well. Ok here is my review. 


It stank like a week old corpse. 

The dialogue and acting was in general pretty bad. I know that it is based on a graphic novel but that does not give it license to have corny or just plain terrible dialogue and acting. There are several different stories in the film like Pulp Fiction. Of the three different stories, I liked the one with Dwight, a killer with a new face helping out a group of prostitutes from the mob as the best of the stories. I can see Tarantino's hand in this part of the movie. I liked the Dwight character a lot. He was cool, tough, and very noir anti-hero. The story with Marv, the huge thug out to find the killer of a hooker he slept is interesting for the first 5 minutes. After that that it gets pretty repetitive with his torturing and killing people to get information. Marv's love scene with Goldie reminded me of Frankenstein and Fay Wray making love on a red heart shaped bed. Very disturbing!   The film is a Sadist's wet dream. Lots of torture, heads in toilets, splattering blood, amputations, katana slicing action, hand axe action, breasts, cannibalism, and more torture. Oh and the torture is mostly done buy the _heroes_ of the film. I bet there isn't five minutes of the film without someone getting tortured in this entire film. This film brings blood and guts to a new level. Don't get me wrong I like violence in a film but this is violence just for the sake of violence. The one scene in which a one of the heroes pulling the family jewels off a bad guy with his bare hands and then pounding the guy’s head flat was pretty disturbing. 

Visually, I liked the use of the black and white with hints of color. Red on some woman's lips, blue on one ladies eyes, etc. The CGI could have been better. It reminded me of Rodriguez' _Spy Kids 3_ (a pretty terrible film in it's own right). One scene with a car driving up a winding road looked like a Matchbox car with two stiff Lego made people in it. 

I think the movie could have used some more humor in it. There is only one small part of the film in which anyone in the theater laughed at all. It was a pretty funny scene by the way. But it lasted all of 15 seconds. 

Also I noticed several things that didn't add up in the film. I will not go over them now, as I don't want to spoil the movie. But the writing could have been tighter. 

This film had a lot of promise and potential in my mind. But with three directors I think they messed it up with too many cooks in the kitchen. 



I gave the movie a 4.


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## Quasqueton (Apr 2, 2005)

> If you liked From Dusk til Dawn and Kill Bill, you'll likely like this.



I never saw DtD, and I didn't like KB, but I liked Sin City.



> If you a fan of the graphic novels or film noir, you NEED to see this as soon as possible.



Only read maybe one or two graphic novels, ever. Maybe seen one or two film noir. Still liked Sin City.

I think the audience is broader than y'all are giving it credit.

Quasqueton


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## king_ghidorah (Apr 2, 2005)

Saw it last night. Think it was a painstakingly faithful adaptation of Miller's work and, as such, had many of the same strengths and weaknesses. The whole thing is very stylized, not only visually, but on every level. It isn't noir, but a stylized exaggeration of noir and tough-guy pulp fiction. An absurdist exaggeration built around the style much more than the substance. An interesting experiment. When it works, it's about an excess of all elements, a stark black-and white depiction of the elements of noir and pulp. The men are all tougher than nails, the women all beautiful and dangerous, the villains are excessively evil, the violence numbingly over the top, and lawlessness is the only source of justice. Like the graphic novel, the sylization sometimes comes at the price of dehumanizing characters and situations, as well as stripping dialogue of verisimilitude. As with Miller's graphic novel, style is substance, and visual presentation and stylized tropes are more important than character and dialogue. It's an interesting film, and I liked it, but it isn't an attempt to do more than capture the Sin City stories on-screen.


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## Jeremy (Apr 2, 2005)

Gomez said:
			
		

> I think the movie could have used some more humor in it. There is only one small part of the film in which anyone in the theater laughed at all. It was a pretty funny scene by the way. But it lasted all of 15 seconds.




It's amazing how much the environment you are in can shape a perception of a movie. Finding Neverland had an interesting moment where the success of the play was determined by the presence of people who would understand it, and they in turn brought the rest of the audience into understanding.

Like I said in my post, I happened to have a great and very appreciative crowd. The one-liners all got laughs, the really painful moments all got winces, and some of the over-the-top violence or well deserved pay backs got laughs too. The pez-dispenser section was hilarious. Some of the applications of the hatchet were hilarious. Marv loving him some coats... Marv's reaction to getting a little electrocuted. Harrig--nevermind. 

Suffice it to say, depending on the audience you are with, particularly who you bring to the movie with you, the violence can either shock you and knock you out of the enjoyment, or can become amusing in it's impossibility all by itself and further heighten the humor in contrast.



			
				Gomez said:
			
		

> The one scene in which a one of the heroes pulling the family jewels off a bad guy with his bare hands and then pounding the guy’s head flat was pretty disturbing.




That's a perfect example right there.  Because we were enjoying the ride at that point, this made sense and got a bunch of laughs.  It was so richly deserved by the sick S-O-B, it was the only justice the hero was going to get both for what had come before and for what the hero knew would come after, and it was also release of anguish from the hideously unfair utter destruction of his life.  We also found it funny in a kind of, "The first time wasn't enough?  Try this on for size!" kinda way.  But it's remarkably easy to see how this scene would rattle people who weren't in the right mindset for it or worse, had been put in the exact wrong mindset for it by the preceding bits of the movie.

Can you imagine if they just put that in trailer?  The movie would be blamed for everything from serial killers to school shootings for the next 30 years.

Kill Bill did the same thing to some people, they either went with people they didn't want to appear low-brow in front of, or sat in a theatre that was disgusted by what they saw, and had a miserable time of it. That time I was fortunate again, you would have thought the audience was watching Kung Fu Hustle. Talk about hit or miss. 

Sorry you didn't get to enjoy the flick.


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## Tetsubo (Apr 2, 2005)

I would have given it a 9.5 if that had been anoption.


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## Fast Learner (Apr 2, 2005)

There was lots of laughter throughout in my screening, too, and plenty of empathetic wincing. And even group shock.

It defnitely is a matter of the particular audience.


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## ssampier (Apr 3, 2005)

*It was good, but very bloody--some SPOILERS*

I have never read of the comic books or knew anything about Sin City prior to seeing this movie. My interest in the movie was stylistic; I've loved the b&w interlaced with color. It reminded me of Memento when the memories where black and white, but the current day was color.

The acting was good, the dialogue was passable. I give that a 9. I loved the blending of color with black and white. It did remind me of an old comic book (even though it is set in the modern day). Visually a 9, since there were a few objects that I didn't see the need to color.

The plot and action I have to rate a 5. The movie was gory violent, I hadn't prepared myself for so much blood, much of which was colored. The excess of blown body parts seemed superfluous (



Spoiler



it seemed every five minutes someone was missing an finger, arm, or hand, especially the butch parole officer who lost her hand


. 

Overall a 7, not bad movie by any stretch, but I'm not sure one I'd like to own.

BTW, what character did Elijah Wood play? I might have missed him in the movie.


