I finally saw Sin City last night, and I gotta say -- Frank Miller has got ISSUES, baby. (Though this is, perhaps, not a revelation about him.)

When your audience gets inured to castration scenes, maybe you need to dial them back, yo. And here's the weird thing -- I found the graphic novels to be utterly disturbing in their level of violence, and that's part of why I had decided not to see the movie -- I figured that seeing all that violence in live-action would just be too, too much for me. However, seeing those same scenes in live-action just took them right over the top into utter, utter absurdity. I ended up snickering/giggling/donkey laughing through most of it.

Tep, my mom gets squicked by movie violence and she enjoyed the movie and did a fair share of giggling herself. Hey, now that you've seen it, you know who Clive Owen is!

You can't have him, though.

Too bad Ewan and Christian and Jonathan were all so damned ugly and undesirable.

I have to admit—and being a Balehead I do not say this lightly—that a great deal of the first duo's appeal was dispelled by the FUGLY hair they had in the part of the story where they were involved. During the 80's era footage I found myself mentally urging Arthur "Bone him again! You're smoking hot now!" (Strangely, the Glam rocker hair worked for Meyers.)

In other Christian Bale news, his voice (along with Lauren Bacall's) in Howl's Moving Castle has done much to erode my stance against English dubbing rather than subtitles. The movie was also visually arresting. Though either there were translation problems or a lot of it made no sense at all.

I think Tommy and Strega are dead-on correct: Plan 9 is goofy good fun. Manos is only painful.

The pain is somewhat muted if you've ever joined a conga line of dancing Torgos.

tommyrot "Buffista Movies 4: Straight to Video" Jul 15, 2005 6:29:40 pm PDT

That's odd, I thought it'd been in the public domain for ages, hence the reason for some many dvd versions being available.

In case anyone hadn't noticed, archive.org also has the original Night of the Living Dead available for download. It too is in the public domain apparently.

A friend sent me the "UK Revokes US Independence" essay from John Cleese, and this bit made me laugh and think of the recent Brits Are Bad Guys discussion:

Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

Though either there were translation problems or a lot of it made no sense at all.

I've read that the English translation makes a lot less sense than the Japanese version. For example, the whole subplot about the scarecrow being the missing prince whose disappearance is the cause of the war felt like it came out of nowhere in the English version, but apparently was much clearer in the Japanese.

There was an amazing tiny movie theatre (which also served snacks and beer so it was like watching in someone's living room) in Cambridge called Off the Wall, which showed mostly short subjects. They had a GREAT programmer so the nights might be "Hygiene Films" or "Cartoons about Movies" or some evening devoted to a modern animator. They also showed longer films once in a while and did an entire Ed Wood retrospective. SO terrible, but so fun to watch.

I loved Off The Wall, scrappy. I saw Baum's silent Patchwork Girl of Oz there, and lots of Warner Brother cartoon programs.

Watching Andie McDowell attempt to speak on film anywhere, ever, is like that, John. She belongs to the Elizabeth Rohm "How does she keep getting jobs?" society imo.

I shoulda known you'd have been there, Hec! Great theater, great vibe, great movies.

Okay, so I searched the thread to read people's comments on Sin City when it first came out, and I have to say how relieved I was to read Hec's take on it:

First of all let me note that his movie is not Noir. This movie is a big Catholic passion play. It's a meditation on how much fleshly suffering you are willing to endure to be good. And not good in the eyes of the world, but to die justified. That is not Noir. Noir is Calvinist, fated. You don't die redeemed. You die because you fucked the wrong girl. You die because you made some stupid little half-assed mistake.

How many wounds to the male genitals were there in this movie? Six or seven at least. Because dicks are evil. Again...Catholic. Wounding the flesh again and again.

About 2 minutes into it, I knew it was never meant to be considered Noir. It was, for one thing, too self-consciously stylized to be Noir. And the characters were -- not stereotypes, but almost Jungian archetypes.

Where the Catholic sensibility of it struck me was in how women are portrayed. It doesn't matter that they're whores who kill to protect their territory, it doesn't matter that luscious Carla Gugino is a lesbian -- the women are portrayed as Righteous. Absolutely they are. Marv goes to operatic extremes to avenge Goldie, the whore who used him for protection but still made him feel loved. That's a twisted and almost beautiful 21st century version of courtly love, basically. Worship of The Woman as righteous and pure -- not sexually pure, not legally righteous, but you betcha they're portrayed as morally pure and righteous. Not just Marv avenging Goldie, but the whole clan of hookers, defending their territory so that they can work the streets on their own terms -- sure, it isn't legally righteous, and whores aren't generally seen as "pure," but defending your territory to maintain your own agency in the world? Righteous. Avenging angels.

And then there's Nancy. Little icon of innocence saved from the clutches of a rapist at the age of 11, who essentially "saves herself" for Hartigan, her savior, the man who is old enough to be her grandfather. (Understand, I *don't* think that 19-year-old Nancy is a virgin when Hartigan returns, but, again, I'm not talking about *sexual* purity; I'm talking about a purity of intent, and emotion.)

That's a very very Catholic take on women, twisted through Miller's psyche though it may be.