Movie I've Recently Seen

Sin City

I wouldn't have believed that such a faithful piece of adaptation was possible. This and 300 have me convinced that the CGI revolution will have longer, more interesting ramifications on film than just the ability to portray amazing things (a man in a spider suit swinging from building-to-building in acrobatic fashion, for example), as impactful as that will be. But CGI let Rodriguez and Miller here create a very singular, completely imagined world, a world that clearly is not meant to be "real" but that is intended to be as stylized and deliberately crafted as a Picasso painting. Put simply, Sin City is a gorgeous film, and not because it's "pretty" in the conventional sense, but because the job of creating this painted, ink-splashed world is done so committedly. I loved it. CGI has enabled filmmakers to take advantage of the benefits available to animators, while still working in live action - and the combination is stunning. Tying it all together is a great cast, and a nicely spare, tight script.

Watching the film on DVD, I did think that another opportunity to make this comic book world more of a piece was missed though - I watched with subtitles on (I often do on the train, since background noise can make dialogue muffled on occasion), and it occurred to me that the heavy use of narration - which mirrors the use of narration boxes in comic books - could have been represented not by traditional subtitles, but by actual narration boxes on screen. Just like in the comic book. That would have been cool.

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