| #31 | |||
| Elite Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 41,349
| Hm..maybe I will have to rent one and see if I like it. __________________ "I believe in anything that brings you back home to me..." Sawyer & Kate | |||
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| #32 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| yup they are quite good, but only do it if you have enough time and just start with the first one cause you need a bit of break between them | |||
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| #33 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| Sin City EW talks with the stars of Robert Rodriguez's newest film by Jeff Jensen Clive Owen is trying to explain everything that is cool about Sin City, a $40 million marriage of crime saga and special effects starring Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, and the man who would be King Arthur. But when a woman tarted up in black leather is spitting bloody chunks of flesh on the floor, this can be difficult. We are inside the Texas filmmaking HQ of movie maverick Robert Rodriguez (Once Upon a Time in Mexico), where on a soundstage that's wall-to-wall greenscreen, Alexander's Rosario Dawson is ravaging the neck of Gilmore Girls' Alexis Bledel. Both play hookers in Sin City, a movie teeming with shady characters. Mobsters, mercenaries, cannibals — you know, the usual underbelly scum. In this scene, Bledel is explaining why she has betrayed their sisterhood of pistol-packing prostitutes, when suddenly Dawson lunges and chomps. . .on a strip of latex slathered in red corn syrup tucked behind Bledel's ear. She rips it away and spits. Lips dripping with cherry goo, Dawson smiles like she just won a pie-eating contest. Through all of this, Owen, clad in a trench coat and red Converse, has been trying to make several important points in a low whisper. ''Robert is totally outside the Hollywood loop. Does everything his own way. I can't see any other way to do this movie — '' ''You bit me!'' Bledel shrieks. ''Sin City is violent,'' Owen continues, ''but with tremendous wit. It's film noir, bent out of shape — '' ''Arrrrggghh!'' Bledel wobbles and falls. ''Everyone has the same objective,'' Owen goes on, ''to bring Frank Miller's comics to life. Literally.'' Fake flesh splats on the floor. Owen shakes his head. ''That's wrong. Just wrong.'' Behind a wall of monitors that resembles a workstation at NASA mission control, Rodriguez, wearing his trademark cowboy hat and strumming a guitar, reviews Dawson's chomp. One screen shows the shot in color; another shows the shot converted into stark black and white; yet another shows the shot as drawn in The Big Fat Kill, one of three graphic novels that make up theinterconnected, Pulp Fictionesque triptych of Sin City. Rodriguez's intention is to replicate the comics nearly panel for panel — a gambit as bold as it is commercially risky. But in Sin City, people are always doing crazy things for love. For all its splatter, the film is really mushy — a big, bloody valentine, from one fiercely independent artist to another. So determined is Rodriguez to get this right, he made the comic-book auteur his codirector. ''Looks good,'' says Miller with a nod. ''Good,'' says Dawson. ''Don't want to wimp out on Frank.'' ''Sin City is a pretty f---ed-up place,'' Owen concludes, as he wades into the green for the next scene, picking up a prop as he goes. It's a decapitated head. Bits of flesh and severed noggins, sadistic brutes and femmes fatales — and we haven't even mentioned the Yellow Bastard, who is literally yellow and actually a rapist. Sin City might be a comic-book movie, but you won't find masked marvels patrolling these scuzzy streets. ''I told my mom I was dressed like an S&M superhero,'' says Dawson. ''She was like, 'What's your name?' I said 'Gail.' She said, 'No, your superhero name?' I said, 'No, Mom, I'm not actually a superhero. . .''' But there is a creative Superman behind Sin City: Frank Miller, who made a pop splash in 1986 with The Dark Knight Returns, a radical reinvention of Batman that certified his genius and proved funnybooks could be seriously good. The karma gods rewarded him with a shot at writing movies, beginning with. . .Robocop 2. His script was wild with ideas — in short, too long — and was severely revamped. He's sanguine now. But at the time, he was bruised. ''When I went back to comics,'' says Miller, ''I threw caution to the wind and did my dream project.'' Out fumed Sin City. Nothing else had ever looked like it: spartan storytelling and smashmouth violence, rendered in jet black and angel white and a periodic gush of color. Since 1991, Miller has produced seven volumes' worth of Sin ''yarns,'' none better than his shock-of-the-new first. Its hero was a hulking killer with a billowing trench coat named Marv, out to avenge the murder of the only woman who dared love his ugly mug. His growling thoughts were pure pulp poetry: . . .and when his eyes go dead the hell I send him to will seem like heaven after what I've done to him. I love you, Goldie. ''The main parameter I had