Frank Miller's Sin City's topics - tribe.net

Sin City 2 Waits for Jolie

joey — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:12:24 GMT

Sin City 2 Waits for Jolie
Source: SCI FI Wire
March 13, 2006

In an interview with SCI FI Wire, Rosario Dawson, who played Gail in Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, has said that the film production has been delayed because Rodriguez wants actress Angelina Jolie to play a leading role, and of course, she is currently pregnant.

"The film's been kind of postponed because Robert has been interested in Angelina Jolie for the lead," Dawson said in an interview. "But she's very pregnant right now. So that's putting an understandable hold on the film."

For more with Rosario Dawson on Gail's part in the sequel, click on the link above.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3963

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Sin City recut and Extended DVD features on yahoo

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 05:38:34 GMT

Sin City recut and Extended DVD features on yahoo:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/sincitydvd.html;_ylt=AiEnaOoH9xjz5y4yYdBNtD5fVXcA

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Sin City Gets Recut and Extended

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 05:15:40 GMT

Sin City Gets Recut and Extended
Source: Sandra Kraisirideja
December 12, 2005
http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=12348

Artist Frank Miller was the last person to believe his graphic novel series, "Sin City," could successfully be re-created as a feature-length film. That was before he began working with director Robert Rodriguez and the two teamed up as co-directors on Sin City. The success of the movie and its faithful recreation of Miller's stark black-and-white style was a triumph for Rodriguez.

Additional details about the filmmakers experiences and the technology used to re-create Miller's world are given exhaustive coverage in the new, two-disc DVD of Sin City available on Dec. 13 (read our review). The special edition DVD is full of extras and there was so much to share that Rodriguez, Miller and special guest director Quentin Tarantino all got together in Los Angeles to screen the DVD and participate in a Q &A afterward.
Guests joined the filmmakers at a private reception in the upstairs bar at the ArcLight in Hollywood where they munched on spring rolls, crab cakes and chicken fingers while trying to spot Rodriguez or Tarantino in the crowd.

Tarantino is a gregarious guy who laughs easy and often. He's still got that manic energy that has become a hallmark of his personality. Rodriguez is more sedate and when I saw him he was normally having a quiet conversation with somebody. When I saw him at first I had to do a double-take because it looked like his arms were covered with tattoos, but it was actually a nude-colored shirt covered with tattoo designs. The look went well with his bandanna, black T-shirt, and wallet chain. Rodriguez and Tarantino are very approachable and they come across as guys who know how lucky they are to be doing what they love.

Rodriguez and Tarantino are next teaming up on Grindhouse, which brings two 60-minute horror movies by each director into one film. Tarantino will be shooting it in digital at Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios in Austin, TX

Just before the screening, Rodriguez, Miller and Tarantino took part in a brief press conference and then the audience was let in. In addition to all of the extras on the DVD, Rodriguez added a re-cut, extended, unrated version of Sin City, which separates the story into four separate segments that can be watched in any order.

Those who were expecting a screening of the new version must have been disappointed that Rodriguez decided to only show four of the DVD's special features. Of course, how often do you get to view special features in a real movie theater?

Rodriguez was especially excited about "The Long Take," a 14-minute segment featuring Tarantino, Benicio Del Toro and Clive Owen. Rodriguez let the camera run for an hour and from that selected 14 minutes of uninterrupted footage to show the audience what it's like on a movie set. The segment shows Tarantino talking to Owen, then Del Toro and Owen collaborating on a scene. It's amazing how much goes into getting just a few seconds of usable footage.

Another treat Rodriguez shared was the green screen version of the movie. This is the movie without any special effects or digital enhancement, sped up about 800 percent, so it ends up being just under 10 minutes from start to finish. What is interesting about this feature is seeing just how little the actors had to work with and how much was created after filming.

Limiting the screening to just a few of the special features meant more time could be devoted to the Q & A afterward, which lasted about an hour.

When Rodriguez selected a guest to ask the first question he joked, "Yes, the guy that looks like Kevin Smith." It turned out that the real Kevin Smith was in the audience, which Rodriguez didn't find out until almost the end. It could be argued that Smith paved the way for Rodriguez and Tarantino by proving that you could make a movie without a big studio and build a career from it. The audience got a big kick out of seeing Smith, who wore a hockey jersey with the word "Hack" blazoned across the back. I'm not sure if that's an actual player or a joke. I'm sure somebody will let me know.

Unfortunately, Miller's responses were reticent and he usually just answered questions with a simple yes or no and rarely elaborated. He did enjoy ribbing Rodriguez and Tarantino and remarked that the three of them together behaved like three boys playing in a tree house.

Watching the footage and talking about making the movie made Rodriguez eager to start filming Sin City 2, but he has to wait on Miller, who is writing new material for the story. It wouldn't surprise me if Rodriguez had planned the whole event as a way to motivate Miller to finish what he's doing so they can get started.

Whenever the filmmakers start, you can bet Rodriguez will already be mapping out the next DVD.

http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=12348

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Sin City 3: Hell & Back (2008)

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 04:36:19 GMT

Sin City 3: Hell & Back (2008)

Directed by
Frank Miller

Writing credits
Frank Miller (graphic novels)

Plot Outline: On a dark night in Sin City, an ex-Navy SEAL named Wallace saved a young woman, Esther, from killing herself. After a night on the town, she was kidnapped by mysterious people. May God have mercy on those who stand in Wallace's way...

imdb:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458482/

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SIN CITY: Recut and Extended December 13, 2005

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 02:59:42 GMT

SIN CITY: Recut and Extended December 13, 2005
http://www.dvdanswers.com/index.php?r=0&s=1&c=7667

Title: Sin City
Starring: Bruce Willis
Released: 13th December 2005
SRP: $39.99

Further Details
Dimension has provided us with the first details on Sin City: Recut & Extended which stars Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Jessica Alba. This new cut of the movie will be available to own from the 13th December, and priced at around $39.99. The set will include both the 124 minute theatrical release, along with the 147 minute extended cut. Both will be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, along with English DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround tracks. Extras will include a commentary with director Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, a second commentary with Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino and a third commentary containing Austin Premiere crowd reaction! Also included will be a 15 minute film school with the director, a Movie in High-Speed Green Screen feature, 17 uninterupted minutes of Tarantino's segment, footage of a Sin City cast/crew party, and a 10 minute cooking school with Robert Rodriquez. Completing the package will be four featurettes on the cars, special effects make-up, costumes and props, a featurette on how they convinced Miller to assist with the film, another featurette on casting, a featurette on Tarantino the guest director, trailers, bloopers, and an interactive game. Topping it all off will be a complete Sin City graphic novel (The Hard Goodbye), worth around $17. We'll bring you art shortly!

source:
http://www.dvdanswers.com/index.php?r=0&s=1&c=7667

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Sin City 2 and 3

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 11:14:55 GMT

Sin City DVD hits Today!
Source: LatinoReview.com
August 16, 2005
http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3405

Below are a few snippets of an interview with SIN CITY director Robert Rodriguez posted at LatinoReview.com.

