Okay, so since it seems that many of us here have seen Sin City, what did you think? Yeah, the GNS comment was a joke, but as I'm sick and tired, I'm thinking it might not have been a good one. Eh. Besides, it's obviously Sim.
I'll go first:
I really enjoyed the movie, but then I've never read the comics, so I don't know if that factors into it.
Have yet to see the movie, but having all the comics-
Nar, all the way. Each of the stories in the comics involves a Kicker, and a "How far are you willing to go for X?" kinda question. A couple of the short stories are might be Sim-y, but man, all the major arcs? Nar, no question.
Chris
All stories are Nar.
Any story can be made with combinations from any of the three.
There could be a gamist application wherein the winner of the game is the one who comes up with the most tragic ending as you bid and counter-bid story tokens to gain advantages.
There could be a narrative application wherein the table comes up with the story together through kickers and bangs.
It could be sim...well, okay, i don't know what the fuck sim really means.
But I don't think anything is any one thing.
No?
Shit, this belongs in GNS now.
Quote from: PakaShit, this belongs in GNS now.
No, no, no. Just say what you thought about Sin City. GNS has nothing to do with it, that was just a bad joke.
Quote from: Andrew MorrisQuote from: PakaShit, this belongs in GNS now.
No, no, no. Just say what you thought about Sin City. GNS has nothing to do with it, that was just a bad joke.
I'm sorry.
I've been trying to wrap my head around theory more and more lately, so I took that lame bait.
My bad.
I'm seeing the flick tomorrow. I've read all of the graphic novels.
No spoilers here, but if you haven't seen the film (and want to), maybe you should stop reading now...
The film left me with mixed feelings. Not surprising, since the comics did the same, and the movie is about as literal an adapatation as you can get.
In some ways, the movie was better than its source material. Miller's writing in the comics is a bit long in the tooth - lots of redundant dialogue, lots more internal monologue than is really necessary. Rodriguez and Miller pare some of that down in the film, and it helps. But not all of the actors are really up to delivering that overblown dialogue, and there are times when it really slaps you in the face.
For my money, Clive Owen nails it best. Maybe I say that because I dig Owen, or maybe it's because Dwight was my favorite character from the graphic novels (although A Dame To Kill For is the better of the two Dwight stories by a long measure, and it's the one that didn't get adapted), but I really think he does a better job of handling the dialogue (or maybe the writing was just less uneven for this particular segment).
The Hard Goodbye is the second best entry, mostly because of Mickey Rourke and Rutger Hauer's performances. That Yellow Bastard has a couple good moments, but was the least entertaining for me overall; I think a phoned-in performance by Willis combined with Alba, who seems to be fighting with the dialogue, and Madsen, who not only delivers his lines poorly but struggles with his body language (suggesting to me he wasn't comfortable acting in front of the green screen) doomed it.
To a certain extent, my bitching should be ignored. These aren't challenging stories, and they aren't meant to be. Having read the books, I knew that, but I was still a little disappointed.
And aside from all that, the film is a technical achievement. Rodriguez took a lot of chances in making it; quitting the Director's Guild, filming it all green screen (after Skycaptain flopped last fall), and adapting the story so damned literally. It is nice to see a domestic director willing to take those kinds of risks for a change.
- Scott
I think Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Benicio Del Toro were awesome. Rutger Haur and Jessica Alba were kind of dissapointing, though -- Hauer was wooden and Alba wasn't very credible as her character. Everyone else did a fine job, or at least good enough that they didn't take away from the movie for me.
The Movie was great. Rodriguez did a fantastic job of putting Miller's work on screen. It was almost like watching the comics come to life.
Very, very violent. If you are planning to attend, leave the kiddies and less desensitized friends at home.
Ok, first of all, a movie can't be GNS. Egads. Nor can a game, for that matter.
However, I think that if I wanted to play out a story where violent revenge is my character's meat and drink -- in which I can destroy nearly anything when I'm focused on said revenge, but I am vulnerable to a woman's slap when not -- the answer is really fucking obvious.
-L
Christ, Luke, don't you read threads before you post? Andrew is NOT ASKING about GNS! It was a DUMB JOKE. Fuck, this is really annoying me.
I mean, it's bad enough that apparently people get more out of putting their noses in the air and distinguishing themselves by saying "I can't bothered to understand mere theory," but then to seize any opportunity to slam it ...
... and bad enough that people raise the term as a joke, as in, gee, it's supposed to be the be-all and end-all, isn't that funny ...
But put those two together? I say again, Fuck!!
So color me really pissed off at everyone. If the rule at the Birthday Forum didn't include "be nice," I'd be pretty not-nice about now.
And plus, I'd really like to discuss Sin City, with people like Scott who saw the movie and have something to say about it. Why not just fuckin' call the thread "Let's discuss Sin City" as if you actually meant what you said?
I wish I could go do something vicious to someone who doesn't deserve it, and not feel bad about it. It seems to be a great tension-reliever.
Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards
I wish I could go do something vicious to someone who doesn't deserve it, and not feel bad about it. It seems to be a great tension-reliever.
(Those who have not seen the movie will not get this.)
If it helps, I'm a hitman.
yrs--
--Ben
do it.
Can't hit me though, Ron, sorry. : )
I walked out of Sin City with mixed feelings too. Technically it was amazing. Stunning lighting & effects. I found the dialogue a bit much in the first Bruce Willis bit, but then that feeling receded once Mickey Rourke stepped up. Maybe it was Michael Madsen's dis-ease, as someone else pointed out, that made it play wooden at first.
But, man, the violence! I'm glad the Nancy character took the name Cordelia in her letters to Hartigan--it brought in resonance of Titus Andronicus which helped me put the hand-losing/dog-eating-a-live-truncated-body thang into perspective. I had just been talking to my housemate about the huge leap upward in violence level that occured between Die Hard 1 & 2. Anybody else remember feeling shocked around the same time when either Arnold or the baddies used a still warm-corpse as a shield in Total Recall, or watching the body count mount with horror in both this and Die Hard 2? Every death mattered in Die Hard. Bodies fell like rain in Die Hard 2.
I'm not shy about violence, I love with great love action movies of all types. But I've got to notice when the overall level & tenor of violence in film ratchets up a level. It reminds me of something I've always thought about John Woo's (pre-hollywood) films. Watching Heros Shed No Tears put 2 and 2 together for me--the bullets flying, bodies falling action in his gangster films is at the level deaths in a war. So I see it as bleed in our imaginative world, going from street crime to the slaughter of warfare.
It was also ironic seeing Sin City after hearing about Ben, Vince & Meg's Polaris game. Beautiful, compelling horror. Ah, perhaps that's another thing that's going on--simple genre cross of action & horror. Though, we've seen shifts in the kind of violence in horror films too: the 80's slasher film is a far cry from it's primogenitor, Psycho.
best,
Em
Hmmm. I expect to love the movie cause I am a Robert Rodriguez fanboy and Frank Miller RAWKS! However I was disappointed. I mean it was neat and all. It was visually interesting and it had some good acting moments but I've reached three conclusions:
1) Direct translations from one medium to another does not work. It just doesn't. And this was as direct a translation as I have ever seen. Hell, as I was watching it I was mentaly going, "Oh I remember that page in That Yellow Bastard." If the movie was good I shouldn't be doing that, recalling the graphic novels.
2) What is written down doesn't sound good all the time. I mean did Frank Miller actually read out loud what he was writing. Didn't they at one point listen to the dialog and go, "Fuck that sounds stupid. We need to rewrite that shit."
3) Long internal narration does not work on the screen. I found it fucking annoying. I also, in conversation with my wife, noted that The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep both lack that and are much better movies as far as the genre is concerned. Internal monologue works for comics, but man does it feel stupid on the screen.
All that said I enjoyed it on some levels, but overall came away disapointed and felt it was a bit overlong too.
Keith
Maybe there was something in my head that clicked over to "comic book violence" while watching the movie. It happened for my fiancee, too. We were quietly chuckling to each other at the sheer over-the-top level of the violence Marv carries out -- he's a big, dumb thug, and this is the only way he knows how to do something productive. It was almost endearing. (The young couple on the other side of us didn't seem to share our take on things -- I think the poor guy had his hand squeezed nearly off by his girlfriend halfway through the movie.)
I think we also felt a distinction between the "Bang-y" deaths (like Goldie and the cop in Old Town) and the ones that were follow-ons. It didn't bother me to see the protagonists kill their way through dozens of mooks, because they'd already drawn the line past that.
As for the dialogue issues, someone mentioned to me (and it matched up with my re-reading of the graphic novel) that Madsen's character is going through the motions of dissuading Hartigan. I think the performance was supposed to look like the character being half-hearted, but it definately looked like the actor was just giving a half-hearted performance. Apart from that, there weren't any deliveries that made me cringe.
Here's a question for those who have read the books and seen the movie:
Why do you think Rodriquez passed on A Dame To Kill For and went with The Big Fat Kill instead? Consider: A Dame To Kill For features tighter writing, a less linear plot, a strong female lead, a nice crossover with Marv, a larger role for Michael Clarke Duncan, and best of all, a flawed hero who actually gets his ass handed to him several times before finally figuring out how to get done what he needs to get done.
Was it because the hero changes faces halfway through the story? I can't imagine that being a problem. Maybe it was because in this day and age, filmmakers can't imagine letting their heroes take a whupping.
- Scott
If you read the three he used (The Big Fat Kill, Yellow Bastard and The Hard Goodbye, which I've always just known as Sin City until recently) all intersect, at the bar in fact. I'm guessing that is why he (Miller) chose those three.