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## Jeremy (Apr 3, 2005)

Kevin.  The boy with the angelic voice who only talked to the cardinal.  Who had a few character flaws and a big wolfish dog.


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## Gadodel (Apr 3, 2005)

Like the comic books, its good.


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## Dark Jezter (Apr 3, 2005)

I loved it.  Gave it a 10, in fact. 

The movie even inspired me to create a hulking, hideously ugly half-orc NPC for my D&D campaign loosely based on Marv.


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## ssampier (Apr 3, 2005)

Jeremy said:
			
		

> Kevin.  The boy with the angelic voice who only talked to the cardinal.  Who had a few character flaws and a big wolfish dog.





oh, the maniac with the glasses, 



Spoiler



the one who chopped up hookers, ate them, and mounted them on his wall


. An interesting character, lightening quick with razor fingers; flat, though, with no real motivation. A definite deparature from playing Frodo Baggins.

On separate, but related note, we should start a thread the on possible D&D alignments of our three Sin City "heroes".


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## Dark Jezter (Apr 3, 2005)

ssampier said:
			
		

> On separate, but related note, we should start a thread the on possible D&D alignments of our three Sin City "heroes".




Just my own thoughts, but...

Marv: CN
Dwight: CG
Hartigan: LG

Don't want to threadjack, but those are just how I'd percieve the three of them.


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## David Howery (Apr 3, 2005)

one of the topics on MSN homepage was "Can the stellar cast save Sin City?"...  That doesn't sound promising...


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## Crothian (Apr 3, 2005)

I haven''t seen the movie but a friend posted this else where:

Violence Says
There are several websites that report on movies with a desire to inform Christian viewers whether a movie is appropriate or not for their religious sensibilities. I'm sure it's quite useful, but occasionally their cold and precise rundown of inappropriate elements can come across as comedy gold. I don't know any hardcore Christian who'd consider Sin City appropriate movie fare, but in case you did... please keep in mind the following:

Wanton Violence/Crime (W):
• multiple bullet impacts with blood, splatter and body part loss
• multiple instances of slicings, lacerations, incisions, impalements, avulsions and amputations
• cartoon images of firearm and blade assaults
• child abduction by a pedophile
• fist fighting
• assault with metal pipe
• gunfire cutting off forearm and to the male privates
• scene of multiple gunfire injuries, graphic
• scene of multiple gunfire killings, graphic
• threat to kill, repeatedly
• action violence, repeatedly
• planning murder, repeatedly
• assault on police, multiple, graphic
• assault to eyes
• firearm threat, repeatedly
• pistol whipping, repeatedly, graphic
• gunfire to privates
• dragging man by car with face against the pavement
• attempted murder by car, numerous times with sight of victim being thrown and bouncing each time
• attempted gunfire murder, repeatedly
• surviving impossible gunfire injuries that would result in death, repeatedly
• assault with sledge hammer, graphic
• heads of five disembodied women mounted as trophies, victims of cannibalism, repeatedly
• woman speaking of man who had eaten her hand while she watched
• assault with a rock
• assault with axe to the private parts
• many gunfire injuries of varying severity, repeatedly
• gore, repeatedly
• beating assault
• man hitting a woman, repeatedly
• double amputation
• dog eating stubs of amputations
• severed head, repeatedly, sometimes talking/moving
• man kissing severed head
• beating with baseball bats
• talk of eating women
• arm breaking assault
• electrocution execution
• many threats of many kinds
• illegal flight to avoid lawful capture
• firearms for offense, many
• killing/injuring with slicing weapons, repeatedly, some graphic
• beheading
• more amputation
• gushing/splattering of blood, repeatedly
• impalement injuries, repeatedly, some graphic
• bodies strewn about
• slicing up five bodies to be able to fit them into a car trunk
• semiautomatic pistol slide rack impaled into forehead
• dead bodies talking
• assault by strangulation of woman
• another severed head, repeatedly, sometimes talking
• knife impalements, repeatedly
• gunfire to kill, repeatedly
• biting gore
• brutality, repeatedly
• victim joking with spear and arrows protruding through him
• blood lust
• extortion with wife's life
• beating gore, repeatedly
• severed finger
• admission of contemplating suicide
• threat to kill with broken window pane glass
• manually ripping male private parts off a man

Impudence/Hate (I):
• 76 uses of the three/four letter word vocabulary
• lusting for murder
• wish to kill
• lies, repeatedly
• stuffing head in toilet with feces to intimidate, twice
• calling murder an art
• "Power comes by lying"
• sadism
• torture with whip as "foreplay"

Sexual Immorality (S):
• graphically descriptive talk of rape and murder of an 11 year old girl
• making out
• intercourse with nudity
• nudity, upper female, repeatedly
• nudity, female rear, repeatedly, some close-up
• sex talk
• thong nudity, repeatedly
• homosexual reference
• ghosting of female anatomy through thin clothing, repeatedly
• translucent nudity
• woman as toys
• sensuous dance, repeatedly
• dressing to maximize the female form and/or skin exposure, repeatedly
• nude woman with appendages hiding gender-specifics
• anatomical references, repeatedly
• man and woman in bed together
• cohabitation
• sexual threats
• camera angle to force viewer on private parts, repeatedly
• prostitutes, many and prostitute dress, repeatedly
• soliciting prostitution, repeatedly
• talk of showing privates to each other
• offer of sex, repeatedly
• inappropriate touch
• pedophile
• threat of sexual torture
• full male nudity with privates hidden by shadows, repeatedly, many angles
• sexual innuendo

Drugs/Alcohol (D):
• smoking, repeatedly
• drinking, repeatedly
• drunkenness, repeatedly
• bar, repeatedly
• booze, repeatedly
• abuse of prescription medication

Offense to God (O):
• "Goldy [a prostitute] worked the clergy"
• speaking of eating not only flesh but souls as well
• name calling with "fool" [Matt. 5:22]
• eight uses of God's name in vain with the four letter expletive and six without

Murder/Suicide (M):
• gunfire murder, at least 13 individual plus a multiple, graphic
• axe to forehead murder, graphic
• neck twist murder
• beating murder, at least two, graphic
• squeezing head murder
• blade murders, at least six, graphic
• arrow murder, at least three, graphic
• murder by slicing off top of head, graphic
• gunfire suicide, graphic


All in just 2 hours 6 minutes.


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## Fast Learner (Apr 3, 2005)

No kidding, how can you possibly pass that up?

(Ok, the pedophilia was really awful, as were some other bits, but otherwise I enjoyed all of that, even if I was squicked out by it. That's the kind of film that it is.)


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## Tetsubo (Apr 3, 2005)

Jeremy said:
			
		

> Kevin.  The boy with the angelic voice who only talked to the cardinal.  Who had a few character flaws and a big wolfish dog.




Jeremy - That was a beautiful act of understatement.


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## The_lurkeR (Apr 3, 2005)

Saw it yesterday... meh...

I gave it a generous 6.

My take on it has already been summed up pretty well by Takyris, Pants, and Gomez.