And the ultimate of all green screen films is Sin City. Robert took the graphic novels of Frank Miller and put them on the big screen. Latino Review had the chance to sit down with Robert, who talked about the release of the DVD, Sin City 2 & 3, and again, working with Quentin on an upcoming double feature. Check out what he had to say:

What are you guys working on story wise for the sequels?
Robert Rodriguez: A Dame to Kill For is the basis for the second one.

So which characters would be returning?
Robert Rodriguez: I think Marv (Mickey Rourke) will come back, before he died and Dwight’s (Clive Owen) in that one, Gail’s (Rosario Dawson) in that one, both Goldie and Wendy (Jaime King) are together, you see the twins together – one blonde, the other black and white, Miho’s (Devon Aoki) in that one, and then there’s a bunch of new characters.

And for the third?
Robert Rodriguez: Yeah, we’re still writing the script to see if there’s enough for a third one or we might just stick with the second one.

When is that going to start?
Robert Rodriguez: We’re supposed to start in January, but we might start earlier if we keep working up this clip.

Your name was attached to a few big franchises like Conan.
Robert Rodriguez: Yeah, and A Princess of Mars. It’s hard to do the studio stuff now that I’m out of the DGA (Directors’ Guild of America) because they develop a project, I can’t do it because I’m not a member. I’m just doing more original material like Grind House and Sin City.

For more of this interview please follow the link above.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3405

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Sin City Dominates on DVD

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:32:32 GMT

Sin City Dominates on DVD
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
August 24, 2005
http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3430

The Hollywood Reporter says that Sin City made a killing on DVD last week:

The wages of "Sin" paid off handsomely last week as Buena Vista Home Entertainment's "Sin City" snagged the top spot on the preliminary national sales chart and the rental chart for the week ending Aug. 21.

The stylish thriller, based on Frank Miller's graphic novels, trounced fellow newcomer "The Wedding Date," from Universal, by a nearly 4-to-1 margin on VideoScan's First Alert sales chart. "Sin" grossed $74 million at the domestic boxoffice, a little more than twice what "The Wedding Date" earned.

On Home Media Retailing's rental chart for the week ending Aug. 21, "Sin" generated an estimated $9.84 million; "Date," a romantic comedy starring Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney, made $8.54 million.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3430

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Salma in Sin City 2?

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 04:33:07 GMT

Salma in Sin City 2? Jul. 12, 2005

Source: JoBlo.com by: Mike Sampson
http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=8013

What could possibly make SIN CITY 2 any cooler? No, besides the addition of Johnny Depp. Yeah, the addition of Salma Hayek! While Depp probably won't have time to make an appearance in the film, it does seem that Robert Rodriguez has his eye on Hayek for a role in the film. While down in Mexico promoting SIN CITY he told newspaper Reforma with a laugh, "I always consider Salma for my projects, even for male roles.' He added, "but yes, there is a character that suits her in this new movie." What role it is remains to be seen but Rodriguez confirmed the sequel will be based off "A Dame to Kill For." Could it be the titular female Ava? Rodriguez also added that Mickey Rourke is confirmed to return and while he didn't mention Clive Owen, you'd almost assume he'd have to be considering "Dame" centers on his character. As for dear Salma, she's currently filming LONELY HEARTS with John Travolta and has BANDIDAS with Penelope Cruz coming later this month. Now if we could only find a way to get Rodriguez and Depp back together again... Thanks to Pepe for the heads-up!

http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=8013

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Rodriguez Confirms Sin City 2 Story

Mon, 23 May 2005 18:32:40 GMT

Rodriguez Confirms Sin City 2 Story
Source: BBC
May 23, 2005

While talking about Sin City at the Cannes Film Festival last week, co-writer and co-director Robert Rodriguez confirmed what storyline you can expect for the sequel. BBC reports:

Rodriguez, who wore his trademark cowboy hat, said he was pleased to be in Cannes, the "home" of film noir.

He added work had already started on a sequel to Sin City, and would feature many of the same characters.

He added that the next film would be based on Miller's book, A Dame to Kill For.

Dark Horse describes "A Dame to Kill For" as follows:

It's one of those hot nights, dry and windless. The kind that makes people do sweaty, secret things. Dwight's thinking of all they ways he's screwed up and what he'd give for one clear chance to wipe the slate clean, to dig his way out of the numb grey hell that is his life. And he'd give anything. Just to cut loose. Just to feel the fire. One more time.

source:
http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=9723

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Sin City DVD to Have Four Covers

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 11:33:08 GMT

Sin City DVD to Have Four Covers
Source: Video Business
June 28, 2005

Video Business reports that Buena Vista Home Entertainment will release Sin City on DVD August 16 with four collectible covers--each devoted to one of the anthology-style movie's story lines.

Sin City particularly lends itself to the strategy because of its multiple interwoven stories, said VP brand marketing Lori MacPherson.

"We knew that different fans had different story lines and different characters that really stood out as their favorite. So we thought that this would be a fun way to give everybody the package that they would want," she explained.

Each retail location will be shipped a mix of all the covers.

"We knew with four different colors all lined up that it would create a really exciting billboard," MacPherson said.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3212

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Sin City 2 Coming Summer 2006

Thu, 26 May 2005 17:40:43 GMT

Sin City 2 Coming Summer 2006
Source: ComingSoon.net May 26, 2005

In an announcement of The Weinstein Company's upcoming release date schedule, ComingSoon.net says that Sin City 2 is included for a summer 2006 bow.

Stay tuned for more news on the sequel as it comes in

http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3065

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Sin City at Festival de Cannes (2005)

Wed, 18 May 2005 14:16:08 GMT

In Competition: "Sin City" by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller

http://www.festival-cannes.fr/films/fiche_film.php?langue=6002&id_film=4278140

For the first time in his career, Robert Rodriguez has come to the Cannes Festival to present a film. Vying for a Palme d'Or, Sin City is an adaptation of the Frank Miller's graphic novel, with a cast including such stars as Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood, Michael Madsen, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, and Brittany Murphy. Robert Miller has credited the comic-book author Frank Miller as co-director; Quentin Tarantino, who directed a portion of the film, also receives this billing.

Robert Rodriguez films three stories involving three people who are lost in the chaos of a murky metropolis called Sin City: Hartigan, an elderly police officer who has sworn to protect Nancy, a stripper; Marv, a brutal but philosophical social outcast, determined to avenge the death of Goldie, the love of his life; and lastly, Dwight, who is employed by Jackie Boy, a violent cop who pimps on the side, to guard his hookers. Some of Sin City's denizens thirst for revenge; others are seeking salvation.

"Reading [Miller's] books, I found fantastic images," Robert Rodriguez enthuses. I liked the fact that the dialogue didn't sound like film dialogue, that the visuals didn't look like anything you could see in a film. It was more unpredictable than any other screenplay. I wanted to bring Frank's vision to the screen exactly as it was. I didn't want to make Robert Rodriguez's Sin City but Frank Miller's! I knew that with the technology I'd already learned how to use, doing the lighting, photography, and visual effects would be possible."

source:
http://www.festival-cannes.fr/films/fiche_film.php?langue=6002&id_film=4278140

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Sin City 2 is Moving Forward

Wed, 18 May 2005 14:13:01 GMT

Sin City 2 is Moving Forward
Source: Mary
May 18, 2005
http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3025

Frank Miller has already begun scripting Sin City 2, which he will co-direct with Robert Rodriguez, reports Screen Daily. The project will be jointly owned by Disney and the WeinsteinCo.

