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

I liked the first Burton Batman OK, just for Jack and the production design, and am pretty sure I'd hate Sin City since ponderous graphic novels are the Dungeons & Dragons of our time.

Beatty's Dick Tracy was nice too.

That's why most film reviewers are utterly useless.

http://slate.com/id/2115999/

earlier in the review, the review sez :"And so it goes - pow, wham, splat."

which to me makes it sound like there is a lot of BLAM throughout the movie.

here are eight million stories in the naked city and almost as many crammed into "Sin City." Based on the comic book series of the same name by Frank Miller, who directed the film with Robert Rodriguez, this slavishly faithful screen adaptation tracks the ups and downs (mostly downs) of tough guys and dolls recycled from the lower depths and bottom shelves of pulp fiction. Instead of Raymond Chandler, though, with his weary allusions to Shakespeare and Keats, these hard-boiled tales owe a debt to the American primitivism of Mickey Spillane and comic book legends like William Gaines.

Set in a nowhere metropolis, the film opens with a gaspingly beautiful image of a woman staring into the night. Dressed in a shimmering gown the color of newly spilled blood, she stands with her back to the camera, oblivious. That gives us time to register that this red is the only color in a landscape exclusively painted hot white, bottomless black and silvery gray. It also gives the narrator (Josh Hartnett) time to creep up on her. Soon, the man offers the woman a cigarette and takes something far more precious from her in return. With a few short sentences and an act of violence, the filmmakers telescope the death and desire to follow, as well as the underlying brutality of their world.

"Sin City" unfolds in a permanent midnight with only an intermittent splash of color to brighten the dark. In this shadowland, the men wear trench coats and chips on their shoulders, while the women wear next to nothing at all. Aesthetically speaking, the filmmakers have a thing for pneumatic breasts and bondage wear, and the women in "Sin City" are conceived along the same fetishistic lines as many comic strip heroines. Dressed in push-up bras and even a pair of chaps, they all look as if they could be on the stroll in Pigalle, including a parole officer, who likes to ramble around in thong panties and heels. It is a vision of women so comically retro you half expect the 1950's pinup Bettie Page to swing by for some fun.

Like "Pulp Fiction," which clearly influences its structure, "Sin City" turns on three tales lifted out of Mr. Miller's original. The first involves a detective with a bad ticker, Hartigan (Bruce Willis), who intersects with a sex fiend (Nick Stahl) and an 11-year-old (Makenzie Vega), who grows up to become an exotic dancer (Jessica Alba) with an undulating belly and a nice way with a lasso. Little girls apparently do not enjoy a whole lot of career choices in Sin City. Except for that parole officer (Carla Gugino) and a waitress (Brittany Murphy), all the other women in this burg are prostitutes, members of a snarling sisterhood bound together by greed, kink, self-interest and numerous lethal weapons.

That sisterhood features most heavily in the story hooked to a psychopath named Dwight (Clive Owen). Like the rest of the film's menagerie, Dwight is a conceit rather than a character, and would barely register save for the fact that Mr. Owen is easy on the eyes, whether jumping out of a window or locking lips with his own personal demon (Rosario Dawson). Dwight's story, a tale of jealousy and misidentification, finds him crossing paths with a thug, Jackie Boy (a barely recognizable, criminally uglified Benicio Del Toro), and not much more. Jackie Boy, whose moniker recalls that of Robert De Niro's doomed Johnny Boy in "Mean Streets," has the makings of a tragedy, but the filmmakers don't have the will. He just crashes and burns, sacrificed for the usual blood sport.

And so it goes - pow, wham, splat. The most developed story hinges on Marv, a slab of sub-humanity played by a thoroughly unrecognizable Mickey Rourke. With a face like roadkill and a pumped up body, Marv is at once the classic cartoon underdog and a pulp superman, a lonely guy who can take vengeance on the world by blowing like Krakatoa. (Needless to say, he is also a classic identification figure for the stereotypical comic book reader.) Like Hartigan and to an extent Dwight, Marv is also an avenger of women, a knight in shining black. Marv has a dream called Goldie (Jaime King), a stealthy enemy (Elijah Wood) and a taste for stomach-flipping violence. You may not look at your dog the same way after you watch Marv go about his gory work.