(For reference, I read the original Sin City comic when it came out, but not the others. Also I loved Kill Bill.)


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## Trainz (Apr 3, 2005)

Crothian said:
			
		

> • cohabitation




Oh, the humanity.


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## RangerWickett (Apr 3, 2005)

The trailers don't hype it accurately.  They make it look like a Tarantino film, which it ain't.

I gave it a 6.  I generally love Roderiguez flicks, and I usually like Frank Miller comics (never read Sin City before, though).  But it must be something about the more visceral nature of cinema that made me cringe at this movie.  It was the same as when I first saw Kill Bill.  Now I love Kill Bill, but at my first viewing I found that the violence unsettled me, rather than entertained me.  I felt the same for Sin City.

I disliked the Dwight story, except for moments with Benicio DelTorro.  It could've been good, but the whole 'Valkyrie' thing grated on me; aside from that woman, Dwight seemed to be a good guy who wanted to stop people from getting hurt.  But then he fawns over this woman who's pretty much just as bad as the 'villains.'  And the prostitutes never got their come-uppance for killing a cop in cold blood.  The other two storylines were kinda bad guys stopping worse guys, but Dwight's story was a guy choosing to work with the sexier of two groups of bad guys.  I didn't like it.

The movie had some elements that I disliked, but it was ballsy enough that I enjoyed it for its style.


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## KenM (Apr 3, 2005)

Endur said:
			
		

> I hope they didn't use comic panels in this movie.  Thats been done many times and its always been a failure.
> 
> The Hulk tried that a year or two ago, and we know what happened.





IMO the reason The Hulk did not do good was not because of that, but beacuse of the slow pace of the movie. The really good action stuff does not start until almost halfway though, and the poodle fight and the fight at the end was shoot to dark, hard to tell what was going on.  END OF HIJACK.

   Saw Sin City today, I liked it. I thought it was enjoyible if you liked the genre, very gory though. Not spetacular, but very good, IMO.


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## king_ghidorah (Apr 3, 2005)

RangerWickett said:
			
		

> It could've been good, but the whole 'Valkyrie' thing grated on me; aside from that woman, Dwight seemed to be a good guy who wanted to stop people from getting hurt.  But then he fawns over this woman who's pretty much just as bad as the 'villains.'  And the prostitutes never got their come-uppance for killing a cop in cold blood.  The other two storylines were kinda bad guys stopping worse guys, but Dwight's story was a guy choosing to work with the sexier of two groups of bad guys.




Dwight? The self-admitted murderer avoiding the cops with plastic surgery? The guy who was hunting a group of thugs with the intent of killing them before the women of Old Town got to them first? That's the good guy choosing to work with the sexier of two groups of bad guys? The only glimmers of good in him are his loyalty and his desire to give an unknown cop a break on the off chance he was a good cop. But he clearly had no hesitation about killing openly frequently, and for little reason, both in the comic and in the book. He just had a comic book mobster's code of ethics.

And as for killing a cop in cold blood, the impression I get regarding Jack is that he is a psychotic, woman-beating thug who planned on gang-raping a prostitute. He is not an innocent by far.

The only characters who seem at all like clear-cut good guys in Sin City are Hartigan and Nancy. Everybody else is a matter of sympathetic or unsympathetic crooks and scumbags. And I think that's pretty much the point.


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## Kelleris (Apr 3, 2005)

king_ghidorah said:
			
		

> Dwight? The self-admitted murderer avoiding the cops with plastic surgery? The guy who was hunting a group of thugs with the intent of killing them before the women of Old Town got to them first? That's the good guy choosing to work with the sexier of two groups of bad guys? The only glimmers of good in him are his loyalty and his desire to give an unknown cop a break on the off chance he was a good cop.




Actually, Dwight's stated purpose in going after Jack was to keep him from hurting anyone, not to kill him.  And he tried to keep the schmuck from killing himself during Jack's "fight" with Miho, not once but several times warning him of some danger.  He would probably have intervened before Miho attacked if he could have, and told, uhm, Rosario Dawson, what's her character's name...?  Anyway, told them not to be too hasty killing the cop and his posse.

The plastic surgery thing is morally questionable, but well within genre "good guy" status - he was manipulated by a wicked dame into killing her husband.  Apparently the Old Town prostitutes were the ones who helped him beat the rap, which is why he seems bizarrely loyal to them.

This info is from a website I dug up after seeing the movie.  The Champions character sheet for Dwight on that page had him with the psychological disadvantage "sex makes him stupid", so that explains some of the other stuff.

Of course, he's still not a clear-cut good guy, like Hartigan, but that's kinda the point.  In fact, I spent most of the Yellow Bastard arc wondering how on earth such a morally strong person could exist in a place as corrupt and, well, _evil_ as Sin/Basin City.

Oh, and the he didn't shoot first in the whole episode with the IRA mercs.  They dacked him with a sniper rifle before he even saw them.  The "fight" with the mob guys is less clear-cut, but still easily within the range of this genre's heroes.

That said, I didn't like the Dwight episode much either.  Too little set-up to do what they did with the character and the Rosario Dawson prostitute just irked me.


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## orbitalfreak (Apr 4, 2005)

I gave it a 5/10.

I'm not really sure if I liked this movie or not; I'm coming away from the theatre with mixed feelings.  I found lots of the film very enjoyable, but other parts had me feeling very "meh" about the whole thing.  I'm not regretting having seen it, but I do wish I'd seen it at matinee prices.

Stylistically, the movie was amazing.  A perfect capture of over-the-top film noir.  I've not read the graphic novels for this, but it was still obvious that the movies pulled from that a lot for visual impact.  The effects used to "comic-book-i-fy" the film were beautiful.  The cinematography, like that of Sky Captain, was superb.

I'm a bit prudish when it comes to sex, nudity, and excessive violence in film.  I was a bit uncomfortable with it at first, but fell into liking it as the film progressed.  It just seemed to fit.  Except Jessica Alba staying clothed.  I could have done without that.

Sometimes, though, things just didn't feel right.  The guy talking with the arrow sticking out of him was really jarring, pacing-wise.  Here we have a dark, gritty movie, suddenly interjected with slapstick humor better found in Warner Brothers cartoons.  Hilarious, but it just didn't work for me.

I also didn't like the three separate storyline format of the film.  It made things hard to follow occasionally, especially dealing with character overload.  Sometimes, the over-the-top violence went too over-the-top.  I understand that that was how the film was made to be, and mostly I enjoyed it.  It just seemed to go a little too far in some places, beyond what it should have in order to feel right.  The blasting off of the arm, the stump left after cannibalization, and the weird way the cops helmet split after the axe hit, they all seemed... off... to me.

Elijah Wood's character, Kevin, was very flat.  No motivation for what he was doing, no development of the character.  He was just "Bad Guy #3" in my eyes, and I really didn't care about him (even anti-caring, since he was bad).

Quite a few great things about the movie, but enough of it had me thinking "They could have done that differently," and an overall feeling of "Great looking (including stylized dialogue), but not really memorable as far as story is concerned."  Again, 5/10.