Speaking at Cannes Film Festival's annual luncheon for international distributors hosted by the Weinsteins, Miller said it was too early to announce casting but did confirm the project will be shot entirely on green screen, like the first film.

Miller was part of a large Sin City contingent that flew into town ahead of today's competition screening. Stars in attendance included Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, Jessica Alba, Michael Madsen and Brittany Murphy.

The $40 million-budgeted Sin City has earned $72.9 million domestically.

source:
http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=3025

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Sin City DVD Release - August 16, 2005

Tue, 10 May 2005 05:28:05 GMT

Sin City DVD Release Date
Source: ComingSoon.net
May 9, 2005

ComingSoon.net has learned that Robert Rodriguez's and Frank Miller's Sin City hits DVD on August 16. The Dimension Films graphic novel adaptation, featuring an ensemble cast, has earned $72.2 million so far. It was produced for about $40 million.

Stay tuned for more details on the DVD.

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Sin City 2 & 3 being shot back to back for 2007?

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 05:50:37 GMT

Sin City 2 & 3 being shot back to back?

Robert Rodriguez will be shooting back to back sequels for SIN CITY 2 and 3 starting February of next year for a release presumably summer of 2007. I guess the studio big wigs were satisfied with the commercial and critical appeal of the uber-cool SIN CITY that they jumped on the shooting back to back sequels bandwagon. Further, Rodriguez plans to start shooting a film titled CONAN for Warner Bros. after he's done with the sequels. We're not sure whether CONAN is the same sequel that's been in development for a few years now, Conan O'Brien's scintillating tell-all autobiography or something completely original.

source:
http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=7308

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Leave and Ignore Hollywood, like Rob Rod

KingBee — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 05:45:56 GMT

"If we actually had to go pitch it to several people, they would have come up with all kinds of reasons why this wouldn't work," Rodriguez says.

I run into this all the time, experts, mentors, advisors, professors, consultants and peers all wanting filmmakers, writers to feed the Hollywood monster machine that outputs 85% shit.

Seek along the lines of the exception, not the rule. Innovate! Rob Rod did it, that's the way to go.

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Sin City is an Official Selection at CANNES 2005

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 21:07:28 GMT

http://www.festival-cannes.fr

Excerpt from THE SÉLECTION 2005 commented by Thierry Frémaux:

- What are the main a characteristics of the films presented?

This year is under the sign of cinéma d'auteur, whereas in 2004 we were under the sign of eclecticism. The competition will thus present very personal and unclassifiable works: Sin City by Roberto Rodriguez who, with the help of Franck Miller and with Quentin Tarantino as guest-director has made a "human cartoon...

LES FILMS DE LA SÉLECTION OFFICIELLE

FEATURE FILMS COMPETITION

Opening film:

Dominik MOLL
LEMMING
2h09

David CRONENBERG
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
1h30

Jean-Pierre et Luc DARDENNE
L'ENFANT
1h35

Atom EGOYAN
WHERE THE TRUTH LIES
1h42

Amos GITAÏ
FREE ZONE
1h33

Michael HANEKE
CACHÉ
1h57

HOU Hsiao-Hsien
THE BEST OF OUR TIMES
2h

Jim JARMUSCH
BROKEN FLOWERS
1h45

Tommy Lee JONES 1st film
THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA
1h54

Masahiro KOBAYASHI
BASHING
1h22

Arnaud et Jean-Marie LARRIEU
PEINDRE OU FAIRE L'AMOUR
1h38

Frank MILLER, Robert RODRIGUEZ
SIN CITY
2h03

Carlos REYGADAS
BATALLA EN EL CIELO (Battle in heaven)
1h41

Hiner SALEEM
KILOMÈTRE ZÉRO
1h31

Johnnie TO
ELECTION
1h38

Marco TULLIO GIORDANA
QUANDO SEI NATO NON PUOI PIÙ NASCONDERTI
1h58

Gus VAN SANT
LAST DAYS
1h37

Lars VON TRIER
MANDERLAY
2h19

WANG Xiaoshuai
SHANGHAI DREAMS
2h03

Wim WENDERS
DON'T COME KNOCKIN'
2h02

Award ceremony film:

Martha FIENNES
CHROMOPHOBIA
Out of Competition
2h07

FEATURE FILMS OUT OF COMPETITION

Grand Théâtre Lumière :

Woody ALLEN
MATCH POINT
2h

Christian CARION
JOYEUX NOËL
1h50

George LUCAS
STAR WARS - EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH
2h20

Midnight screenings:

Shane BLACK
KISS, KISS, BANG, BANG
1st film
1h42

KIM Jee-woon
DAL KOM HAN IN-SAENG (A Bittersweet Life)
1h58

Stuart SAMUELS
MIDNIGHT MOVIES: FROM THE MARGIN TO THE MAINSTREAM
1st film
1h25

Salle Buñuel :

Special Screenings:

Fatih AKIN
CROSSING THE BRIDGE
1h45

Adam CURTIS
THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES
2h37

Avi MOGRABI
NEKAM ACHAT MISHTEY EYNAY (Avenge But One of My Two Eyes)
1h44

Rithy PANH
LES ARTISTES DU THÉÂTRE BRÛLÉ
1h25

Michel PICCOLI
C'EST PAS TOUT À FAIT LA VIE DONT J'AVAIS RÊVÉ
1h15

Bertrand BONELLO
CINDY
14'

Seijun SUZUKI
OPERETTA TANUKIGOTEN (Princess Raccoon)
1h51

http://www.festival-cannes.fr

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'Sin City': 7 (potentially) deadly sins

subfab — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 17:24:42 GMT

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2005-03-31-sin-city_x.htm

'Sin City': 7 (potentially) deadly sins
By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY

At some point during the making of Sin City, Robert Rodriguez simply ran out of rules to break.

The rebel director avoids the movie capital, shooting his movies at his home studio in Austin. He has made Mexican shoot 'em-ups cult hits in the USA (Desperado, Once upon a Time in Mexico) and resurrected 3-D for a blockbuster family movie (Spy Kids 3-D). Today, his much-anticipated adaptation of Frank Miller comic books takes moviegoers and Hollywood's expectations to yet another dimension.

Rodriguez's $40 million Sin City breaks some cardinal rules of moviemaking. Whether his unusual film will catch fire — or fizzle — at the box office will be a measure of his success in tweaking Hollywood's commandments.

The movie is about an assortment of thugs, prostitutes, strippers, cops, vigilantes, corrupt politicians, psychopaths and the occasional innocent who exist in the shadows of the fictional Basin City, which goes by the nickname that serves as the movie's title.

"If we actually had to go pitch it to several people, they would have come up with all kinds of reasons why this wouldn't work," Rodriguez says.

Luckily, he says, he's a longtime friend of Bob Weinstein, the head of Dimension Films, who told him: "Sure, go do it."

