300, Sin City and the age-old ‘hypocrisy’
The movie CAN NEVER better the novel. But I haven’t seen the movie yet.
The images with those fantastic lines can never be matched by the motion pictures, the dialogues from Gerard Butler and his expressions look way too stereotyped in the trailer (Infact the trailer had dialogues only from the comic). Hopefully the movie offers more although I really doubt it would.
BTW Sin City ‘The movie’ is great. Maybe we can argue that it’s better than the book but that can never happen, because Frank miller compiles it in such a way that it sticks on your mind in parasital way ..it never lets you go! The slick visuals with the bad-ass cast and that screenplay worked really well. Infact thats the best Robert Rodriguez could bring out from the graphic novel.
The pixel-by-pixel CGI re-creation mirroring the Comic is noteworthy. CGI imagery in Sin City was more like black/white with mid-toned/enhanced colours (usage of red/blood and sometimes babe’s skin is appreciated). It looks stunning and it was stylishly shot, fully justifying its adaptation.
Waiting for Sin city 2 because it’s based on the exciting ‘A dame to kill for’. Expect more gore, blood, babes, violence and what not!
BTW fuck the armchair critics.. hypocrites. They just moan over these supposedly tawdry movies, how dumb can they get? Movies (or rather the cinephiles) need different genres. Comic book adaptation needn’t always be less restrained superheroes from Marvel/DC publications. You need sick bastards like Frank miller too.. Dark horse publications provides many other bastards. It’s NOT for kids and certainly not for the faint of heart!
While one acknowledges the need for better ‘acting’. The actors NEEDN’T act like a Deniro/brando or how Meryl streep would. This is an ultra-violent movie set up in an imaginary world..Yeah you need actors to portray their characters. This is ‘Sin city’ and you only have bastards or whores around. (Assholes or bitches are saints here) And the casting was perfect IMO!
Interweaving is an overused tool from Akira’s interwoven themes (situation-study) to Alejandro innaritu gonzalez’s fascination for it and not to mention, the God of ‘interwoven story-telling’, Robert Altman . Well what can you say? His trademark style of packaging short stories together. It’s actually a good thing that there are more multiple-storyline movies releasing as it’s really hard to compress many stories into 90-180 mts package. It has become corny like in ‘Crash’ with no character development or depth, no vision or flow. It looked like a routine melodrama with plastic characters.. But there are great movies like Amores perros/21 grams/Love actually/magnolia/pulp fiction/A prairie home companion/Gosford park/traffic/city of god,etc… What I don’t get it is, Why nitpicking in Sin City alone? Be fair and justified. How else do you expect the movie to be presented.. Read the comics and see for yourself, how ingenious the filmmakers really were! they could have gone wrong like most of the adaptations but somehow Robert Rodriguez pulled it off..
I just wonder how many schmucks will agree here. But I can’t help but throw profanity at the ‘turd’ around (flowing around almost everywhere I go). Just throw away the facade and admire the creativity. If you find it dumb, then I am sorry to say your taste is retarded!
Don’t practice hypocrisy! why practice double-standards?
When one can praise Miike’s or Chan-wook park’s! Or when they admire Animes adapted from Manga, I don’t see why they moan about Frank miller’s works.
And 300’s cinematography might look ‘dud’ to some.. But once you read the comics, you can recognize the comic’s style adapted in the movie (from the trailer, I can sense the ‘feel’, it sets out to instill) ! The unconventional drawing style of ‘300′ makes it even more ’special’ and ‘profound’!
Question from a dork: Why Sex/violence are glorified in these films?
Well it’s not glorified but we live in a world where these things are ever-present, Isn’t it? And whats the question of justifying in a comic book adaptation? These kinda movies need hard-minded people who manage to sit through it and don’t creep in their pants or feel sick in their stomach only to puke. No one asked/forced/welcomed you to watch them. See the ratings…see the posters ..see the trailer..Not your cup of tea, right? Then fuck off!
Sorry I can’t stand this hypocrisy!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Brother, why u so angry? If ur from the world of comics, then everything else does not matter. Growing up on Marvel/DC, life is never explained quantitatively so why does some else’s interpreation or standards of movie making matter?
300 rocked, the story, for newbies, is difficult to digest cos basically it is sparta! SPARTA!
I’m with you Thilak!
SIN CITY was one of the best movie experience in my life. That movie was awesome. I was awestruck!
300 was entertaining. Thats it.
cheers
hands down Thilak ^:)^
“You need sick bastards like Frank miller too.. ” – classic
interweaving – sin city was better than pulp fiction IMHO
300 was kool due to the special efects. But sadly lacked the script. Looked like a typical Mithun chakravarty film to me
@ravptor,
Couldn’t stand it, bro.
” 300 rocked, the story, for newbies, is difficult to digest cos basically it is sparta! SPARTA! ”
-nice to hear that. Haven’t seen the movie yet.
@Mainak,
“SIN CITY was one of the best movie experience in my life. That movie was awesome. I was awestruck!”
Cheers mate. That just sums up what I felt about the movie.
@KK,
“interweaving – sin city was better than pulp fiction IMHO”
Thats what I tell my friends (some of them are self-proclaimed critics), but then they just laugh at me and at ‘Sincity’. That ticks me off the most!