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Apr 4, 2005)

And I'll jump in here and give this thing a 10. I loved everything about this movie. Marv had the best story, of course, but I enjoyed all of them and had no trouble at all following all of the characters. I loved the narration through the entire thing, though it wasn't even really narration as the characters were literally speaking it half the time. 

The black and white just made it even better, especially the stark white of the blood, which was probably more jarring than when it was a deep red. And I don't care that Elijah Wood's character had no development...he had what he needed. Creepiness. And damn was he creepy.


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## Mark (Apr 4, 2005)

With only one vote below a "5" and the vast majority at seven or better, I'd have to guess that most people who saw it and voted found this to be worth thier time and money.  I think I will have to put this on the short list of flicks to see.  Thanks!


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## Wormwood (Apr 4, 2005)

I don;t know why I failed to enjoy this film.

I really loved the comics---I own the entire series and I've enjoyed them for years.

But seeing them brought to life on the big screen left me cringing uncomfortably in my seat a couple of times.

I guess I'm willing to accept certain comic-book conventions when they are in print, but I don;t find them so effective on film. The same dialogue that was evocative in the comic books sounded terrible when delivered by an actor. 

Sorry, but I gave it a 3 on substance and 8 on style, with a one-point deduction for being too long by 20 minutes.


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## MacMathan (Apr 4, 2005)

It was everything the comics were when I first saw them. I give it a 9. If you go in expecting anything but Miller's exxagerated version of pulp/noir then you will be disappointed, but then again if thats the case the movie was not made for you. 

I also respect Rodriguez for dropping out of the Directors Guild and losing a large studio movie because of it, because he wanted Frank Miller to have a Co-Directing credit.


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## derelictjay (Apr 4, 2005)

I loved it, gave it a 9. I've glanced at Frank Miller's Sin City graphic novels before, but never read them.


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## Truth Seeker (Apr 4, 2005)

It will get a* 10* from me...everything was delivered, as much as can be, from the comic book.

And my friend who saw the film with me, had to catch himself, after seeing....all the...well...as all the previous posts, points out the mentioned scenes.

Got my attention.


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## Agamon (Apr 4, 2005)

I gave it an 8.  It was everything I expected it to be, and I wasn't disappointed by that.  The pace was decent, the stories were engaging.  The literal translation of the comic made the diaglogue a bit corny, but it seemed to fit the movie alright.  I'd watch it again once it hits the movie channels.


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## reapersaurus (Apr 4, 2005)

I liked Sin City better than Kill Bill 1, and quite a bit better than Kill Bill 2.
A 9 from me, and I didn't read the novels, but have known of them.


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## Hand of Evil (Apr 4, 2005)

From me a 7, while I thought it was a very good movie, my problem is that Dwight should have been played by Bruce Cambell.


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## Truth Seeker (Apr 4, 2005)

Ankh-Morpork Guard said:
			
		

> And I'll jump in here and give this thing a 10. I loved everything about this movie. Marv had the best story, of course, but I enjoyed all of them and had no trouble at all following all of the characters. I loved the narration through the entire thing, though it wasn't even really narration as the characters were literally speaking it half the time.
> 
> The black and white just made it even better, especially the stark white of the blood, which was probably more jarring than when it was a deep red. And I don't care that Elijah Wood's character had no development...he had what he needed. Creepiness. And damn was he creepy.




Mercy, when I realize it was him as the 'clawed' killer...I was like. oh *bleep, bleep*, he is kicking *bleep, bleep* Rourke's character behind. That was enough development for me!!! 

And oh, wasn't it fun to see *Frank Miller*, take a bullet in the film, as the priest of confession. I shouted out, "You Bastards!!, You just shot Frank Miller!!!"  *figurally speaking for the movie, not in real life*


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## Henry (Apr 4, 2005)

I THOUGHT that priest looked familiar!!!

I gave the movie a 9: Not for plot points or any other logical reason, but because several of the action sequences were "jarring" for me - in particular, the Looooong jumps of Marv and Dwight, and Marv smashing through a car windshield at high speed. I can accept physcially impossible things, but they went just a weeeee bit over my threshold.

I loved the stories, having never read Sin City, and found them artfully done. Despite he was as cold blooded as they come, I just couldn't help LIKING Marv. Rourke did a fantastic job playing him, whether he was killing someone in cold blood, or just beating the heck out of them. I could sympathize with him the most, out of any of the characters.


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## The Serge (Apr 4, 2005)

Heh heh heh...  This was great stuff.

9.


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## Jeremy (Apr 4, 2005)

Tetsubo said:
			
		

> Jeremy - That was a beautiful act of understatement.




Hehehe...  Thanks.  I had fun with it.


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## ragboy (Apr 4, 2005)

Miller's Batman and Daredevil were 100 times better than Sin City (comic
form). Every Sin City story's the same:

1) Hard-nosed ex-con protagonist that's also a homicidal maniac (check)
2) Effete serial criminal that's emasculated by a hooker.
(rapist/killer/cannibal preferred. Double Plus: If the criminal actually
looks like Frank Miller)(check).
3) Hooker. (preferrably dead, disfigured, and raped (check)

1 tracks down 2 in order to exact bloody revenge for the
rape/dismemberment/death of 3.

Rinse. Repeat.

Cinemotagraphy was great. Marv's story was epic. The rest was forgettable.

Here's my question after seeing the movie:

If the hookers in old town have cut a deal with the dirty cops to keep the
mob, drugs, pimps and cops out of Old Town, why are they still hookers?
Can't they go into like flower-pressing businesses and open ice cream
shops, engage in multi-level marketing schemes and whatnot?


----------



## Capellan (Apr 5, 2005)

9.  Everything except Jessica Alba (voluptuous, but vapid) was great.


----------



## haiiro (Apr 5, 2005)

I started reading the comics 10 years ago, and I love them. That said, I think they did a nearly perfect job bringing Sin City to the screen -- it was fantastic.


----------



## Desdichado (Apr 5, 2005)

Capellan said:
			
		

> 9.  Everything except Jessica Alba (voluptuous, but vapid) was great.



I was planning on seeing it just for Jessica Alba; she is teh h4wtn3ss.

Well, that's not true; I'd want to see it anyway.  But Alba is a hottie alright.

Then again, so is Alexis Bledel, although I feel kind dirty calling her a hottie considering how young she is.  Then again again, I don't know how young she is, but she _looks_ like she can't be much over 20.


----------



## Tarrasque Wrangler (Apr 5, 2005)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Then again, so is Alexis Bledel, although I feel kind dirty calling her a hottie considering how young she is. Then again again, I don't know how young she is, but she _looks_ like she can't be much over 20.




She's 23.  Practically an antique .


----------



## Kelleris (Apr 5, 2005)

ragboy said:
			
		

> Miller's Batman and Daredevil were 100 times better than Sin City (comic
> form). Every Sin City story's the same:
> 
> 1) Hard-nosed ex-con protagonist that's also a homicidal maniac (check)
> ...