The Seven Deadly Sins of Moviemaking

Sin City commits all of them. Find out why the people involved in the film say these sins may be forgiven, even embraced.

1. Making a movie in black and white

Ever since color motion pictures left shades of gray in the shadows during the 1960s, Hollywood has been loath to go back — even for stylistic reasons.

Co-director Frank Miller draws all his Sin City comics in stark black and white, no shading. Both he and co-director Robert Rodriguez wanted to keep that look for the movie, with occasional bursts of color — a red car, blue eyes, blond hair.

"These are morality plays as much as they are love stories and mysteries and crime novels," Miller says. "I wanted them harshly lit because it's a harsh place."

To mimic the drawings, actors were shot against a blank green background, and the walls and scenery were painted in to get the appropriate contrast. "(The backgrounds) were custom-made to have no mid-tones," Rodriguez says. "It's a really punchy black and white."

Are today's audiences ready for a return to monochromatic retro? Quentin Tarantino's use of black and white in Kill Bill 2 won critical acclaim, but that was for only a few scenes. And last year's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow bombed with a similar attempt at replicating the muted colors of old photographs. Sin City will have to prove it's more than just stylistic imagery.

2. Muzzling big-name stars

Major actors generally like to have big scenes to suit, but some of the main characters in Sin City have nothing to say. Literally.

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood plays a silent, Zen-like serial killer named Kevin. And while not yet at Wood's level of renown, 2 Fast 2 Furious model/actress Devon Aoki gets a lot of screen time but no lines as a mute ninja streetwalker.

While silencing Rings' Frodo may seem to risk alienating his fans, for Wood that risk was worth the potential payoff.

"I was psyched to play Kevin," Wood says. "I wasn't looking to shine, I was just looking to be a part of something that I knew was going to be special."

3. Using voice-over to propel the movie's drama

The rule of thumb in movies is show, don't tell. Long soliloquies leave moviegoers feeling as if they're at a lecture.

Rodriguez has made his movie top-heavy with telling.

The heroes of Sin City are loners. With no sidekicks, there's no natural way for them to express their intentions other than voice-over narration.

Without them, "you wouldn't understand Marv," Rodriguez says, using Mickey Rourke's vengeance-bound thug as a for-instance. "If you just watched what he did, you would think he's just a criminal. But when you're inside his head, it's the only way to understand him."

4. Making actors act against screens, not other actors

Actors usually hate shooting scenes alone because they feed off give-and-take with other actors. But many Sin City sequences were created by piecing together footage of performers whose busy schedules kept them apart.

Brittany Murphy plays a barmaid who has an exchange with Bruce Willis, but she never met him until Monday's movie premiere. Jessica Alba's stripper character interacts with Clive Owen and Rourke's hulking bruiser, but they weren't really there, and Wood's mild-mannered serial killer pulverized Rourke in absentia.

Murphy says the trick will work because Rodriguez used it to get experienced actors who enjoyed the challenge of using more imagination in their performances.

"I've always had a theory that a good actor can make chemistry with a wall, and this proves it true," she says. "It's like a one-woman show."

5. Overt sexuality in a comic-book film

Most comic-book films have been rated PG-13 to appeal to the young comics geeks as well as draw family viewers.

But this comic flick is not for the Archie set. R-rated for sustained over-the-top violence, nudity and sexual content, Sin City features women who are strippers or prostitutes, clad in revealing outfits — leather dominatrix gear, cowgirl chaps — or in the cases of Carla Gugino and Jaime King, nothing.

Alba, who plays a stripper, says she thinks the movie has a healthy attitude toward sex most R-rated movies are too timid to embrace.

"Robert almost puts women on a pedestal as something you can look at but not touch, even as far as the prostitutes. Their sexuality is just something about who they are."

Miller and Rodriguez also use the characters to surprise viewers. The velvety tan of Alba's skin is one of the picture's few splashes of color.

Says Miller: "Many people thought of the character as simply being a stripper. (But) you go into the place expecting a stripper, and instead you get an angel."

6. Having three directors on board

Directors are notoriously driven to make films without the influence of outsiders. In fact, the Directors Guild of America forbids sharing credit.

But Rodriguez wanted to share the behind-the-scenes work with Miller.

"What he was doing in the comic was so much bolder than anything anyone was doing in cinema, I thought we should be emulating him, not taking his material and squeezing it down into a movie," Rodriguez says.

So Rodriguez dropped out of the DGA. That move cost him the opportunity to direct Paramount's sci-fi adventure A Princess of Mars. (The union forbids non-members from signing onto projects already in the works at a member studio.) He can, however, make movies independently and distribute them through a studio. His friendship with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who headed Miramax but split from Disney this week to start a new company, practically guarantees he will continue to direct movies.

For Sin City, Rodriguez wanted yet another talent on board, his pal Quentin Tarantino, who serves as a "special guest director" on a sequence.

Says Rodriguez: "I really got into this business to do new things and make really cool cinema, not to be part of a club."

7. Making marquee actors ugly

Most movies make use of the masculine sex appeal of their stars. But the Sin City men are ghouls.

Willis' grizzled detective has a giant criss-cross scar on his face, Owen is a greasy low-life, and Rourke is hidden behind a mask as a thug who looks like a cross between The Hulk and a pile of cinderblocks. Terminator 3's Nick Stahl plays a Sin City psychopath who is a bright-yellow Dopey the Dwarf look-alike.

Even Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro plays the high-rolling tough guy Jackie Boy in a prosthetic nose.

"Benicio looked at the comic more and more and said, 'I want to look more like him,' " Miller says. "I've never heard of an actor wanting a prosthetic."

Just as the women didn't mind flaunting their sexuality, the men were eager to cast off their vanity and obscure their movie-star good looks, according to Rodriguez. "Actors want to create memorable characters, they don't just want to play themselves in movies over and over again," he says.

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Trivia for Sin City (2005)

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 23:00:50 GMT

imdb posted a lot more trivia for Sin City

Trivia for
Sin City (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/trivia

After a poor Hollywood experience in the early-'90s, Frank Miller refused to relinquish the movie rights to any of his comic works, "Sin City" in particular. Robert Rodriguez, a longtime fan of the comic, filmed his own "audition" for the director's spot in secret. The footage, shot in early 2004, featured Josh Hartnett and 'Jamie King' acting out the "Sin City" short-story "The Customer is Always Right". He presented the finished footage to Miller with the proclamation: "If you like this, this will be the opening to the movie. If not, you'll have your own short film to show your friends." Miller approved of the footage and the film was underway. Rodriguez also screened the footage for each of the actors he wanted to cast in the film - all of whom are reported to have been instantly amazed.

Directors Rodriguez and Miller planned each shot in the movie by using the panels from the original book as storyboard.

While the three stories in the film are based on "The Hard Goodbye", "The Big Fat Kill" and "That Yellow Bastard", as well as the short "The Customer is Always Right", there is a very brief scene taken from the story "A Dame to Kill For" in which Dwight (Clive Owen) thinks in a voice over in Kadie's Bar how Marv "would have been okay if he'd been born a couple of thousand years ago".