Keith
Hiya,
A Dame to Kill For intersects at the bar too, and in fact a little more integrally than the ones he used. It also would explain the Manute character far better, who pretty much just comes out of nowhere in the film. Still, I understand if maybe the film needed (a) not to be 3.5 hours long and (b) to showcase each protagonist equally, rather than be half all about Dwight.
I like Dwight McCarthy immensely; he's my fave Sin City character all around. Unlike some, I think all the actors in the movie did a superb job, without any "uneasy" or "phone-in" performances at all. So my interest is having a screen version of A Dame to Kill For is merely preferential, rather than aesthetic.
What I hope for is a DVD version which includes A Dame to Kill For, integrated into the storyline just as the three stories in the theatrical release are integrated.
Or who knows, maybe a sequel that includes A Dame to Kill For, Family Values, and some of Booze Broads and Bullets (notably the Blue Eyes sequence). Now I'm just geeking, though.
Best,
Ron
Quote from: Ron EdwardsOr who knows, maybe a sequel that includes A Dame to Kill For, Family Values, and some of Booze Broads and Bullets (notably the Blue Eyes sequence). Now I'm just geeking, though.
I think the odds of a sequel are pretty good (and I think that might be one reason A Dame to Kill For wasn't used already). From what I hear, the movie cost about $40 million to make (about what a high-end romantic comedy costs these days -- greenscreen helped, but Rodriguez knows how to save money), and it's already made $28 million.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed, anyway.
The DVD version of the film is apparently going to offer the option of watching the three stories separately, with deleted scenes integrated.
Quote from: Ron Edwards
Or who knows, maybe a sequel that includes A Dame to Kill For, Family Values, and some of Booze Broads and Bullets (notably the Blue Eyes sequence). Now I'm just geeking, though.
Best,
Ron
Kevin Smith's NPR interview with Rodriguez and Miller hinted pretty strongly at this, I thought.
Quote from: Bob Goat1) Direct translations from one medium to another does not work. It just doesn't. And this was as direct a translation as I have ever seen. Hell, as I was watching it I was mentaly going, "Oh I remember that page in That Yellow Bastard." If the movie was good I shouldn't be doing that, recalling the graphic novels.
2) What is written down doesn't sound good all the time. I mean did Frank Miller actually read out loud what he was writing. Didn't they at one point listen to the dialog and go, "Fuck that sounds stupid. We need to rewrite that shit."
3) Long internal narration does not work on the screen. I found it fucking annoying. I also, in conversation with my wife, noted that The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep both lack that and are much better movies as far as the genre is concerned. Internal monologue works for comics, but man does it feel stupid on the screen.
GOD YES. I wanted to mute the whole movie and just look at the pictures. As it was, I felt like I was watching two hours of Max Payne cutscenes.
I realized a couple of days after I saw it that I would have liked the movie significantly more if they'd made all the narration into subtitles instead of voiceovers. Better yet, it could be cut entirely with little loss, and most of the scenes could be shortened by half. I've never seen a movie that needed a bold editor more.
Narration boxes in comics work because you get between one and ten visual frames per shot; the combination of text and image increases the throughput of ideas. In film, you get literally hundreds of frames (thousands in long takes). The throughput is so much higher that the narration is unnecessary. It's like putting inline skates on a bullet train, so it'll go faster downhill.
QuoteI realized a couple of days after I saw it that I would have liked the movie significantly more if they'd made all the narration into subtitles instead of voiceovers.
This is an interesting thought...we've gone on about how literal the adaptation is and how it's very nearly like watching the graphic novels (just with moving pictures), but subtitles or captions would have taken that a step further even. I wonder what that experience would have been like? Matt Gwinn and I discussed after seeing the film that the greenscreen imagery, even when a little shoddy, was perfect for this particular film, since many of the old b&w films made use of elaborate mattes for backgrounds and this was basically the same thing (just inserted after the fact rather than before). Captioning the voiceovers might have worked in the same way, giving a little nod to silent films while also helping to capture the experience of enjoying a graphic novel, where reading is just as vital as seeing the images. But man, there were so many images to see...it would've required effort to drink both in (and would that have been a bad thing? it's certainly never affected my desire to watch foreign films.) I guess we'll never know, although when the DVD comes out it might be fun to watch it without sound with just the subtitles on.
And to go back to Dwight McCarthy for a sec...Rodriguez has said he wants to eventually film all of the Sin City stories, so I have hope that we'll see A Dame To Kill For eventually. I only wonder if he'll get two different actors to play the part, or just slather Clive Owen in prosthetic appliances (ala Mickey Rourke's Marv) for the first half of the story. Either would be fine, although I think Owen inhabits the character perfectly.
- Scott
Quote from: hardcoremooseI guess we'll never know, although when the DVD comes out it might be fun to watch it without sound with just the subtitles on.
Ah, brilliant! If only there were a way to keep the music on without any speech. Maybe it'll have a decent non-English dub I can switch to? (But probably not.)