Buttercup and I watched this visual gem last evening and I found it disturbing and entertaining. There were 3 main plot lines: Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Mickey Rourke.
To my suprise I liked the MR plotline the best followed by BW and then CO.
All other contributions welcome. Let the love flow!
Bunny out
9 comments:
Sheriff: I loved the hell out of that film. I am a huge fan of the source material and to see someone finally work towards achieving the seemingly impossible feat of correctly translated a comic book to film was great.
I think that the order of quality was spot on. Rourke as Marv was absolute brilliant casting. He really chewed the scenery without swallowing and gave the perfect mixture of grizzled hardass and twisted sympathy.
Bruce Willis was inspired as Hartigan as well, they really gave him a fantastic world weariness and there was a relatively palpable sense of tragedy that surrounded him. While Jessica Alba was hot, I didn't think she did much to help bring Nancy's character to life other than being good at wearing chaps. The That Yellow Bastard storyline is one of my favorite Sin City Tales anyway, so seeing it handled so well in general was amazing.
The story The Big Fat Kill is good, but even in the book it doesn't feel like there's much weight to it. It's rendered accurately enough, and it's a fun ride, which I think works well when sandwiched between the black hole sensibilities of the other two pieces surrounding it. I like Benecio as Jack Rafferty, but I was a little annoyed with how he altered his voice for the character. I think Iron Jack's sleazy behavior says enough about him without having to resort to a hyperbolically slimy speech pattern.
Props also to the nearly completely nude Carla Gugino, as well as Jamie King. Yowza.
There are questions I have about how they are going to approach the sequel since they are doing "A Dame To Kill For" next. I don't know who's read the books, so if no one, I'll just keep mum about what I mean.
I concur the props with a "SHAZAM!!"
Busy as all kids... yo
Well spoken my friend....I have not read the books so your future concerns are yours alone.
Kern, as always, has set the bar very high friends of fino. Pithy, well written comments only need apply.
bunny out
Thanks Sheriff! I will say this: the aspect that will be challenging was subtly referred to by Dwight at one point in the film. I think it shot by most people who haven't read the books, but he talks about having a new face, something that is directly related to the second book in the Sin City series(the Big Fat Kill was book 3).
Also, if they choose to do A Dame To Kill For, everyone gets to find out what the hell happened to Manute's eye.
Hopefully that did not err on the side of spoiler-ish.
No stones thrown here. I will say that while it's not a good excuse, this is one of the cases where familiarity with the source material and/or the nature of the source material is key.
I hate to sound like a Judas to my comic book brethren, but I think in this instance there is a lot of truth to the fact that Sin City's execution is impressive mostly for its ability to faithfully translate its source material to the screen.
One of the biggest criticisms of Miller's comics is that they are nihlistic and hollow. This has a certain ring of truth to it, but I would argue that the world of Sin City in the books is an mutated noir with roots in Chandler and Jim Thompson perhaps, but with a decidedly visual emphasis. This isn't to say that the premises of the books are not fun at the core, but what Miller tries to accomplish in his comics isn't so much about the depth of the story; it's far more about mise-en-scene and controlled explosions of emotion and human impulse in a vacuum. In large part I think this is why it translated so well to the screen, and goes along with the general agreement of fans and non-fans alike that despite plot discrepancies, it is visually stunning and captures the book.
Simply put, it's my opinion that perhaps the standard of judgement for movies like Sin City(and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but that's another rant entirely) should be slightly adjusted to take into account the spirit of the source material rather than trying to view it as a soverign work.
Just my two cents.
I might actually recycle my comments on my blog and do an article on films that are more of an extension of their source material rather than films that stand alone. That might be cool.
I see your points. I think the only place we diverge slightly is where as you viewed the movie as being bound to the mistakes of the books, I don't neccesarily view the plot being secondary as a mistake so much as I think that Miller's concepts are far less to do with plot but more with atmosphere. This probably sounds like a copout to excuse the lack of plotting, but I don't believe that's the case. As an avid fan of the books, I personally just think that Sin City(the books) were always more about using noir plots as a loose guide to immerse people in an atmosphere rather than a story per se. Generally, I know that noir is about story to be sure, but a good deal of noir is atmosphere.
Ultimately, I agree that in most cases it's a shortcoming of a director to make a work that cannot stand without reference to its source material.
But I think Miller's intent with this piece was indeed to set out to replicate his books as closely as possible. His take, I think was that he was making a movie for the people who adore the books and his original intent, which admittedly is not well thought out storytelling, but almost the sole use of powerful visuals to encapsulating the reader/viewer in a dark, gritty world that they'd never experience otherwise.
Deit, that's a very good way to put it. Bravo!
The above compliment was mostly in regard to the Hopper/Pollack comparison. I still think that portraying an atmosphere is a little more that just pretty pictures, but I the thing I agree with ultimately is that as a work of art Sin City is very successful, and it doesn't do its job as a movie.
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