Official Sin City(& Jessica Alba appreciation) thread =^).

[Yi Fong Yu]

so whaddya think folx? those that have seen it, those that haven't? i'm definitely seeing it Friday. it loox awesome.

[Marco Leavitt]

I'm with you. I can't comprehend why she's never broken out into a major star. I have high hopes for this one, also for Rodriguez who has never quite delivered on his tremendous promise. I like most of his movies, but so far substance hasn't quite caught up with his amazing style. I think "From Dusk Till Dawn" is a great, underrated movie by the way, so maybe my judgement is suspect. Can't wait.

[Yi Fong Yu]

yeah i agree marco, RR's very stylish but he is lacking substance. i hope he directs a classic one of these days =).

[Gary McClurg]

I think that RR can direct, edit, etc.

But I've never liked his writing, just my .02.

[Yi Fong Yu]

sin city is one of the few times he's directing other people's writing. so hopefully this'll better than the faculty AT LEAST!

[Charles Papert]

Saw a lab screening of this summer's underwater action film of "Into the Blue", with Jessica Alba and Paul Walker. It's pretty good, think it will do well. Jessica in a bikini underwater--let's just say, it works for me. Think the Alba fans out there will be pleased. Might just be her big breakout movie too.

The underwater photography is pretty amazing. The movie was shot by my friend Shane Hurlbut, who I am working with right now.

[Rob Lohman]

Ah... Jessica Alba... can't wait to see Sin City, mostly for Alexis
Bledel though (and the look, of course! Doh)

Charles: 42.4%? I see Shane and you worked on both C/B and
Mr. 3000? neat! C/B looked nice!

p.s. I just found out (on IMDB) that I need to wait till June 2nd to
see Sin City in the cinema here. Nooooooooo! Argh, sigh....

[Greg Boston]

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Ah... Jessica Alba... can't wait to see Sin City, mostly for Alexis
Bledel though (and the look, of course! Doh)

Charles: 42.4%? I see Shane and you worked on both C/B and
Mr. 3000? neat! C/B looked nice!

p.s. I just found out (on IMDB) that I need to wait till June 2nd to
see Sin City in the cinema here. Nooooooooo! Argh, sigh.... -->>>

Rob,

Yet another reason for you to make that move over here like you were talking about. And, you wouldn't have to stay up until 2am to watch the Academy Awards like we did the year I was in Nederland. But, you lucky souls get to start your daylight savings time adjustment a week earlier than we do, and you have stroepwaffels so I guess it's all even (hehe).

-gb-

[Joshua Starnes]

I saw Sin City at a press screening about a week ago. It was pretty awesome. It's not perfect - there are somethings from the books that just don't translate well into the 'real' world, there are some lines of dialogue that are fine to write but impossible to say - but it works more often than it doesn't.

[Yi Fong Yu]

josh,

you are aware that a lot of the films written in the 30s-50s had dialogues straight out of books, right? plus lotta screenwriters then were novelists as well.

[Joshua Starnes]

<<<-- Originally posted by Yi Fong Yu : josh,

you are aware that a lot of the films written in the 30s-50s had dialogues straight out of books, right? plus lotta screenwriters then were novelists as well. -->>>


It's a little different. The fact is there were a lot, lot of bad noir films written in the 30s-50s, the one's that survived are the ones that adapted to the medium the best - stuff like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, which though they had pulpy roots, had a different cadence to their writing and dialogue than they're neighbors - which is one of the things that set them apart as masterpieces of the genre at the time, and continues to do so today. There were plenty of crime writers before Hammett and Chandler, they were just the ones who were the best at it. And The Big Sleep Sin City ain't. Nor does it try to be, as Miller's inspiration for it came from somewhere else.

While Sin City the movie takes its look from film noire, with some changes, the characters and the story and the dialogue all come from the old Crime pulps - and that's a different kettle of fish altogether.

Frank Miller took the specific inspiration for Sin City - the comics - not from noir films but from pulpy detective fiction like the kind Mickey Spillane used to right (in fact, Spillane's Mike Hammer work is a direct inspiration for Sin City, many of the prose passges in the book sound as if they could have been written by Spillane himself). Most of that stuff wasn't ever translated directly to screen as it was written, and the stuff that was normally wasn't very good because then as now some of that stuff a person just can't say.

Part of it is that is that you can read faster than you can speak - and when dialogue and action are put together to create a specifically timed gag - it really throws the gag off when one of the characters has to get a whole lot of words out. It throws the timing off and lets the construction of the scene show through. It works fine on a comic page, where you can get everything that's going on and absorb the dialogue at a glance, but it doesn't work the same when you have it moving in real time.

And that's not to say the entire movie is like that. Like I say, it works more often than it doesn't. But sometimes, it doesn't. Michael Madsen, in particular, comes across like he's reading off of cue cards. Some of Clive Owen's stuff doesn't really fly either. But for the most part, it works fine.

[Marco Leavitt]

I heard from a screenwriting teacher that the Maltese Falcon script accidentally came about when a secretary typed up all the dialog from the book as a writing aid for John Houston. The writing aid ended getting greenlit. I don't know if it's true, but I'm halfway through the book right now and it does indeed appear to be word for word with almost no changes or deletions. Even the staging -- remember Bogart's secretary rolling his cigarette while perched on the edge of the desk? -- is exacly the same. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I think Joshua definitely has a point about Hammett's writing naturally lending itself to the screen. Having Bogart say the lines can't have hurt either.

[Yi Fong Yu]

i suppose some writers are "cinematic" and some aren't =^). v. interesting.

[Joe Carney]

Roger Ebert gave Sin City a huge thumbs up. Calling it brilliant.

His review did a better job of explaining the movie than anyone elses so far. Apparently Rodriguez was very faithful to the book.

According to the review, they used the actually comic books as story boards. There are three main stories that converge toward the end to keep it from burning out too soon.

[Keith Loh]

I've read most of the Sin City's but I stopped reading them when I heard the movie was coming out. I want to see the movie stand on its own without wanting to compare it to the books. But it will be interesting comparing what I see on the screen to the books *after*. From what I've already read, the composition is certainly faithful. I know Rodriguez wanted Frank Miller to get director's credit but how much did Miller actually do on the set?

Anyway, I hope Miller gets to film "Hard Boiled" too. That's the book he did with Geoff Darrow who went on to do a lot of the design of the Matrix movies.