was it had to be fun to draw, because what's fun to draw is fun to look at,'' says Miller, 48, whose sharp-edged avian profile and hard-boiled imagination belie his shy, kinda shlubby demeanor. He likens himself to Dwight, the romantic Everyman of Big Fat Kill. Yes, Hollywood was interested. Miller resisted, because no one could guarantee utter faithfulness. It had to be his way, or no way. ''I decided Sin City was going to be this rack of books that people enjoyed for what they were, not homogenized, sterilized, given happy endings,'' says Miller. ''I didn't know there was a third way.'' The third way presented itself in 2003 in the form of Robert Rodriguez. The El Mariachi wunderkind was coming off Spy Kids 3-D, which he'd shot digitally on the new green stage at his Austin studios, a private playground financed from the shrewd maximization of his Hollywood opportunities. Rodriguez worked on special effects for Spy Kids 3-D, in addition to his usual workload of directing, producing, photographing, editing, sound mixing, and scoring. He was writing a thriller to follow up his kid flick, but it wasn't moving him. ''Having learned all this s---, I realized I wanted to apply it to something more challenging,'' says Rodriguez, 36, who is also an accomplished chef, has his own rock band, and in his spare time writes and draws bedtime stories for his four boys. Rodriguez had been a Sin City fan since the beginning. Looking at the books again in 2003, he saw the potential for another Matrix, perhaps, ''one of those visual turning points, where people would see movies in a different way.'' He also recognized a kindred soul in Miller. ''I loved that he did Sin City all himself, just for himself. . . . I was willing to take his baby in my hands, because I wasn't going to drop it. I wanted to make his version. Not mine.'' Things happened quickly, as they often do with Rodriguez. In September 2003, he met Miller in New York and made his pitch. ''I don't want to adapt Sin City,'' said Rodriguez. ''I want to translate it.'' Miller replied, ''Nice choice of words, mister.'' In January 2004, Rodriguez invited Miller to Austin to demonstrate how computer animation could replicate Miller's shadow world. The ''test'' material was Miller's two-character short story ''The Customer Is Always Right,'' with Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton playing the roles. '''Test,''' says Miller. ''That was the stealth name for 'first day of photography.''' (In fact, ''Customer'' serves as Sin City's opening sequence.) ''Coming to Austin finished the deal. Robert knew it would.'' Soon after completing ''Customer,'' Rodriguez and Miller got a $40 million green light from Miramax/Dimension. The plan was to make Marv's tale, plus The Big Fat Kill, in which Owen's Dwight and Dawson's hookers find themselves up crap creek after a fateful encounter with a very bad Benicio Del Toro, and That Yellow Bastard, about a good cop (Willis) with a bad heart who tangles with the titular monster (Nick Stahl) over a lasso-twirling exotic dancer (Jessica Alba). Sold by the ''Customer'' test, Willis was among the first to sign on. ''About a minute into it,'' the actor recalls, ''I said, 'No matter what else I see, I want you to know I'm in.''' For the seriously screwed-up Marv, Rodriguez wanted Mickey Rourke, who knows his way around screwed-up. ''I've spent most of my life feeling like Marv,'' says the 9 1/2 Weeks star. During his first meeting with Rourke, Miller recalls writing in his notebook: ''Mickey is Marv.'' Such sentiment has its sting. After all, the notorious Rourke is trying to put his past behind him. ''I remember going to my shrink with the graphic novels and saying, 'See how they see me, doc? They still see me that way.''' On the eve of shooting last March, turbulence: The Directors Guild of America objected to crediting Miller as codirector, a title that the organization grants sparingly. The DGA suggested making Miller a producer. Instead, Rodriguez quit the DGA — a ballsy bit of rebellion that cost him the chance to direct Paramount's big-budget fantasy A Princess of Mars and stalled plans to expand his Austin operation; Rodriguez wanted to use Paramount's largesse to build another soundstage. ''I never liked clubs, anyway,'' he quips. Seriously: ''It was important to me for Frank to be in a recognized position of authority so people respected him,'' says Rodriguez. ''What a mensch, huh?'' says Miller. ''Having the man who created this world on set was invaluable — especially since we couldn't technically see it,'' says Elijah Wood, who plays (brace yourself) a mute cannibal serial killer. Everyone had his greenscreen-is-a-bitch story: Stahl had to wear stinky blue body paint so the animators could later paint him yellow. Some sets were built, like the skanky bar where Alba dances. Otherwise it was greenscreen�canvas for the F/X firms charged with realizing the blighted cityscape, snowy forests, pounding rain, and ravenous killer dog. One Sin City player did attempt to revolt against the tech tyranny: Quentin Tarantino, whom Rodriguez asked to helm a truly