The logo for Kadie's Bar is the same as the cover art for the Sin City short story collection "Booze, Broads, & Bullets" and even read "Kadie's - Booze & Broads".

Jessica Alba did not know how racy the images of her character Nancy is in the novel until after she signed on for the film.

Jessica Alba wanted a choreographer to assist her in her dances but the director insisted that she just feel the music and dance to it instead.

Jessica Alba went to strip clubs as a part of her research for her character. However, she said that it didn't help because all the pro-strippers were doing "is trying to get tips".

Director Rodriguez added the music Alba danced to later. She was actually listening to different music while performing in front of the blue screen.

In the graphic novel, the Yellow Bastard's (Nick Stahl) car is an Atlantic '57C Bugatti. However, it was changed to a 1936 Cadillac Limo for the film because it would've cost over $230,000 to use the Bugatti for four shooting days. Also, the Yellow Bastard's license plate is "TYB 069." The first half is TYB, the initials for the story "That Yellow Bastard."

Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Steve Buschemi where all originally offered roles.

Robert Rodriguez originally envisioned Johnny Depp in the role of Jackie Boy. Due to prior commitments, Depp could not play the part. While at the Oscars Rodriguez saw Benicio Del Toro with long hair ("Wolf Man" hair as he describes it) and he said that he "was looking at Jackie Boy". He then told Del Toro not to cut his hair and mailed him the comic book and a copy of "The Customer is Always Right" he had directed. Del Toro immediately signed on.

The cars and the guns were real, not CGI.

The signature white blood proved hard to achieve on screen. Regular movie blood couldn't provide the stark look. The crew had to use fluorescent red liquid and bath it in black light. In post-production, the liquid was turned white.

The reason Yellow Bastard had to be painted blue was because yellow, as with green, reacted with the green screen. This caused the color to spill into the background, making them impossible to separate.

One of the hookers in Old Town is dressed like Wonder Woman. She is seen from the back, wearing a set of star spangled hot pants and with a golden lasso at her side.

One of the guns used by Hartigan is a Beretta M93R Auto 9, which was used by RoboCop in the RoboCop movies. Frank Miller wrote Robocop 2 (1990) _qv and RoboCop 3 (1993) _qv

When John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) comes into the bar near the end of the movie, the waitress he talks to is carrying Chango beer. This is the same brand of beer used in the beginning scene of "Desperado", also directed by Robert Rodriguez.

Knowing that the stories would have to be cut down for time, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller shot them (The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard) in their entirety anyway in order to be completely faithful to the source material and as a feature for the planned DVD.

The particular scene in question that Quentin Tarantino directed is the drive to the pits scene in which Dwight (Clive Owen) talks with a very dead Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro). When Tarantino insisted on a real car being built for the shooting Robert Rodriguez told him that it would be easier without one. After shooting a few takes with the real car Tarantino realized his friend was right on account that he couldn't get the shots and angles he wanted with a real set piece.

Rodriguez has said that he does not consider this movie to be an adaptation but rather a translation. This is why there is no screenplay by credit in the credits, all that is mentioned of writers is Frank Miller as the creator of the graphic novels.

The film, and many of its effects and scoring were all done in Rodriguez's studio which is immediately across the street from his home. Because the director refuses to work anywhere else and as such shuns Hollywood traditions, it took his friendship with Bob and Harvey Weinstein to make the production of the film possible as no other studios would take a leap on either Rodriguez's methods or such a bizarre film.

Becky's "peace symbol" earring is actually the symbol of PAX, the paramilitary peace force from Frank Miller's graphic novel "Give Me Liberty"

Rodriguez, who credits Miller's visual style in the comic as relevant as his own in the film, insisted that Miller receive a "co-director" credit with him. The Directors' Guild of America would not allow it. As a result, Rodriguez resigned from the DGA, saying "It was easier for me to quietly resign before shooting because otherwise I'd be forced to make compromises I was unwilling to make or set a precedent that might hurt the guild later on." Unfortunately, by resigning from the DGA, Rodriguez was also forced to relinquish his director's seat on the film John Carter of Mars (2006) (at the time "A Princess of Mars" after the book on which it was based) for Paramount. Rodriguez had already signed-on and been announced as director of that film when the DGA situation took place, planning to begin filming soon after wrapping this film.

Based on the graphic novels "Sin City" (this was the first of all the stories and originally had no title, but Miller has since re-named it "The Hard Good-Bye"), "The Big Fat Kill" and "That Yellow Bastard", by Frank Miller. The infamous "opening footage" with Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton is from the Sin City short-story "The Customer is Always Right" from the "Babe Wore Red" collection.

Robert Rodriguez scored Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) for $1. Quentin Tarantino said he would repay him by directing a segment of this movie for $1. Tarantino, a vocal proponent of film-over-digital, has said that he was curious to get hands-on experience with the HD cameras which Rodriguez lauds. When asked about his experience, Tarantino merely replied, "Mission Accomplished."

This was one of several films around the world to be shot on a completely "digital backlot" (i.e. with all the acting shot in front of a green screen and the backgrounds added during post-production). While the other movies (Immortel (ad vitam) (2004), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), and Casshern (2004) - two of which were shot on film) were shot first, this movie's use of High-Definition digital cameras (like "Sky Captain") in addition to the "backlot" method makes Sin City (2005) one of the world's first "fully-digital" live action motion pictures.

Originally, the film was going to include the story featured in the "Sin City" maxi-series "To Hell And Back", with Johnny Depp in the lead role as Wallace. This was scrapped before production began but will most likely be filmed for a sequel as Rodriguez plans to film all of Miller's stories at some point.

Leonardo DiCaprio was originally up for the role of Junior but eventually declined the role, which later went to Nick Stahl.

Michael Douglas was offered a role but turned it down.

Kate Bosworth was the first choice for the role of Gail.

Footage has been so coveted by fans that when a 27-second behind-the-scenes clip appeared on "Entertainment Tonight" (1981) (airdate: 19 May 2004), it was quickly (though not officially by the show) placed on the internet and downloaded over one million times. The raw footage featured only quick shots of Bruce Willis and a scantily-clad Jessica Alba performing in front of green-screen.

Although several of the actors already looked similar their characters, some of them underwent make-up and prosthetics to more strongly resemble their Miller-drawn likenesses, including Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, 'Benecio Del Toro' and Nick Stahl.

Although the movie is presented primarily in black-&-white, particular items are in color and, as such, had to be colored blue or green on set. According to Robert Rodriguez, Nick Stahl (who plays The Yellow Bastard) was known on set as "The Blue Bastard".

Cameo: [Frank Miller] the co-director and creator of the original comic series has a cameo as a priest.

soucre:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/trivia

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The Man Who Shot Sin City [WIRED article repost]

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 01:34:21 GMT

The Man Who Shot Sin City
How Robert Rodriguez, the one-man digital army behind El Mariachi and Spy Kids, brought an "unfilmable" cult comic to the big screen.
By Brian Ashcraft

[thanks to ATOM]:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/sincity.html

For years, one of the biggest gets in Hollywood was the movie rights to the graphic novel series Sin City. Penned from 1991 to 2000 by Frank Miller, whose The Dark Knight Returns resurrected the Batman franchise, Sin City was emblematic of a new generation of comics that replaced the candy-colored superhero with an angst-ridden antihero. Sin City's hardnosed dialog, cinematic compositions, and kinetic violence evoked classic Warner Bros. crime films more than Marvel's men in tights. Handsome movie offers followed, but Miller didn't bite. He'd been burned by the studio system before: In 1990, he lost control of his script for RoboCop 2 and was less than pleased with the onscreen result. He told friends that it just wasn't possible to make a live-action version of Sin City.