The scene with Marv and what turns out to be a hungry hound could have been published in William Gaines's E.C. horror comics. Originally published in 1950, these comics hit a postwar America with an understandably strong appetite for horror, and are filled with Grand Guignol laughs, distressed damsels and terrors bubbling under the surface. Like many comic book artists, Mr. Miller was influenced by E.C., but his voice and style are also steeped in the romantic fatalism of film noir. There is nothing urgent or remotely profound about "Sin City" and its pastiche of styles; here, the text is the subtext, and the horror is abstract, not rooted in the real. But Mr. Miller certainly knows how cool a guy looks, or thinks he does, walking its mean streets.

I bring up E.C. because "Sin City" has been made with such scrupulous care and obvious love for its genre influences that it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore. In recent years, Mr. Rodriguez has been a careless craftsman, but he went to great lengths to honor Mr. Miller's vision, even quitting the Directors Guild because it wouldn't allow the two men to share the directing credit. But in an effort to make a faithful adaptation, Mr. Rodriguez put his own movie sense on hold, not even bothering with a real script. He didn't just try to make his "Sin City" look like a graphic novel: he tried to replicate the private experience of reading one too, slowly turned page after slowly turned page. The problem is, this is his private experience, not ours.

The soporific vibe isn't helped by the fact that "Sin City" has the muffled, airless quality of some movies loaded with computer-generated imagery. The film feels as if it takes place under glass, which makes conceptual sense, since the characters don't bear any resemblance to actual life: they don't have hearts (or brains), so there's no reason they should have lungs or air to breathe. At the same time, Mr. Miller and Mr. Rodriguez's commitment to absolute unreality and the absence of the human factor mean it's hard to get pulled into the story on any level other than the visceral. When stuff goes blam, you jump like someone who's landed on a whoopee cushion. But then you just sit there, wrap yourself in the dark and try not to fall asleep.

(I hope the "almost equal to" symbol shows up correctly...)

Um. Is she perhaps unfamiliar with what Benicio Del Toro looks like?

Isn't most of the movie about fighting between the hookers and the druglords? Does this strike anyone as being akin to complaining that most of the women in "Sister Act" are nuns?

if she is trying to make this sound like a bad thing, she didn't do a very good job.

(In other words, read Dan's post.)

[xpost]

I think Mizz Gibbons, given her job, should be asking herself the Qs re: being a prostitute.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/01/review.sin.city/index.html

(CNN) -- "Sin City," adapted from three hardboiled comic books by the renowned graphic novelist Frank Miller, is without doubt the most visually stunning live action transfer of the comic book format to the big screen ever made.

The stark black and white images -- with beautifully calculated splashes of vivid color -- are shockingly faithful to Miller's lurid, ultra-violent, crime-riddled world. It's an alternative universe where almost everyone is a perpetrator, a victim or a witness.

Co-directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez -- with a special guest director stint by Quentin Tarantino -- the film was shot entirely against green screens using the latest in high-definition cameras. Rodriguez and Miller have lifted the comic-book panels from page to screen. The result is an eye-popping visceral feast.

The combination of these non-Hollywood mavericks also attracted a wide range of acting talent eager to populate this world of gun molls, prostitutes, crooked cops, serial killers and guns-for-hire. It's Mickey Spillane on steroids.

The film opens with a brief teaser featuring a doomed dame standing on a terrace high above the cold, teeming city. Her flaming red dress is in high contrast to the black and white world she inhabits. In a cameo role, Josh Hartnett enters the scene with the words, "She shivered in the wind like the last leaf on a dying tree." He then simultaneously kisses and kills her. The stage, and the tone, is set.

Then, like a smack in the face, the action charges into the first of three graphic novels, "That Yellow Bastard." This story is cut in two, thereby framing the film's beginning and conclusion. Featuring Bruce Willis as Hartigan, a good cop with a bad ticker, it's a tragic tale of the hunt for a raging pedophile named Roark Jr. (Nick Stahl). He's the son of a corrupt senator (Powers Boothe), a man who is determined to protect his offspring at all cost.

