Old News: Sin City

The three stories all happenning in the same little world was super cool, since it made the movie about the city (as the title suggests), and not just these characters. Especially when we see a glimpse of a character in a different character's story, it adds a huge amount of presence to what would have been some guy sitting in the background. This reminds me of when a character is built up to be complex and interesting, generally someone we care about, and they are introduced to someone else we care a great deal about. There's a huge bundle of stuff going on on both sides of that first conversation. An example would be when Picard meets Kirk in Star Trek: Generations. Or the dinky little crossovers like Helen Hunt form Mad About You eating lunch in Central Perk, the Friends restaurant. We have care invested in both sides of the interaction, so when they unexpectedly meet up, it's a really rich experience.

The dialogue was corny, but Bruce Willis can make corny dialogue sound excellent. He has a way of using tone to remove cliche. Still, I had to laugh a few times ("He made me WAAAAATCH!!!!").

What's with Elijah Wood always having screwy eyes? Eternal Sunshine was all about that, this, I heard the white glasses effect is on him for a new film, and even in Lord of the Rings, he had that augmented blueness goin' on.

When Clive Owen was sinking in the tar pit, and it went to inverse-silhouette, his coat shouldn't have stayed near his sides, it would have gone straight up, in the thick tar (picking nits, I know, I know...).

Overall, I really enjoyed it. The intense violence didn't bother me, since Pulp Ficiton and Kill Bill has set the stage for something like this. The stories were exciting, the world was involving, the images were memorable. But, it was so close to the comic, that I couldn't help but wonder, why not just read the comic? I feel like there's something to be said for imagining the voices exactly how you want, or implying the camera moves within the panels. Both a comic and a film are visual mediums, so where's the adaptation? Not that I don't like comic-movies, but this one was toted as the most true to the source, that I was left with the feeling that one was almost a supplimental piece, of the other.