That all changed in January of last year, when Miller got a call from Robert Rodriguez. A young director known for innovative, inexpensive genre pictures like Desperado and highly technical box office darlings like Spy Kids, Rodriguez made Miller a simple offer: Come to Texas and shoot with me for a day. If you like what you see, we'll make a deal. If not, the short film is yours to keep. Miller accepted and flew to Rodriguez's digital back lot outside of Austin. Inside a massive soundstage outfitted with a 30-foot-tall green screen and the latest Sony hi-def cameras, Miller watched as actors Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton performed a scene lifted straight from "The Customer Is Always Right," a decade-old short story in the Sin City series. After the shoot, Rodriguez cut the footage in his editing bay, laid down a few special effects, and added music - all that same day. Miller was floored. "A test? Come on! You don't put Josh Hartnett in a test," he says. "I just dove in." They sealed the deal, with Miller named as codirector. That three-minute short became the opening scene of the movie Sin City, set to hit theaters April 1.

Of course, that's not how the standard Hollywood pitch goes down. Then again, nothing about Rodriguez, 36, is conventional. To finance his first feature, El Mariachi, the director took a gig as a human lab rat. For more than a month, a local research hospital paid him to ingest an experimental cholesterol drug. With the proceeds, he produced the film, which he wrote, directed, edited, photographed, and scored for a mere $7,000. Originally intended for the Spanish straight-to-video market, the movie was picked up for distribution by Columbia Pictures in 1992 and went on to win the Audience Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival; at the time, it was the lowest-budget film ever released by a major studio. Even after Rodriguez got backing from Columbia for his next projects, he didn't go by the book. When studio execs wanted to bring in an outside editor to work on Desperado, his follow-up to Mariachi starring Antonio Banderas, Rodriguez demanded to do it himself - and won. While making From Dusk Till Dawn, he insisted on using a nonunion crew. Naturally, he christened one of his sons Rebel and named his studio Troublemaker.

Rodriguez couldn't be a troublemaker, let alone a rebel, if he weren't equipped with an arsenal of digital filmmaking tools and the know-how to use them. With his own Sony HD cameras, a Discreet visual effects system, four Avid digital editing machines, and XSI animation modeling software, Rodriguez can make truly independent films - and for less money than traditional Hollywood directors. "It's like going back to the old video days," Rodriguez says, "when you could run around in your backyard and shoot a movie." His stubborn independence and technical savvy call to mind a young George Lucas, who left Hollywood for Northern California 25 years ago after a squabble over the opening credits in The Empire Strikes Back. In fact, Rodriguez is the first filmmaker since Lucas who's had the confidence and skills to work outside the studio system yet still produce big-budget, effects-laden pictures.

That kind of freedom doesn't come without consequences. A week before Sin City began shooting, the Directors Guild of America called to inform Rodriguez that he and Miller couldn't be listed as codirectors in the movie's credits. It would be a violation of DGA rules. (This reg doesn't apply to the Wachowski or Hughes brothers, who are granted DGA waivers for being "bona fide teams.") Rodriguez was stunned when the DGA threatened to shut down production. Rather than dump Miller, Rodriguez resigned from the guild. "Down here in Texas, it's like those rules don't apply," he says. "So if I leave, I can do anything I want and don't have to worry about someone coming up behind me who's still in the dinosaur age, saying, Hey, you can't do that; you can't make movies like that."

Rodriguez felt the sting of that decision almost immediately. By turning his back on the establishment, he lost a lucrative deal. Paramount Pictures had slated Rodriguez to helm the $100 million sci-fi epic A Princess of Mars, the first book in a series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which Tinseltown thinks could be the next megafranchise. But as a DGA signatory, Paramount can't hire a nonunion director. Execs gave the film to guild director Kerry Conran (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow). The whole drama played out in the pages of Variety. But by then, Rodriguez had already proved that he didn't need studio muscle: By showing private screenings of his three-minute test, he assembled an A-list cast for Sin City - including Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, and Benicio Del Toro.

For Rodriguez, the breakout film was Spy Kids, a 2001 movie that grossed more than $110 million at the domestic box office and earned him the confidence and cash to set up shop in Texas. He rented two soundstages and converted his garage into a post-production suite with 10 monitors, editing equipment, and a storyboard machine. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams was shot entirely with hi-def digital cameras and edited at Troublemaker. The title credits for Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over begin with this: "A Robert Rodriguez Digital File." The revolution was in full swing.

"Having finished the Spy Kids series," Rodriguez says, "I was looking for a good effects challenge." That's what led him to Miller's Sin City. The series takes readers on an eye-popping tour of an underworld packed with tough cops, femme fatales, and seedy lowlifes. "The stories were great," he says, "but what grabbed you was the look." Miller's black-and-white chiaroscuro style reflects an artist raised on pulp fiction and old crime movies. Every scene takes place at night or in some back alley.

Frank Miller's noir makes Raymond Chandler look almost Techni-color. There are absolutely no midtones in the graphic novels, a trait that makes them especially problematic to portray on celluloid. "This movie wouldn't even be possible if I shot it on film," Rodriguez says, explaining how difficult it is to capture pure black and white on camera. His workaround: Shoot the actors against a green screen and add most of the backgrounds digitally in postproduction ("All of the guns and cars are real," Miller points out). Even small details like Sin City's signature "white blood" proved to be an effects challenge. Regular movie blood didn't cut it. Instead, the crew used fluorescent red liquid and hit it with a black light. This allowed Rodriguez to turn the blood "white" in postproduction. Likewise, the novel's few splashes of color proved troublesome. Yellow and green react with green screens, causing color to spill into the background and making them impossible to separate. So during shooting Rodriguez painted the villain, Yellow Bastard, blue - and then colored him yellow in post.

As Rodriguez refines the tools of digital filmmaking - and the liberty that comes with them - others are slow to follow. Hollywood purists tend to dismiss the geeks in the business as more interested in technology than storytelling. To dispel that notion, Rodriguez persuaded his pal Quentin Tarantino to direct a scene in the movie. Tarantino is the poster boy for analog: He collects rare 35-mm prints and doesn't even use monitors on set while directing. He had just come off shooting Kill Bill, where he did take after take, perfecting each scene, but ballooning the movie's budget and production schedule in the process. For Sin City, Tarantino filmed a self-contained segment at Troublemaker and learned that high tech means low stress. Rodriguez explains: "Quentin did a scene where the actors are in a car and it's raining. Instead of worrying about all that stuff, the car and the rain were added later, and he could just get the performance." Tarantino conceded, telling Rodriguez, "Mission accomplished. I'm glad you brought me down here." Tarantino now says he'll shoot his own digital feature.