Toward the end of the movie -- when this storyline continues, the son morphs into an arch villain -- the Yellow Bastard -- allowing for one of the film's best uses of vibrant color. This vignette also features a sexually charged performance by Jessica Alba who plays Nancy, an erotic dancer who, as a child, was one of Roark's victims.

Mind-numbing repetition

The attention then switches to Miller's "The Hard Goodbye," starring an unrecognizable Mickey Rourke as a half-man, half-beast killing machine named Marv. He's seeking revenge for the murder of a hooker named Goldie (Jaime King) who showed him the only touch of kindness he ever received. The search leads to Kevin, a psycho-serial killer played by Elijah Wood in an obvious move to make everyone forget all about Frodo. This story is the core of "Sin City," and it's the best of the three episodes.

The final vignette -- "The Big Fat Kill" -- includes some major performances. Clive Owen is Dwight, one of Sin City's only good guys. Rosario Dawson plays Gail, his ex-lover and the leader of a gang of Amazonian hookers. Benicio Del Toro does a great turn as Jackie Boy, a ruthless, corrupt cop. Brittany Murphy portrays Jackie Boy's reluctant girlfriend, Shellie. When Jackie Boy is murdered, Dwight steps in and maintains the truce set up between the hookers of Old Town and the cops.

Hard-core action junkies, comic book geeks and the young male movie-going demographic will undoubtedly go wild over this over-the-top blood fest. However, after "The Hard Goodbye" unfolds, "Sin City" drifts toward committing the "eighth deadly sin" -- boredom.

Due to the mind-numbing repetition of the same grotesque violence (dual beheadings, numerous scenes of people being mowed down by automatic weapons, and various faces being shoved into toilet bowls), plus the failure of a coherent weaving together of the three storylines, this wildly innovative film bogs down in the third act. Just as in life, in film, looks aren't always everything.

Instead of thinking, "What's next?" you begin to think, "Didn't we just see this?" The meticulous faithfulness to Miller's work is the film's greatest strength and its biggest weakness. As with many dark, graphic novels of this type, his stories are more focused on the visual than driven by the plot. But despite the lack of a strong narrative, this film has to be hailed as a landmark. Not only did it succeed in pushing a film genre into virgin territory, it may even have created a new one.

I liked what I read well enough, though I don't think I've read an entire story. I am super-psyched for the movie, though, because it looks FREAKIN' AWESOME!

BTW - on NPR.org, there's an extended interview by Kevin Smith w/ Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller. I heard a truncated version on Morning Edition today - Smith's a total fanboy (duh) (& he likes to use the NPR words), but it was interesting stuff.

this line from Ebert's review sums up in perpindicular fashion exactly why I don't have much interest in seeing this at all:

"And now Rodriguez has found narrative discipline in the last place you might expect, by choosing to follow the Miller comic books almost literally."

Ugh.

I respect Robert Rodriguez more than any other sloppy director that has never made a movie I liked. Writer/director/editor/composer/producer/FX man/production designer might be the coolest credit ever.

All the same, I'm hoping - as many of these reviews seem to affirm - that Frank Miller somehow makes Rodriguez step up.

(Oh, wait: I like the first two "Spy Kids" films and "From Dusk 'Til Dawn." I just hate his OTT action movies. And "The Faculty.")

That said, I love the man's DVD supplements. He eats and breathes film, and loves talking about how he pulled various stunts and shots off. Unfortunately, his movies are pretty amateurish. Except the "Spy Kids" flicks, which are superior family entertainment.

Also, on the "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" DVD (another shitty movie), he reveals that he keeps laminated menus in his kitchen for guests, listing all the dishes he can whip up at a moment's notice. That's clever.

Sweet. Now to become a guest.

It was a little bit draining after a while (I don't tend to read those comics one after another.) It's quite stylishly done though and Mickey Rourke was at his absolute OTT best. I agree that Owen would perhaps not be who I would have cast (he looks the part fine, but the accent's a bit off.) I predict there will be a sequel ("A Dame To Kill For", "Family Business" and the recent-ish one I can't remember) before long.

Sequels seem more than likely; Miller, Rodriguez and EVERY actor attached has made it clear they'd love to do more.