You do realize that only one arc of _Sin City_ follows that pattern, right?  They all involved prostitutes or strippers, but that does not a repetitive plot make.  Can't speak much for the other Sin City graphic novel arcs, but they're pretty well-differentiated from what I have seen.


----------



## megamania (Apr 5, 2005)

I have not seen it yet but really want to.  I believe it will have a following like the Crow series.


----------



## Teflon Billy (Apr 5, 2005)

10/10

I wish I could give it a higher rating.

I think it might be the best movie I've ever seen.


----------



## Desdichado (Apr 5, 2005)

Tarrasque Wrangler said:
			
		

> She's 23.  Practically an antique .



Yeah, I looked her up on imdb after that -- not only is she 23 or so, she's half Mexican half Argentine (although with that last name, her father was probably German-argentine) and although she's a native Houstoner, her native language is Spanish.

I like her even more, as a Texas native who lived two years in Argentina who speaks (albeit very rustily) Spanish too...


----------



## Umbran (Apr 5, 2005)

Meh.  Not so good, imho.  It washed over my graphic violence threshhold - I spent more time wondering who they bribed to keep it under an NC-17 rating than I did appreciating any of the actors' performances.  And that's not good.


----------



## Quasqueton (Apr 5, 2005)

> Violence Says
> There are several websites that report on movies with a desire to inform Christian viewers whether a movie is appropriate or not for their religious sensibilities. I'm sure it's quite useful, but occasionally their cold and precise rundown of inappropriate elements can come across as comedy gold. I don't know any hardcore Christian who'd consider Sin City appropriate movie fare, but in case you did... please keep in mind the following:



What I find most amazing is that someone had to sit there and note all this. That is a long list, and pretty specific. And was it a person whose sensibilities would be disturbed who took these notes?

Another thing that cracked me up:

There is one point in the movie where Marv hits and knocks down/out a wolf. Just a punch. He even is gentle and apologetic to the wolf. Then at the end of the movie, in the credits, there is a note that the ASPCA monitored the taping of this movie and they approve that no animal was harmed. There is no note that any of the hundred acts of violence against *humans* did not result in harm to a person. Funny as hell.

Quasqueton


----------



## Arnwyn (Apr 5, 2005)

A solid 7, for me. I thought it was pretty interesting and unique, what with techniques they used to transfer a comic book to film. So definitely a decent movie, I thought. (Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the source material.)


----------



## Henry (Apr 5, 2005)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> There is one point in the movie where Marv hits and knocks down/out a wolf. Just a punch. He even is gentle and apologetic to the wolf. Then at the end of the movie, in the credits, there is a note that the ASPCA monitored the taping of this movie and they approve that no animal was harmed. There is no note that any of the hundred acts of violence against *humans* did not result in harm to a person. Funny as hell.
> 
> Quasqueton




Probably because they really COULDN'T make that statement, because in every movie where there's stunts, done by live actors, someone's getting a chipped tooth, a fractured finger, a broken nose, etc. Insurance policies cover that, but the actors can contractually enter into it. 

When I saw the wolf, out of the damned blue, I was watching this with my wife, and thought, "Oh, heck, he's going to do something to the wolf, isn't he?" and half expecting my wife to storm out of the theater - she can't STAND even simulated violence to animals. (She'll never watch Old Yeller or K-9.) But Marv handled it in such a way that she approved.  Then again, one doesn't go to a movie like Sin City and not expect blood and gore and bloodthirsty mayhem on humans.


----------



## ShinHakkaider (Apr 5, 2005)

Saw this movie yesterday and so far it's my favorite movie adaptation of a comic book.
I'm a little confused about people complaining about the level of violence in this movie. Even if youre not familiar with the source material, its rated R. It even tells you in the rating WHY it's rated R. There are glimpses of Guns and swords in the trailer you have to assume that they get used. The reason that SIN CITY escaped an NC-17 rating probably has nothing to do with bribes (that's Lucas' and Speilberg's thing) and everything to with the fact that almost none of the blood depicted in the movie was RED. Most of it was either white or yellow, for some reason the MPAA has no problem with something being bloody if the blood is not in color. It's why KILL BILL 's sequence in the House of the Blue Leaves was allowed for the most part to remain intact ( and the sequence was actually written that way in the script). 

You want an example of NC-17 level violence that was allowed to pass? SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. 
I'm sorry but I've said this before, there's no way that's an R movie. It's not just the violence it's the pure intensity of it.

anyway 8.5 and definitley RR's best film to date.


----------



## WayneLigon (Apr 5, 2005)

I was very pleased by the movie. Excellent casting, cinematography...everything. With all the cool stuff coming out this year I doubt it'll wind up being my favorite for this entire year but it is so far.


----------



## Umbran (Apr 5, 2005)

Henry said:
			
		

> Then again, one doesn't go to a movie like Sin City and not expect blood and gore and bloodthirsty mayhem on humans.




You are very, very wrong here, Henry.  Don't assume everyone has the same expectations.

I went with a bunch of people this weekend.  Of the 7 people in the group, only two had ever read the comic.  And only two (not the same pair) were not surprised at the level of violence.

I hadn't read much about the movie.  The TV ads I saw did not play up that it was violent.  All most of us knew was that it was a movie based upon a comic book.  So, we had no real indication of the high-violence level.


----------



## Henry (Apr 5, 2005)

I dunno - I may have had unrealistic expectations, because i saw at least two reviews the day before and the day of, I saw the previews months before on E! entertainment  network, and an interview or two with a couple of the actors, and all of the sources I saw said to expect high violence. One even likened it to Once upon a Time in Mexico (not far off). That, and the name, seemed to scream violent to me, if not very violent.

All said, it still wasn't as violent to me as Kill Bill, because the blood was often played down by the gray-tones, whereas in KB everything was 3D-Super-Real-oVision.


----------



## Pielorinho (Apr 5, 2005)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> There is one point in the movie where Marv hits and knocks down/out a wolf. Just a punch. He even is gentle and apologetic to the wolf. Then at the end of the movie, in the credits, there is a note that the ASPCA monitored the taping of this movie and they approve that no animal was harmed. There is no note that any of the hundred acts of violence against *humans* did not result in harm to a person. Funny as hell.




To build on what Henry said, from the perspective of someone in the animal welfare biz:
1) The notice was almost certainly that the American Humane Association monitored the taping; the ASPCA is a primarily New-York-based organization, and it's the AHA that does movie monitoring.
2) The human actors all choose to be in the picture, and get paid handsomely for their work.  The animals don't make the same choice.
3) In the bad old days before the AHA imprimatur became standard, directors would routinely kill animals during the filming of a movie for dramatic purposes--the classic example being spaghetti Westerns in which horses would be run at a gallop into a tripwire, causing them to fall at full speed and break many bones.  They'd get shot once the scene was filmed.  Human stuntsmen were never subjected to this kind of rigor.

For more information about AHA's process, check out http://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pa_film.

