so SIN CITY looks good then?

xxp

the anti clerical shit is absurd, and its been so overplayed and im
sick of seeing it.

its also less violent then the list would indicate, and strange, an
extenstion to the ends of what is left to be said about noir.

i am worried that the only women are whores, that the only role for a
women is a whore, it bifuractes and discards the standard binary
(madonna/whore) the only mother, nun, waitress, etc are ones who are
off screen or the ones willing totake their clothes off--an
deventually we will recognize that presenting phallus is not enough to
make complicated and real roles for women (which tarintino has done,
but im not sure either miller or rodgieruz has)

Also I had the worst case of heartburn going into the theater to watch this BETRAYAL TO MY FANDOMNESS.

hence my enormous yawn of real roles for women, freudian readings, and phallocentrism.

dawg, the books "subvert" the holy fuck out of those tropes precisely by forgrounding them. in addition to kicking mucho ass.

as far as not being sure about miller creating real roles for women, search Martha Washington.

(also, L totally OTM - if you like the books, there's just kinda no reason to see the movie)

what does this mean?

what does this mean (if anything)?

is he going to make a calypso record like Mitchum??

I don't think I've seen a film yet that relied on CGI/animated background that was visually worthwhile. Mostly it just seems like a cheap gimmick. Sky Captain was soft-focused to death, this one was okay but nothing special (real sets that mimicked the comic look would have been much cooler), the Star Wars films have been terrible from top to bottom. Die fad die.

the main genres in american movies (action, westerns, romance, crime/gangster, porn) are in many ways more about gender or more clearly about gender then the mainstream versions--they work as a sort of secert commnetary on american life. In Sin City, the directors realised that this was the case--but decided (like Ray in his western) to deconstruct it--to move the center away from how things are usually talked about (the company of men, the nature of the buddy, the role and position of phallic agression, etc) and recentralises it so that women rule over the men, there are no real buddies, and mccambridge/crawford engage in butch rituals.

In Sin City, w. the colony of whores and how it reverses how whores are treated (and continue to be treated--cf black dalhia) perhaps resembles the reclamations of Ray.

as well--by v. carefully finding out what the aesthetic compoents of not only noir, but glosses of noir and parodies of noir were, and extending that into something fairly close to farce, it recreates and renews our interest in its formal capacities...namely it, after 60 years of making fun of noir and fucking with noir, it made us reconsider why 30s gangster films actually looked they way they did--it isnt farce, its stop before that chasm gives sin city its power.

so you're saying that the women have the power, whereas in most film noirs and westerns the women are relegated to supporting roles? that's broadly true, though i'm not sure the "women have the power" aspect of "sin city" went very deep. you're right that there wasn't any real male bonding in the film; there was always a betrayal. but that too is in the tradition of noir, where in one variation the loner cop/crook finds that he can rely on no one (except maybe--MAYBE--the girl, e.g. "out of the past"). i think the genres you invoke possess a broader range of memes than you suggest, and it's not so easy to "subvert" them. although as you might know i have a basic skepticism about the notion of "subversion" and its application to popular culture and hollywood films in particular.

i think i know what you mean about the film calling attention to certain formal aspects of film noir... you might even say reifying. a lot of the lighting devices, obviously "cartoonish" (that was the intended effect!), felt like noir signifiers rather than expressive devices in themselves. though i can't draw a clear line between the two of course.

* The dialogue really could have been much better...more pointed...maybe I was expecting The Big Sleep and am being unfair, but the ersatz Chandler at the beginning started me off with low expectations...

* I tend to agree that it's all about surface, except for one scene: the scene where Bruce Willis is pounding the guy's head into the ground is probably the most emotional thing I've seen on screen all year. I can't think of any other scene in recent memory that has so much anger and hatred. Yikes.

how are these simultaneously 'the main genres' and not 'mainstream'? and what's secret about 'em? i have a hunch that 'johnny guitar' only appears subversive if you know what you're looking for, which its makers adn audience did not, in 1953...

as in, genres that were connected to explotation, grindhouses, b movie palaces--movies that were not mainstream, high class, who were not put out as the first product in the studios, etc. (or even put out by the studios at all.)

i don't really know if "genre" is an "industrial mode." in fact i'm fairly sure it isn't. "genre" is an academic construction--not to say an unwarranted one. but some things identified as "genres" weren't identified as such, or even as much of anything, when the movies held up as exemplars were current. other "genres," like the musical, really were considered a thing apart, with their own production units etc. but westerns didn't have separate production units, except maybe for the ones cranked out as serials.

with noir, it provided an aesthetic and narrative about cities--real cities, and broken cities, that happened less and less in other main stream cities, and not only cities--but how men and women interact in liminal spaces, (liminal here between law and order) and i feel the same way about westerns--the gender thing then, is how cosompolitian, sexually aware, constructed gender exists (and exisited in weimar berlin and new york at the same time--there was v. little change in the same place)

you cited the musical already which *is* clearly an industrial mode, but i think that with certain stars and directors (and presumably other technicians -- ie wranglers) involved predominantly with making films about the american west, and with a definite audience in mind, 'the western' was something studios made, that it isn't a construction put on things by academics. where academics have gone wrong is, as you say, to place this idea of the 'monumental' genre film. they fray at the sides, so the noir film is a little like the women's picture or the gangster film.

but it's in the nature of industrial production that there are some kinds of parameters to what gets made, and for whom, and instead of starting afresh with each movie (at the pitch, ray would not have to say: 'okay, it's set in the american west, it's about cowboys') producing 'a western', or moreover 20 westerns (or whatever) a year, was how it was done. it would be interesting to see whether, say, boetticher's westerns worked like the freed unit, ie as semi-permanent production teams.

[sub·vert

tr.v. sub·vert·ed, sub·vert·ing, sub·verts

To destroy completely; ruin: “schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community” (Alexander Hamilton).

To undermine the character, morals, or allegiance of; corrupt.

To overthrow completely: “Economic assistance... must subvert the existing... feudal or tribal order” (Henry A. Kissinger). See Synonyms at overthrow.]

http://www.musicalbear.com/film/review/sin_city_robert_rodriguez_and_frank_miller_us_2005