Tarantinoesque passage — a long drive-and-talk between Owen and Del Toro. It was a challenge to the Kill Bill director, designed to settle a debate between them. Digital filmmaking: bliss or blasphemy? At first, Tarantino insisted on a real car. But after one take, the director became bothered by the limited range of camera angles, ditched the wheels, and put the actors on crates. (Not surprisingly, Rodriguez takes great pleasure in telling this story.) Sin City may be the most faithful comic-book adaptation ever, but there have been some changes. Like the nudity. ''Frank never intended his comics to be a movie,'' says Rodriguez. ''I'd say, 'Do we really want this guy's dork hanging out here?' And Frank would say, 'Oh, yeah. That would be distracting.''' And while the plan always called for selective uses of color, Rodriguez is currently adding more as he wraps the film from home, in his teched-out garage. (He often works in his jammies.) Commercial considerations aren't a factor, insists the director (who has final cut), and it's hard to believe the studio is sweating a lack of color — not with a scene where Del Toro gets dunked in an unflushed toilet, then spits up yellow water. Asked if he's tossing and turning over Sin City's violence, Dimension boss Bob Weinstein points to saving graces like Dawson's outfit: ''I know what I think about when I go to sleep at night.'' Miller himself is dreaming of sequels. ''I want the job,'' says the artist, whose next comics project — a new Batman series, which he's writing — has fanboys foaming. (Miller tells EW he's also working on a timely-as-it-sounds graphic novel tentatively called Holy Terror Batman!)Rodriguez is game for more Sin; he likes the thought of having all of Miller's yarns together on DVD. Until then, Rodriguez is keeping it clean — and close to home. He just wrapped another 3-D family movie, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, based on an idea of his 7-year-old son, Racer. It will mark a turning point for Rodriguez: His longtime patrons, the Weinstein brothers, are expected to soon leave Disney, and the filmmaker is likely to follow. ''[Working together after Disney] is 100 percent in the cards,'' says Bob Weinstein. ''We're lifers.'' In fact, Rodriguez says Sin City was a clarifying experience. ''I couldn't have done Sin City with anyone else. What we have is really hard to build anywhere else.'' The Weinsteins certainly want to keep him happy. After nearly losing him to Princess of Mars, they promised he could make a big-budget opus with them, whenever he's ready. It might be a while. Rodriguez wants to follow Shark Boy with yet another family film made with his wife and sons. ''Like a giant home movie. That's where I started with El Mariachi,'' he says. ''Sometimes I think I'll grow up and do a really serious movie. But I'm already 36. I don't think there's much hope!'' 2/14/2005 | |||
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| #34 | |||
| Total Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2001
Posts: 7,383
| An avatar: ![]() __________________ Find someone to love. Your heart has never been broken. You've never done anything unforgivable or hurt anyone beyond reparation. Everyone you've ever loved you treated like gold. | |||
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| #35 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| oh my thats brilliant, you should post it also in the avatar thread ![]() | |||
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| #36 | |||
| Elite Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 41,349
| Beautiful avatar. I said this on the icon thread, but I snagged it. ![]() I got some friends to agree to see the movie with me -- hopefully they will stick to it. __________________ "I believe in anything that brings you back home to me..." Sawyer & Kate | |||
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| #37 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| yes a promise is a promise | |||
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| #38 | |||
| Elite Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 41,349
| Very true. But if they don't see it..I might consider seeing it by myself. ![]() __________________ "I believe in anything that brings you back home to me..." Sawyer & Kate | |||
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| #39 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| yup i mean after all your an independent woman there´s nothing gonna stop you | |||