Alone in his Austin garage, Rodriguez puts the finishing touches on his next feature, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl. Due out in June, it's a 3-D live-action movie about a young outcast who makes fantastical stories come true. Sounds a lot like Rodriguez's life.

source:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/sincity.html

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

wired

east_bay_gray — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 03:09:30 GMT

How Robert Rodriguez, the one-man digital army behind El Mariachi and Spy Kids, brought an "unfilmable" cult comic to the big screen.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/sincity.html

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 2 replies

Sin City: Bringing the Graphic Novel to the Screen — Literally [vfxworld article]

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 01:31:08 GMT

Visit this article online at (http://vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=2447)

Sin City: Bringing the Graphic Novel to the Screen — Literally
Tara DiLullo descends into the seedy underworld of Sin City to see how the filmmakers ripped the images from the graphic novel page and plastered them onto the silver screen.

“Inspired by…” It’s the formula followed by just about every studio that’s ever translated a comic book into film. Looking to mine the rich stories and inspired visuals of decades’ worth of superheroes and dark anti-heroes, Hollywood’s aim has never been about creating literal translations from print to screen. They’ve been more intent on capturing the spirit of the original or just bringing life to a character…until now. Rebellious filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has built his career on doing things his way, literally directing, shooting, writing, cutting, scoring and even creating the visual effects for his films. Yet when he became obsessed with the idea of translating Frank Miller’s heralded Sin City graphic novels to screen, it wasn’t to put his own spin on the groundbreaking works. Instead, Rodriquez wanted to give Miller the chance to see his drawings and words faithfully adapted to the big screen — the first graphic novel made real on celluloid. For years, other directors had tempted Miller with the same promises, but the writer declined every offer. That is until Rodriguez, in Miller’s own words, literally seduced him into giving his blessing. But a blessing wasn’t enough for Rodriguez and he drafted Miller as his co-director on Sin City (to the detriment of Rodriquez’s DGA membership), ensuring that Miller’s vision would remain the guiding principle for all aspects of the production.

Rodriguez and Miller shot Sin City entirely at the filmmaker’s Austin, Texas, compound, Troublemaker Studios, with a large cast of Hollywood veterans and up-and-comers, including Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Rosario Dawson and Jessica Alba. Yet even more enticing was Rodriguez’s plan of how to approach tackling the visual look and feel of Miller’s novels for the movie. Following the path of his Spy Kids films, Rodriguez made the choice to shoot the actors almost entirely in greenscreen environments, using the barest minimum of props, with the intention of creating Miller’s world digitally. While Troublemaker did some initial previs work for the segment they shot to sway Miller’s approval for the film, Rodriguez knew the scale of the film would be too big for his in-house facility and bid the project out to three visual effects boutiques with whom he had previously worked: Hybride, CaféFX and The Orphanage. Each facility was awarded one entire story to create for the film, either “The Hard Goodbye,” “The Big, Fat Kill” or “That Yellow Bastard.” They were then provided Miller’s novel, the filmed footage for their story (with Troublemaker establishing the look with Rodriguez along with invaluable groundwork), and were mandated by Rodriguez to create their segment with Miller’s artistic vision as their guide. Rodriguez also told the houses to work independently, in a virtual creative bubble, so that each story’s look would remain true to Miller’s own artistic evolution over the series of the novels. The three stories would then be connected together in HD post, where the assembly would connect the three visions together for the first time. VFXWorld talked to the visual effects supervisors from each house to get their perspectives on this unique creative process and their personal challenges in making these stunning pages come to life.
Hybride — “The Hard Goodbye”
Visual effects collaborators with Rodriquez since the first Spy Kids, Hybride of Quebec was the first house to begin work on Sin City after the initial test was done at Troublemaker in late spring of 2004. Daniel Leduc, vp and visual effects producer of Hybride, became the supervisor for the house on the film and he explains that they were approached by Rodriquez to join the project despite their lack of familiarity with Miller’s novels.

“The critical point for Robert was that he wanted to follow the style of the book, but when you are looking at the pictures in the comic book, it’s not something that you can transpose on screen right away,” Leduc admits. “The style of Miller is black-and-white, with no gray scale at all. I remember we had a lot of discussion, lighting-wise, because it’s all drawings. When somebody is drawing, you can put highlights here and there and those are sometimes impossible to recreate on film. I was really nervous at the beginning because it was a black-and-white movie and we aren’t used to dong that, plus the vfx were the other way around. Normally, when we are doing effects, it’s more of a CG character over a background and this project is the other way around: it’s a real character on CG. In [Robert’s] mind, the movie was a super high contrast movie with no detail in the black or white. In his mind, it was supposed to be really close to the book, but it did change during production as we began to show him stuff.”

As the style began to evolve, Rodriquez settled overall on a very stylized look that incorporated black-and-white, photorealism and even object specific colors that were used randomly throughout all of the stories. Leduc explains, “The original elements were all in color, but in the compositing, they were finalized in black-and-white. Not knowing the final style, it was hard to plan everything ahead. We were trying to define things and environments in black-and-white and it was really, really difficult. At some point, we made the decision to do everything in color because we are more used to it. We did the environments in color and then peeled the color and it was much easier for the artists. It allowed us to decide that if we wanted to put back an object in color, we could just create a matte…but it didn’t happen,” he chuckles. “He made the decision to put color mainly on character — eyes, colors, hair.”

While working on the visual style, Leduc says they also had to settle on determining the technical details for the actual shooting in order to help in the post-production process. Physically, Rodriquez decided early on to keep the actor interaction with their environment as limited as possible.
“In our part, there is a bed in the opening. We call it the art bedroom. The bed was actually part of the shooting and real. We decided at the beginning to make all the interaction objects, anytime the actor was touching something, it was part of the set. It’s one of the toughest parts of vfx — contact. The bed, chairs, tables were part of the set, but not the floor or walls.” As for the cinematography, Rodriquez elected to continue working on video by choosing to shoot Sin City in HDSR, a format Leduc was pleased about. “My part at the beginning was to find ways to do the shooting to be able to generate the visuals after. This wasn’t my first HD movie, the third or the fourth one, actually. Technically speaking, I prefer to shoot something more flat so I can add the contrast after. To satisfy us both, we made the decision to use two monitors on set. One to show the real output of the camera and another one in black-and-white, in high contrast, looking closer to what Robert was expecting at the end. It helped a lot. The new HDSR have a lot better resolution than the HD cam. It’s 444 recording RGB, which means better keys and extraction and less noise. Technically speaking, it’s a lot better system. It’s closer to the definition scanning from film.”

Having worked with Rodriquez before in the format, Leduc says they had already worked out a lot of the technical shooting issues on previous projects, which made this process easier all around. “Robert is a strange man,” he laughs. “He likes a lot of technique and he is an artist at the same time. He always wants to understand what is happening and how to do things. I remember working on Spy Kids, I was always explaining things how to get certain effects. Now on Sin City…he knows what to do and he was really aware. I was on set for the beginning of the shooting, and in less than a month, I was back home and he shot it by himself.”