I know all three of the Sin City books well enough that I was able to quote most of the movie as it was being said (NO I DIDN'T BUT I COULDA) and I was mesmorized by the frame by frame translation. I expect this to be phenomenally popular and hope that speaks well to the possibility of more "adult" (read: R rated and edgy; not just tits and blood) comic book movies.

"The Hard Goodbye" >>> "That Yellow Bastard" >> "The Big Fat Kill"

That Elijah Wood character seemed to have been teleported in from some completely different milieu - his strange powers and proclivities didn't seem to fit in with the film noir "naked city" Gothamesque vibe - but perhaps that made him all the more compelling. And the Mickey Rourke character (although I didn't know it was him until the credits, thanks to heavy make-up) sort of out-Arnolds Arnold - or the kind of pulp roles that Arnold used to do before he got too classy - stuff like "Predator" and "Commando" where his body becomes another special effect - and he did the best voice-overs of any of the protagonists. (Voice-over being a narrative technique which I prefer to be used sparingly, I think it was perhaps a bit overdone in this movie - which is a frequent pitfall of adaptations from written forms.)

Thematically it reminded me of Kill Bill - with vengeance being a thread that ran throughout all three episodes. However, whereas the Uma Thurman character in Kill Bill was content merely to kill her enemies - using violence and brutality, sure, but not dwelling on the inflicting of pain much more than necessary - the characters in Sin City seemed happy with nothing less than brutal torture of their enemies before killing them. It was the glorification of sadism, I think, more than the blood and gore, that made me feel a bit uneasy about the film - especially when the audience seems to laugh at the wrong moments.

My first thought coming home was that I loved it but didn't know if I ever want to see it again, but I'm getting the urge. It's kind of PoMo horror movie crossed with a "Roadrunner" cartoon.

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/dimension_films/sin_city/brittany_murphy/sincity2.jpg

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/dimension_films/sin_city/brittany_murphy/sincity2.jpg

also, she's wearing a symbol from Frank Miller's "Give Me Liberty" series on that earring...

http://www.capalert.com/capreports/sincity.htm

Note that management of the local theater, the Driftwood Theater 6 has implemented special controls to allow no one under 17 to enter the auditorium showing Sin City unless their parent(s) or legal guardian accompanies them into the auditorium. Tickets sales will be closely monitored and checked at the door of the auditorium. Even adult siblings may not be allowed to escort their under 17 siblings. Management suspects this film might have been one MPAA vote away from NC-17. Granted, the MPAA guidelines are not law but Driftwood is committed to ensuring a family-oriented service and supporting parental controls. I am proud of the management of the Driftwood Theaters for their bold stance which is apparently not often taken by other theater owners.

http://www.capalert.com/capreports/sincitydata.gif

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

oh noes! "squeezing head murder"!

i really like most of the actors and it was a lot of fun seeing them do what they do in this movie.

mickey rourke was the best. definitely the strongest segment and he KILLED the VO.

-- Amateur(ist)

maybe you haven't seen much pornography.

To put it another way: The question for Rosario isn't "omg, you played a prostitute, that must have been hard, eh?" but "geeze isn't it corny that somebody is so out of touch with what an actual prostitute's life is like that they when they stage a gang of prostitutes they basically look like Tekken fighters as dressed by Hot Topic?". I know the knee jerk response is Dude, it's a comic book what do you expect? to which I would reply "the plot of your comic book makes the way you think about women and the way you think about yourself extremely obvious, and the relentless violence of that vision and the virgin/whore clichés that drive your fantasies seem really obvious and worn-out".

the film didn't seem to have the conviction which would inspire me to be offended; it just left me feeling indifferent and a little chagrined.

The friend that I saw this with (milton) pointed out that a lot of Miller's lines read well on the page but sound corny when read aloud by actors- I haven't read the original comics- do other people think that this is true?

as they say.

but, this is exactly the point i was making.

The lines are pretty corny on the page too, but obv everything sounds cornier when you are actually hearing them read aloud. Both the comix and the movie kind of play the corniness for yuks too.

I'm still amazed that Frank Miller's leather/German fetish made it through intact. Not just the iron crosses, but the swastikas too! I've never completely unraveled what he's going at with it, and I don't think anyone's going to be able to analyze it through this film alone. His imfamous Batman story, "The Dark Knight Returns" has this element as well.