As for _Sin City_, I neither liked nor disliked it as much as I expected.  It was well done, and I'm still thinking about the movie several days after having seen it, but it didn't blow me away.  I've never read the graphic novel, but I'm a big fan of film noir (especially _The Maltese Falcon_ and _The Big Sleep_, two of my all-time favorite movies).  This had the look and the feel of film noir, but the dialogue just didn't sparkle as much as I'd hoped it would.

Daniel


----------



## Henry (Apr 5, 2005)

Pielorhino said:
			
		

> This had the look and the feel of film noir, but the dialogue just didn't sparkle as much as I'd hoped it would.



I saw in an E! Interview with Robert Rodriguez that the reason he liked the dialogue of the Sin City strips was that, like Film Noir was shocking to the audience of the 1930's and 1940's, presenting an image of life that was not normally seen in movies, Sin City did the same sort of shock for audiences of the 1990's and now the 2000's. It just seems to take more to shock an audience now.


----------



## ragboy (Apr 5, 2005)

Henry said:
			
		

> It just seems to take more to shock an audience now.




It didn't shock me so much as make me a little sad that such an innovative artistic approach (comic and movie) was tied to such crap stories. There's so much potential to tell some truly amazing stories with Miller's artistic style... anyway. I'm probably reading too much into it. It's a comic book movie after all. All the lines are heavily drawn...


----------



## Pielorinho (Apr 5, 2005)

Henry said:
			
		

> I saw in an E! Interview with Robert Rodriguez that the reason he liked the dialogue of the Sin City strips was that, like Film Noir was shocking to the audience of the 1930's and 1940's, presenting an image of life that was not normally seen in movies, Sin City did the same sort of shock for audiences of the 1990's and now the 2000's. It just seems to take more to shock an audience now.




That may be, but I wasn't really shocked by the dialogue; in fact, when I noticed it, I liked it.  Dialogue in _The Maltese Falcon_, on the other hand, had me laughing with delight the first time I saw the movie:  it was just so snappy, so smart, so sparkling.  I don't much care for the _Maltese Falcon_ storyline, and in fact barely remember it (or that of _The Big Sleep_)_, _but the dialogue rocked.

I think maybe it's that _Sin City _has got more monologue and less dialogue.  Lots of voiceovers, lots of character speeches to one another; and these are pretty well done ("I took away his weapon.  Both of them.")  But when characters engage in battles of wits, there's precious little wit flying back and forth.  And I missed the dangerous banter, which is one of my favorite aspects of film noir.

Daniel


----------



## Jeremy (Apr 5, 2005)

I think that's another sign of how literally they put the comic book into the movie, Daniel.  I don't know if you followed Krug's link to comic/movie comparisons for this movie, but it's so exacting that I wouldn't be surprised if the internal monologues were straight out of the comic.

And the internal monologues are normally heaviest when walking somewhere, driving somewhere, or otherwise in between scenes where in a movie you have tons of available dead air.  Most comic book quips and insults are handed out in the comic book speed-talking bullet-time of a few missed punches.  And just like Spiderman, those will never transfer to the screen.

Had it been based on a noir play or some such that was always intended as spoken art, I believe you would have had more of what you were seeking, but they treated this like a tribute to the graphic novels for better or worse and that's one of the detractions/bonuses (depending on your point of view) that comes up when you do the conversion with the ridiculous level of detail that they did.

I sometimes felt as if the comics had been printed on transparencies and used as the film in the projector.  But again, I loved the movie so I'm biased.


----------



## theburningman (Apr 5, 2005)

I gave the movie a 6.


I gave Carla Gugino a 10.


----------



## Pielorinho (Apr 5, 2005)

Jeremy said:
			
		

> I think that's another sign of how literally they put the comic book into the movie, Daniel. I don't know if you followed Krug's link to comic/movie comparisons for this movie, but it's so exacting that I wouldn't be surprised if the internal monologues were straight out of the comic.



Oh, I wouldn't be surprised, either--I've not read either Krug's link or the original graphic novel.  

And not to be crass, but those things don't really matter to me.  I enjoyed _The Maltese Falcon_ and _The Big Sleep_ before I read the novels on which they're based (and in fact like both of them better than I like their respective novels, although I do think Raymond Chandler is a superior writer).  The things I like in a movie tend to be things that exist within the movie, not things that exist outside of the movie.  Whether the director was faithful to these graphic novels just doesn't affect my aesthetic judgment of the movie.  Does that make sense?

The lack of sparkly dialogue was a disappointment, true, based on my expectations about film noir in general, and to a degree it's therefore a disappointment drawn in relation to something outside of the film.  However, I'm not faulting the film for a lack of sparkly dialogue; I'm just saying that I was disappointed at its absence.

Daniel


----------



## Mark (Apr 6, 2005)

theburningman said:
			
		

> I gave Carla Gugino a 10.




Are you hoping for a "Spies Kids 4: Spy Mom"?


----------



## mojo1701 (Apr 6, 2005)

Mark said:
			
		

> Are you hoping for a "Spies Kids 4: Spy Mom"?




Spy MILF (sorry, couldn't resist).


----------



## Umbran (Apr 6, 2005)

Henry said:
			
		

> That, and the name, seemed to scream violent to me, if not very violent.




Hm.  To me, "Sin City" evokes an image of illicit behavior, rather than violent behavior.  The Seven Deadlies are greed, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, pride, and anger.   While any of them might lead to violence, only one of them really makes one think that violence is imminent.

The dialog shocking?  As compared to dismemberment and bloody emasculation?  I found the movie's verbiage to be downright quaint and tame by comparison.


----------



## Mark (Apr 8, 2005)

Anyone know how much this is making compared to how much it cost to make?  It certainly seems like it will keep raking it in for a while, too.


----------



## Pielorinho (Apr 8, 2005)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/business

It cost $45 million to make; opening weekend it took in $29 million.  I don't know how good that is for an April release, but it doesn't sound like a flop, either.

Daniel


----------



## Viking Bastard (Apr 8, 2005)

According to Warren Ellis:


			
				Warren Ellis's Bad Signal mailing list said:
			
		

> So, according to what I read this
> morning, SIN CITY has opened at
> around $28 million, making it the
> #1 film in America this weekend.
> ...




.

As for the movie: I gave it a 9. I'd give it a 10, but I never give a 10. There's no 
perfect movie to give a 10 to or at least, until I find one I won't. 

But anyway, I loved it. The mood, the dialogue (GREAT dialogue! It wasn't smart or witty, but it did it's job: Gettin' the feel across, creating the world), the violence, 
the style. Perfect!

Not just a fun movie, but a great movie. A movie that made me go 'Whoah!'.

The last time that happened was, I dunno, Fellowship of the Ring. American Splendor 
_maybe_, but still not really. 

I may even go as far as calling it a... masterpiece. Maybe. I'll tell you in July (when 
the movie officially premiers here and I can see it a few times again).