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| #40 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| Take A Trip To 'Sin City' March 16, 2005 Crawling with hardened criminals, crooked cops and sexy dames, 'Frank Miller's Sin City,' in theaters April 1, is chock full of dark characters looking for revenge or redemption. All this week, ET has the exclusives, including never-before-seen clips! Based on the cult series of graphic novels created, written and illustrated by FRANK MILLER, the film contains three stories that take place in the titular, fictional city, translated from Miller's Sin City, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard. "I started looking at it as instead of trying to turn it into a movie, which would be terrible, let's take cinema and try to make it into this book," says director ROBERT RODRIGUEZ (the 'El Mariachi' and 'Spy Kids' trilogies), who co-directs with Miller to bring the graphic novel to life. "The mediums really are very similar; they're just snapshots of movement." Hollywood's hottest stars clamored to be part of 'Sin City,' including BRUCE WILLIS, JESSICA ALBA, CLIVE OWEN, ROSARIO DAWSON, BRITTANY MURPHY, MICHAEL CLARK DUNCAN and ELIJAH WOOD, and the result is this year's most enviable cast. "When we started casting all these parts, strange things started happening; people showed up who looked like my drawings," adds Miller. "In a lot of ways this movie's quite literally like having a dream come true." But some who made the cut found themselves looking a lot more like their comic-book counterparts than they expected, some with the help of extensive make-up and prosthetics. Like MICKEY ROURKE, who plays Marv, an outcast on a mission to save the life of his one, true love (played by JAIME KING). "When I was looking through the comic book, I didn't know which character [Rodriguez] wanted me to do," says Rourke. "Then I saw it was the character of Marvin, I got really excited cause it was this far-out lookin' cat that had some interesting things to say and do, and I thought, 'Wow, this is gonna be interesting and fun,' and its been a real hoot." Anti-hero Rourke is somewhat recognizable despite his sloping forehead. So is bad guy BENICIO DEL TORO. NICK STAHL, on the other hand, is completely unrecognizable under tons of make-up as Yellow Bastard -- and the only character rendered in color (yellow, naturally) in the black-and-white movie palette (save for some surprising splashes of red). JOSH HARTNETT, who gets to keep his good-looking mug intact, says he was hand-picked by Rodriguez before the project was even a go. "Robert just basically came to me and said, "I'm doing this graphic novel, makin' it into a movie, I don't have the rights to it, and I need somebody to come down and convince [Miller] to let us go ahead with it." With the help of willing stars and some preliminary shots to show Miller what the final product would look like, Rodriguez clinched the deal and the rest, as they say, is history! Watch ET all this week for 'Sin City' exclusives! http://et.tv.yahoo.com/movies/2005/03/16/sincitybts/ | |||
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| #41 | |||
| Elite Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 41,349
| Like I said on the news thread, that is very cool that Josh was hand-picked for the part. It shows that people are interested in him and how he acts. __________________ "I believe in anything that brings you back home to me..." Sawyer & Kate | |||
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| #42 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| Yes indeed it is, it shows he´s respected by people in hollywood which not many are ![]() Now apparently losts of reviews are coming in these days and i´ll keep yall updated from aintitcool.com L.D.K.A. takes in SIN CITY and is reduced to a sticky geeky amorphous throbbing mass of well pleasured flesh! Hey folks, Harry here... I'm dying to see this film. Dying. All my doubts are officially gone. First off - I got a review - the type of reviews I despise that are literal step by step, shot for shot - that just spoils everything. I've chosen not to post it after talking with Moriarty & Quint - as there are going to be tons of reviews coming in on this movie - and they'll be all over the net. It sounds like Rodriguez and Miller nailed this one with railroad spikes. Beyond this - I've heard from a couple of folks that have seen it, as has Moriarty and the people we know... say it kicks unholy ass. Rodriguez? He's so happy with it that he's compulsively watching it over and over and over, unlike any film he's ever made, cuz he's so happy with it. Before I get to the main review - here's the opening of that spoiler review I was talking about - just so you can see how excited this comics professional (aka Killgore) got about the film: Quote:
harry, you haven't used any of my previous early reviews, but maybe now you might, if only because now the early review in question is for SIN CITY. Quote:
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| #43 | |||
| Elite Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 41,349
| Ooh glad to see a good review but it sounds insanely graphic .. __________________ "I believe in anything that brings you back home to me..." Sawyer & Kate | |||
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| #44 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
| i know but my fav part was the one with that josh is in more than just the opening ![]() | |||
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| #45 | |||
| Master Fan ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joined: May 2000
Posts: 12,274
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