Bao's BLOG!!

Alright, here we go. For the past week or so, I’ve been sick, at home, in Mississauga, instead of in Waterloo, because my mom wanted me to stay home so she could take care of me. Thus, I’ve been having a lot of free time, and one of the things I’ve been doing is catching up on TV, and on some of the new shows I’ve been missing and older shows that people have mentioned over the years. So I’ve been watching NCIS (Naval CSI but no good), Medium (interesting, girl has premonitions in dreams and when meeting people, solves crimes), Lost, House, What I Like About You (cute cast), Life on a Stick (okay jokes, horrible acting), a bit of Eyes (seems like a spy sorta show), and Tru Calling (amazing new Fox series, Eliza Dushku lives a day, sees someone end up in the morgue, then she relives the day, trying to save that person, while Jason Priestley’s job is to keep that person dying). Last but not least, I started watching Gilmore Girls – a lot of it, too. Christa mentioned it on several occasions, and David talked about it too, so I started watching it. It’s okay, but I guess I can see Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as, sorta, friends and neighbours now, so that’s cool. I’ve been seeing Lauren Graham on Conan and Celebrity Poker, so I’ve gotten to know her outside her show, and now I know her inside her show. Alexis Bledel’s cute :) And of course, even though I’m sick, I can still stay up and watch Leno, Letterman, and Conan, and from that I’ve seen many recent interviews with Jessica Alba, Robert Rodriguez, Britney Murphy, and Michael Clarke Duncan, and each one brings along a clip of their own from Sin City, so that just pumped up my feeling that I had to watch it. And thus, here it goes. SIN CITY 18A, for gore and violence, and later I figure out, of course, language, and some nudity as well. Saw it at Coliseum with Jody (Amish couldn’t make it), 4:20 pm on Friday, $9.95, about 20 people in the theatre. Coliseum still plays lord of the rings music. Alright, so this is Sin City, and this is my review of it. I’ll start with saying that I liked it. When I first exited the theatre, I gave it 7/10. While thinking about it and reflecting on it for the past 27 hours, I’ve bumped it up to 8/10. Reading what more people thought of it, I might bump it up more, but for now it’ll stay at 8/10. There are no amazing spoilers in this except for the clearly labeled paragraph in the middle. So, Sin City is based on a comic / graphic novel by Frank Miller. In the interviews I saw, I think they made it pretty clear it’s a graphic novel rather than a comic. Anyway, the movie played very much so like a graphic novel. The movie is split up into 3 chapters, plus an intro chapter that introduces you to Sin City, and an outtro chapter that brings the whole thing full circle (begins with Josh Hartnett’s character, “The Salesman”, and ends with him too). Each chapter or volume is separate, with different storylines and main characters. The stories don’t intertwine except by location, Sin City, and other characters make cameos in different chapters, only because of location. Also, like a comic book, there are a lot of narrative parts, spoken by the main character of the current chapter (Rourke, Owen, and Willis). The narrative is in a noir-sorta setting, so that’s cool. The movie is very stylish with its art style and colour and characters, but because of the lack of continuity between stories, it felt… short. Each story is like a separate comic book or graphic novel, so there was no continuity between stories; it’s like watching several episodes of some show in a row, but not even that because main characters change. And much like a comic book, a story starts at some point (not the beginning of a character’s story), and ends at some point. What I mean is, we know very little of sin city; we don’t know how it started, or why it is Sin City. They could make an entire movie about the beginning of sin city. Another thing is that, character development… well, there wasn’t too much; you couldn’t get too close to a character, because each story was pretty short. So we didn’t get too close to the characters. Anyway, the whole movie’s stylish, and the acting or casting was pretty awesome. Britney Murphy’s role wasn’t as big as I thought it would be… maybe I thought it would be big because I saw an interview with her. Jessica Alba’s pretty hot, and her role was important, but she wasn’t onscreen as much as the other characters. The coolest person? I’d say it was Devon Aoki, or Miho, an asian Ninja girl working in Old Town. And there was another cute girl, but for the whole movie I couldn’t quite put my finger on who it is. Then in the ending credits, I noted her name, and it wasn’t until I got onto IMDB that I found out it was Alexis-Bledel, or Rory from Gilmore Girls. So that’s why she looked so familiar! And so cute too. Thanks to Gilmore girls, I got more familiar with Alexis’ character and it made Sin City more enjoyable. Carla Gugino has a pretty nice body :) Elijah Wood… ugh, what a weirdo. That reminds me, Sin City villains are very much like comic book villains, and by that I mean Elijah Wood and Nick Stahl’s second character, crazy characters they are. Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke… all good, all good. Michael Madsden, Rosario Dawson… good too… didn’t care much for Benicio Del Toro… Carla Gugino’s all good… Josh Hartnett had a small role, he did fine… Michael Clarke Duncan had a pretty small role too… As for recommendations… well, yes, it’s a very violent movie. It’s very artistic, looks very stylish, beautiful colours. It’s a dark, gritty movie, but very nicely done. There’s blood, but not like a lot of gushing blood, if I remember correctly. I remember blood on faces mostly. Of course, there’s that one goriest part, involving the death of a psychopathic cannibalistic killer, but he deserved it… that’s probably the goriest scene. So it’s not as bloody as say, Kill Bill Vol 1, nor as much killing, but it’s not for the faint of heart. So basically what I’m saying, is everyone will enjoy it, maybe even David, but it might be hard to get him into the theatre cuz… it is, pretty violent. So, after writing this, I might bump up the score a bit past 8… maybe 8.5? Or I’ll keep it at 8, I’ll hover it there. IMDB gave it 8.7 so far, which is pretty darn good. Anyway, time for the spoilers! Oh, and David, if you do plan to see it, don’t read the spoilers. START SPOILER Ya know, I wasn’t planning on writing on any story elements that would give it away. However, there was one thing I learned from watching the interviews that bugged me for the first 15 minutes while watching, and then for about 5 seconds every 20 minutes thereafter. So, don’t read this, because it might bug you. In the interviews, I heard that the ENTIRE THING, or something to that effect, was shot in front of a green screen; that is, all the backgrounds, the buildings, etc… they’re all fake. They’re all digitally placed there. All the actors acted in front of a green wall… so they weren’t actually on location, they were just… in a studio, acting, talking, driving, walking, whatever… no real objects around. So that bugged me for a while. Every now and then I would notice Bruce Willis walking and then I realized that he’s just walking by a wall, and… it really makes you lose focus, makes you think of the acting and it takes you out of the movie. David keeps saying how he has to be focused when watching a movie, be one with the characters… if you notice this fact though, then you’ll remove yourself out of the movie for a few seconds, you’ll take yourself out of the picture… and that’s no good. Anyways… I guess that’s it. Anyway, if you were curious and read this part, shame on you, but you can still enjoy the movie the way I did, with a few interruptions every now and then. END SPOILER So, that’s my review of Sin City! Go watch it! And I read on a billboard outside of coliseum that all movies there are guaranteed $9.95 or less (after tax), so it’s not super expensive to enjoy a movie nowadays. With the violence, and the art style, and the directing style, and the story telling and the acting, there has to be something for everyone, although that’s not saying the movie’s for everyone… Someone download this for me, I can’t wait to see Miho in action again… Devon Aoki has to make more movies… and… I wanna go to Old Town… looks like a nice place to stay…