----------



## Hand of Evil (Apr 8, 2005)

Mark said:
			
		

> Anyone know how much this is making compared to how much it cost to make?  It certainly seems like it will keep raking it in for a while, too.




I always use Box Office Mojo: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/


----------



## Dimwhit (Apr 8, 2005)

Teflon Billy said:
			
		

> 10/10
> 
> I wish I could give it a higher rating.
> 
> I think it might be the best movie I've ever seen.




I'm with you Billy. At the very least, I'd have to say it's the best movie adapted from a comic (of any sort) EVAR. I couldn't believe how amazing it was.


----------



## Tetsubo (Apr 8, 2005)

Dimwhit said:
			
		

> I'm with you Billy. At the very least, I'd have to say it's the best movie adapted from a comic (of any sort) EVAR. I couldn't believe how amazing it was.




There were moments that I thought the graphic novel had just come to life in my hands... truly a work of genius.


----------



## Hand of Evil (Apr 8, 2005)

Mark said:
			
		

> Anyone know how much this is making compared to how much it cost to make?  It certainly seems like it will keep raking it in for a while, too.




Here is the numbers....
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=sincity.htm


----------



## Mark (Apr 9, 2005)

Thanks for the links and the numbers.  Looks like it is going to do just fine.


----------



## BryonD (Apr 9, 2005)

Certainly the best comic style adaptation ever, and by a wide margin.
I really liked it at first.

But by the end I felt like they could have just about taken any 15 minutes and looped it 8 times to get nearly the same effect.  I really think you can get away with doing the same thing over and over in a monthly comic because of the time between fixes.  But cram a bunch of issues into 2 hours and the redundancy really jumps out.

7/10


----------



## barsoomcore (Apr 12, 2005)

I gave Sin City a 7 out of 10, which is pretty high for me.

It looked spectacular and included one stomp-down amazing performance (Mickey Rourke as Marv) and a number of really good performances (Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Rutger Hauer, Jaime King especially), and unfortunately a couple of limp, unprepossessing performances (Rosario Dawson and Jessica Alba).

It also had a little script trouble that I suspect comes from the translation of comic book to screen -- or at any rate highlights the differences between the two media.

Anyway, the Rosario Dawson/Jessica Alba problem was the most obvious one. And I'm a fan of Rosario -- she was GREAT in _Josie and the Pussycats_. She should have OWNED that screen everytime she appeared. But she didn't. Frankly, her whole army looked like a bunch of teenage girls trying desperately to look tough and sexy. And failing.

Except for Miho. Miho was great. But the rest of those women looked uncomfortable in their outfits (and maybe that's why Miho did better than the rest -- she was wearing a lot more) and unable to stand up to their leading men. Rosario was okay in close-ups, but in full-figure shots she wasn't electrifying the scene the way she ought to have been.

And Jessica Alba just can't act. She was okay as long as she didn't open her mouth, but every line that came out was flat and empty and unconvincing. Which is a real shame because it was a great part. I heard that when she was preparing for her "cowboy" dance Rodriguez refused to give her lessons, claiming that Salma Hayek hadn't needed any for HER performance in _From Dusk Till Dawn_.

Jessica, that sound you hear is your scrawny ass getting beaten by Salma Hayek.

(which I would pay to see, by the way. Never mind)

The script problem is a little more subtle, but I think it's what is keeping a number of people from being as enthusiastic about this film as they might otherwise be.

The script lacks suspense.

In film, suspense is a very specific thing, created by one particular technique -- by letting the audience know something the characters don't. Our heroine is rifling a hotel room. There is no suspense unless we see the guest returning to his room and the heroine doesn't know. If we don't know the guest is returning, we don't feel any suspense.

In a comic book, this principle doesn't hold. Comic books don't need to do this because they can work on the "page-turning" effect that books use -- where it's what you DON'T know (how it's going to turn out) that keeps you going. But a film doesn't have to keep you going -- it goes along without you turning the pages. What a film has to do, to be exciting, is to show you what's coming and then make you wait until the dire situation is resolved.

That's how tension is generated in film, and Rodriguez didn't generate much tension.

I'm pretty sure I'll go see it again. I liked it a lot, please keep in mind, and I suspect I'll like it even more when I can watch it on DVD, with each story as a coherent bit, not unecessarily jumbled together like they were.


----------



## takyris (Apr 12, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> It also had a little script trouble that I suspect comes from the translation of comic book to screen -- or at any rate highlights the differences between the two media.




That looks vaguely familiar...   Excellent later analysis re:suspense. That's not a way in which I've thought of differences between the media, but it completely makes sense.

Despite getting knocked out of the No. 1 spot by _Sahara_ (which seems to have surprised the heck out of everyone), it seems like _Sin City_ s going to make a nice little profit, though, so it appears to be a happy ending for all concerned.

Even Jessica Alba.


----------



## Rodrigo Istalindir (Apr 12, 2005)

I think it suffered because it was *too* faithful to the comic books.  It didn't work on a narrative level -- it was all visceral and visual.  Not that those are bad things, and it was a fun couple hours at the movie theater, but it wasn't the kind of movie that kept us sitting at a restaurant table for hours re-hashing it.

The bookend sequences with Josh Hartnett were out of place, and the attempt at intersecting the plotlines ala Pulp Fiction seemed half-hearted at best and gimmicky at worst.  It felt like watching a compilation movie like 'Twilight Zone' or something.  

Two stories instead of three, with more material about the city itself would have been better, I think.


----------



## Psychic Warrior (Apr 12, 2005)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Meh.  Not so good, imho.  It washed over my graphic violence threshhold - I spent more time wondering who they bribed to keep it under an NC-17 rating than I did appreciating any of the actors' performances.  And that's not good.




Probably they didn't have to bribe a single person.  Violence rarely gets ratings bumped to NC-17 in America.  Sex yes violence no.


----------



## Mark (Apr 12, 2005)

Psychic Warrior said:
			
		

> Sex yes violence no.




_You and your wacky slogans...  Though that one might catch on!_


----------



## barsoomcore (Apr 12, 2005)

takyris said:
			
		

> It appears to be a happy ending for all concerned.
> 
> Even Jessica Alba.



Heck, if she IS getting spanked by Salma Hayek, I say "ESPECIALLY Jessica Alba".


----------



## Hand of Evil (Apr 12, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Heck, if she IS getting spanked by Salma Hayek, I say "ESPECIALLY Jessica Alba".




 

She can't act but Jessica appears to be the 'hot' new female in Hollywood, two more movies this year, with one of those being Fantastic Four, move over Jennifer Garner.  I do not think this is a good thing.


----------



## Psychic Warrior (Apr 12, 2005)

Mark said:
			
		

> _You and your wacky slogans...  Though that one might catch on!_




Who wouldn't take sex over violence?  I mean  really...


----------



## mojo1701 (Apr 12, 2005)

Psychic Warrior said:
			
		

> Who wouldn't take sex over violence?  I mean  really...




And then there's people who will take both...