” 300 was kool due to the special efects. But sadly lacked the script. Looked like a typical Mithun chakravarty film to me ”
-haha, Looking forward. I just love the comics and I can’t wait to see the movie.
take a torch and a 300 comic wid u in da theatre to see 300,if da movie bores u i guarentee the background score wont bore u,just listen to soundtrack and read da comic in ur torch light!….,…..
i’m one of those supporters of 300.. loved everything about it ‘cept the story itself, which was eh.. but then again, i didn’t exactly buy a ticket to watch the story. i watched it for the visuals, and for me.. every penny worth. same goes for sin city.. unfortunately, didn’t get to watch this one on big screen so had to settle for the dvd
@Sanket,
haha..good idea
@Striker,
These days, movies aren’t worthy enough to watch on big screen. duh! They aren’t even worth downloading. except for few movies like Sincity. Got to watch 300!
thilak.. true.. that’s why movies like SC and 300 make it worth it. another movie i loved in the theater.. “the descent”. not much has been said about it, but GODDAMN this is an awesome movie!!
Striker,
yeah I have heard about the movie and read about it a lot. none of the theaters in chennai release not-that-famous flicks unless it’s from major studios or big names..Even that has become inconsistent.I have no idea whats happening with the multiplexes here..you would be surprised to hear that even a movie like ‘The departed’ released only few weeks back!
@ – Thilak,
There is much I agree with in your post, but is it necessary to call people, “armchair critics”,
“hypocrites”, and “schmucks”, as well as other names.
To call people who might not agree with you, “retarted”, and ask them to, “**** off”?
I didn’t really like this film, but think you expressed very well the things that I really *did* like about the film.
But, a movie like this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and if a person didn’t like it, that is their valid opinion and they shouldn’t be attacked for it.
Of course people flocked to this film.
There hasn’t been a great Hollywood release this year, so Friday night date/family options are limited right now.
Many people may have flocked to this movie the first weekend because there weren’t many options, but this movie continues to draw crowds due to word of mouth from fans like you.
And, like everyone else I know except for the person I watched this film with.
Really, visually this movie is amazing, such a treat to watch.
I loved the battle scenes, done so realistically.
Even with the added unrealistic elements, the battle formations and tactics were protrayed with historic accuracy.
And, no one has yet commented on the fact that the female star of the movie was sexy, smart, attractive, and well over 30.
This is a rarity in Hollywood.
But, the added dialog scenes slowed the film.
I rarely say this, but I wanted more action, less talk!!!
I did have a problem with the sex in this film, and it is not because I am a prude.
I enjoyed the scene with the Oracle, visually this was a treat.
But, why show an extended sex scene between the two major characters?
The chemistry between them was apparent, the love between them in no doubt, the onscreen physical attraction between them strong.
Many filmmakers should watch this film just to see how to cast and to film two people in love, they were great to watch in the scenes where they were together.
But, did we really need to see the gratuitous sex?
It added nothing to the story.
This wasn’t “glorified” sex, just an attempt to keep the teenage boy audience tittilated…
BTW, if anyone is interested in seeing this film, go see it in the theatre, do not wait for the DVD unless you have a killer home theater system.
The soundtrack is amazing, and a movie of this scale really does need to be seen on the big screen.
t! the female lead was indeed very beautiful.. completely agree! also.. i think anytime a sex scene is thrown into a movie where it’s not needed, it’s a pretty safe assumption that it was done upon the studio’s insistence. i felt the same in “the namesake”.. zuleikha robinson’s ass shot was not only unattractive, but it just left me in wtf mode.. so much so that it was a distraction for me during the rest of the movie.. i just kept asking myself “why was that shown?? what was the point?”
300 is a entire pakage….if story falls weak the visuals make it interesting covering it up! and in interviews zack snyder and frank miller themselves didnt want the audience to know accurate history,….dats y he exaggerated a lot of stuff and modified many concepts which make it look cooler rather than being historically accurate…but if u r a action fan 300 makes u want to kill somebody for no reason and do stomach crunches to get the six packs….so i say 300 is a movie they should play in gyms for ppl to influence to exercise!………
Striker…bare assed or not, Zuleikha Robinson should never be in any movie, let alone The Namesake.
@t,
sorry if it sounded offending…it’s just my frustration-venting.
vijay
) i’ve never even seen any of her other movies.. and i don’t plan to
For a long time I have been trying not to talk about 300. It
@ Striker – it is not only sex that studios/producers force into films like this. I find it distracting when they do the same with manufactured love stories in movies where the story obviously didn’t exist in the original script…
A few years ago I saw a movie called In the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood, and it stands out in my head to this day because it was the first time I realized that the love story in the film did not belong. It was obviously patched onto the script at the last minute by the studio/producer because it made no sense and did not fit. It was as if someone thought, “You can’t have so much testosterone in a film, you must force estrogen into it to make the film work.”
Instead, it made a perfectly good film painful, and made me start noticing how much of this happens in Hollywood film on a regular basis…
t! yeah.. INTLOF is a good example of a love story that just shouldn’t have been. u should see the sex scene in “crank” (jason statham).. now THAT is how you incorporate a sex scene into a hardcore action flick! it totally flowed with the tone that the movie was trying to set
LOL!!! Funny thing, I was thinking about that scene when I wrote the first comment, for the same reason!
Not to mention, both sex scenes were hilarious, they were there for the laughs and to drive the story, not just to show T&A.
There is a place for sex in some stories, and in others it should be left out. Same for romance and love. Too bad that in big Hollywood films, this doesn’t seem to be the prevailing attitude…