RARA-AVIS: At the Movies... SIN CITY and 300

From: foxbrick ( foxbrick@yahoo.com)
Date: 29 Oct 2007


--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, DJ-Anonyme@... wrote:
> I'm beginning to think you don't like Sin City.
>
> I don't really see it as a parody or homage. I just see it as
pushing
> the genre to its extreme. leaving it to the viewer to laugh with or
at
> the conventions in stark relief. The connection to Spillane is
obvious,
> but I liked this and I'm not a fan of Spillane. I'm not sure why,
> probably because I could get lost in the visuals.
>
> Sure, it's style over substance, but what style. Both the movie
and the
> comic. Sure, it's been done in comics before by Alex Toth, Will
Eisner,
> etc, but I don't see any Spirit movie on the horizon (and the TV
movie a
> decade or two ago was pretty lame). So I'll satisfy myself with Sin
> City. I just thought it was fun in its overblown comic booky way.
>
> As for your rhetorical question about why it was labeled Adult,
you've
> lived below the 49th parallel long enough now to know how we
purtians
> freak out about nudity, and there was lots of nudity, well, female
> nudity, in Sin City.

Never complete nudity, alas. Stuff that would pass w/o a comment on Canadian broadcast television.

Miller's basic looniness left the actual narrative unengaging, for me. Fitfully amusing, but not up to, say, his BATMAN comics, where his obsessions mesh well with the character, and the OTT aspects of hero comics, particularly when anti-hero comics.

I found myself admiring primarily the technological details of both SIN CITY and 300 (and nearly no other aspect of the latter); as I put it Bill Crider's blog, I came away from both humming the scenery.

Todd Mason



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