----------



## barsoomcore (Apr 12, 2005)

mojo1701 said:
			
		

> And then there's people who will take both...



Have I mentioned the alluring combination of Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba, and spanking?


----------



## Pielorinho (Apr 12, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> The script lacks suspense.
> 
> In film, suspense is a very specific thing, created by one particular technique -- by letting the audience know something the characters don't.




Hmm, so dramatic irony is the only source of suspense in films?  That's interesting, but I"m not sure it's true.

Though many people didn't find _Blair Witch_ to be remotely suspenseful, a lot of us did--and we didn't have any information beyond what the characters did in many scenes.  (Well, we knew the postscript, but the scenes would've been suspenseful without it).  In _The Vanishing_, we don't know until the end what's going on, but it's extremely suspenseful.  In _Das Boot_, the "ping" scenes on the submarine are all kinds of suspenseful, but we have no privileged information in them, I think.

It seems to me that a director can create suspense by putting characters in danger, having the characters know they're in danger, and delaying the onset of violence (or other unfortunate events).  

I agree that _Sin City_ wasn't very suspenseful, though:   I think it's because I didn't much empathize with anyone in it, so I didn't worry about whether they'd live or die.  Either way would be cool.

Daniel


----------



## Desdichado (Apr 12, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Jessica, that sound you hear is your scrawny ass getting beaten by Salma Hayek.
> 
> (which I would pay to see, by the way. Never mind)



*Damn* straight! 

Whether or not Jessica Alba can act, I haven't the foggiest idea, as I still haven't seen this movie, and I don't think I've seen anything else with her either.  But damn, she's hot.  You'd think she could dance, at least, though.  Wasn't that the whole point of _Honey_?  Not that I saw that either...


----------



## Hand of Evil (Apr 12, 2005)

mojo1701 said:
			
		

> And then there's people who will take both...



I think it was Sid Visious of the Sex Pistols that said "No violence in sex, try moving more" (msiquote).


----------



## barsoomcore (Apr 14, 2005)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> It seems to me that a director can create suspense by putting characters in danger, having the characters know they're in danger, and delaying the onset of violence (or other unfortunate events).



Yeah, fair enough. I have a tendency to overstate things.

I would have said, "I ALWAYS overstate things," but that would have been overstating things.



Actually, though, the idea comes from Hitchcock -- that's his analysis of suspense in cinema (that it depends on the audience knowing more than the characters).

But I think the key is really the passage of time. The writer of a book cannot control the passage of time for the reader -- what a writer needs to create are unanswered questions which keep the reader turning pages in order to acquire answers. The film director needs to create unresolved situations that they can then string out over the minutes of the film.

The two techniques overlap (you could consider an unresolved situation as an unanswered question) but I think there's a distinction buried in there somewhere, and I think it's THAT distinction (whatever it is), that _Sin City_ missed out on.

Basically, a writer needs to keep the pages turning. A director needs to keep the moments "suspended". Something like that.


----------



## barsoomcore (Apr 14, 2005)

Okay, try this on for size (if anyone is still listening to my Film Theory 101 geek ideas):

In written media, what the audience DOESN'T KNOW is what keeps them turning pages.

In cinema, what the audience ALREADY KNOWS is what keeps them in their seats.

I dunno if that works. But I'm throwing it out there. Any thoughts?


----------



## takyris (Apr 14, 2005)

Hmm. Not sure. I think they're both valid techniques, but I also think that you can twist around either to mean the other one.

For example: In the novel I just sent out, a major character gets run through by the bad guy with about three chapters to go. The chapter ends with the character looking up at the moon, trying to get up but with no strength left in his arms -- the usual "Oh, I've been run through" stuff.  My mom called me at this point and said, "You didn't really kill ___, did you? Because I'm worried about him. The chapter ended, and now we're with other people, and I'm concerned."  So that would be my mom (God love her, she reads anything I write), concerned because of something she doesn't know.

But then, a chapter and a half later, we're in another character's head, and ___ shows up and appears to be fine, and after a fight with bad guys, the other character says, "Hey, ___, it looks like you got cut, there," noticing a smear of blood.  And ___ says, "Just a scratch. Don't worry about it. In fact, forget you ever saw it at all," or words to that effect.  At which point my mom called me again, and this time, she was in suspense because of something that she DID know -- that this guy did NOT just get a scratch, that something had happened, and it was very very wrong that he was up and about and acting as though nothing had happened.  So that would be concern regarding something the reader knows that the character doesn't.

And then you've got movies -- heck, Hitchcock movies being a great example thereof -- in which the director builds suspense by giving us something misleading, something that the audience infers incorrectly and does not, in fact, know.  Like when an ominous-sounding conversation that we thought was related to a hunt for a murderer turns out to be two police officers playing chess over the radio or something. That's different from a legitimate suspense-build, because it's not actually due to something we know -- it's due to something that the director faked us out with. The end feeling is the same, but the source is different.

I mean, at a base level, suspense seems to come from the reader or audience being concerned that something bad is going to happen. That can be because the audience knows something the characters don't, because the audience doesn't know something, or because the director is messing around with the audience, but at the end, it seems to all break down to "We, the readers or viewers, are afraid that something bad is going to happen."

But a statement like that rarely generates much conversation.


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## Pielorinho (Apr 15, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Okay, try this on for size (if anyone is still listening to my Film Theory 101 geek ideas):
> 
> In written media, what the audience DOESN'T KNOW is what keeps them turning pages.
> 
> ...




It's interesting, but I'm still not sure I agree.  "The Cask of Amontillado" begins:



> THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
> It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile NOW was at the thought of his immolation.




From the beginning, we know that this poor fool is going to be having a very, very bad day.  It's what we know that keeps us in such suspense.  (Sure, we don't know the particulars, and you could say that it's this ignorance that keeps us reading).

Similarly, in the spectacular first novel _Secret History_, we find out in the first two paragraphs that the character Bunny is going to be murdered by his friends.  It's a terrifically suspenseful book, and a lot of the suspense is driven by this dramatic irony:  as Bunny is blithely shooting the bull with these people, we know that he's goin down.

Then there's movies like _The Vanishing_:  in the first few minutes, the guy's girlfriend disappears, and the rest of the movie is an exploration of what happens from that point on.  We never know anything more than what the protagonist knows:  while we've got a general guess as to what happened, so does the protagonist.

Or take--let's see, what's a good example?--okay, what about _The Game_?  It's been awhile since I've seen it, but as I recall, we're smack dab in the middle of the grotesque mindgame right alongside Michael Douglas.

I definitely think that both types of suspense-building are valid, and I agree that neither one plays much part in _Sin City_.  However, it seems to me that both types appear in books and in film.

Daniel


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## Pielorinho (Apr 15, 2005)

Incidentally, I keep referring to "the first few minutes" and "the first few paragraphs" not because I think these are the most important moments for building suspense, but because I don't feel bad about spoiling anything that happens on the first page or the first scene. I hate spoiling stuff further in.  



Spoiler



But Fortunato is toast.


 
Daniel


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