Back at Hybride, Leduc says they were left to their own devices on how to create their segment. “One important thing was that Robert decided not to involve the three houses apart from the technical specifications so we all worked the same way. It was part of the style. The design was really open. In Robert’s mind, everybody was able to design the direction, while he was controlling the direction at the same time. He needs to see stuff to make decisions, so seeing stuff from all the vendors, he put together the overall direction. Some scenes Robert was very specific on the directions and other scenes, it was up to us. It’s nice, but scary. Sometimes Robert didn’t even know what would be the final result. We did exchange the technique of the rain but we didn’t talk about the snow for my part. He did send to me shots from other vendors showing me what he liked and it was faster for him because there was so much stuff. He did that at the end with all the vendors.
“That was a big question mark with the movie because he was really trying to convert the book one-to-one and sometimes it was more contrast or less. So that was another reason why it was difficult at the beginning and we made our decision to do everything with a lot of resolution, like a normal picture. On the final, we were able to cut details so we didn’t have to redo everything. We did it once and after that we could do different styles.” As for systems used on the film, he adds, “We use mainly XSI for the 3D. We have Maya for the 3D parts and for compositing it was Discreet logic, inferno, flame. We had 85 people working on it for the 3D and other things.”

Reflecting on the project, Leduc is really happy with the forest they created. “It wasn’t exactly a real forest; it was in between being stylized and real looking. The other challenge was the rain. We began by doing real rain and Robert said it looked too real and he didn’t want to see something that looked too real. So we tried to find the essence of the look of it from the comic book, trying to extract the style, but at the same time you need to believe it’s real rain.”

In the end, Leduc says the “The Hard Goodbye” segment consisted of 735 shots and another 200 shots of color correction, for about 54 minutes of effects. “We began shooting last spring, but the big chuck of production was in the last four months. Matter of fact, one of our shots, was shooting in the second week of January 2005! It was the shot with the priest at the end of our book. They were actually shooting Shark Boy and Lava Girl then, so they took a break from that to do a couple days of Sin City again.
CaféFX — “The Big, Fat Kill”
Digital effects supervisor Everett Burrell of CaféFX Inc. suggests their involvement with Sin City stemmed from the sheer volume of effects that were needed for the film. “Robert has a relationship with CaféFX since Spy Kids. Basically, when Hybride realized that there were just too many shots, it became an automatic decision to go back to the other vendors they trust the most: CaféFX and The Orphanage.” Burrell admits he was a fan of Miller’s novels before they were assigned and because of his familiarity with the books, he initially thought the project would be easier because of Miller’s high contrast style.

“As we talked to Robert, he said, ‘No that’s not necessarily true because we can’t go as graphic as the graphic novels because it would wear and tear on the audiences eyes.’ We then realized it was going to be a photorealistic show and that we would selectively pick areas that are more stylized than others. So, we had to build the whole world, photoreal, and then in certain moments, it goes more stylized. That way, the audience isn’t so strained looking at a big, white screen all the time.”
Using the graphic novel as their storyboard, Burrell admits, “It was a lot more intense than any of us originally thought. We thought it would be a lot more comic booky, but it’s actually more film noir, than, say, the Richard Linkletter film, Waking Lives.” So we watched these old noir films like The Third Man, Touch of Evil and even Eraserhead was a very big influence.” In order to balance the intense effects demands, Burrell says they broke the segment down in-house. “I supervised half of it and Jeff Goldman supervised the other half. We split it pretty evenly and then Dave Lombardi at our Santa Monica office handled the [guest directed Quentin] Tarantino sequence, which was 35 shots, I think. Our teams would share ideas and techniques.”

Because of the greenscreen shooting, creating their entire world from scratch took a huge bulk of CaféFx’s time. “[Robert] wanted the actors to appear very real, just more moody and keeping all the nuisances. That also translated to the world we had to build: a subtle, realistic world, that wouldn’t make the audience think it’s fake. We had to make sure we put in every nook and cranny, bolt, doorknob and light bulb, tiles and carpeting and dirty glass. It’s a very dirty world! There had to be stains on the walls and dripping water, garbage in the alleyways — very intense detail. Also, the actors had to interact in this world that didn’t exist. It was exciting, but it was also very frightening because the amount of work. When you look at the plates, you just see guys standing on a greenscreen. What’s there? What’s behind them and how deep do we have to make this world?”
Very deep was the answer, with the minimal prop use meaning more work for the artists. “There would sometimes be a real car, but sometimes he couldn’t get the camera where he wanted so [the actors] were instead sitting on apple boxes. We had to create interiors of CG cars that had to cut with the real cars and match exactly. There is a scene where they go to, like, the La Brea Tar Pits and it’s really just a concrete floor. They are walking in wet mildew grass that didn’t exist, as well as bushes and tress and rain. We have the most rain in any episode and there was no rain on set. We had to create all the CG rain and the interaction of the rain and the clouds moving and trying to keep continuity. When you shoot an all greenscreen movie, you tend to get really lost quickly because you don’t have any point of reference. We had to develop north/south/east and west looks right off the bat. We actually temped out our entire episode by Thanksgiving of last year, even when it wasn’t due until the first of March. It was a tough call to make and it really burned some people out, but it was the only way we could be sure what Robert wanted.

“It was also scary, because Robert didn’t want us to share between the vendors,” Burrell continues. “We asked and Robert said, ‘No offense, I want you to do what you think is best and run with it. I want Hybride and The Orphanage to do the same because they are uniquely different stories.’ To Robert’s credit, he uses that to motivate the companies to come up with new things. If he sees something that he likes from one company, then he’ll tell the other company. But, honestly, I think everybody did such uniquely different jobs, we never got into a situation where Robert asked us to match.”

As for his favorite moments that CaféFX created, Burrell details, “There is a scene where Dwight is holding Jackie-Boy’s head in a toilet. In the graphic novel, it’s black shadows on Dwight and a white wall behind him. We built this photoreal bathroom, so what I thought would be neat was a slow push in on Dwight. We tweaked the levels and made it look just like the graphic novel. By the time the camera was done with the push in, we went from a photoreal world to a white wall and Dwight was super contrast-y and we captured that flavor from the graphic novel. When Dwight gets up to leave, it goes back to the real world. It’s an isolated moment and Robert loved it. Dwight is sort of a crazy character and you don’t know when he is going into his madness, so it heightens that. [Robert] liked it so much, he had us do it in other moments in the film, so there are moments where it goes into stylized mode, but it just accents the action or the motivation of the character.”
Another highlight involves Tarantino’s segment. “He directed a scene with Dwight driving a dead Jackie-Boy in his T-Bird to the Tar Pits. Jackie-Boy is dead, but Dwight thinks he is talking to him, so it’s a very maddening scene. Quentin shot it and referenced a really great film called Suspiria, which was one of the last films [printed in Technicolor dye transfer]. There was a super colorful scene of a girl in a taxi and these colored lights are going by and Quentin wanted us to match that and we did. Again, it’s super stylized and it’s not like in the graphic novel, but it captured the flavor.”

Detailing the overall production schedule, Burrell says, “It was a long haul. I was on it for nine months. We had a huge crew and it was the most shots Café has ever done for a single film — 650 shots. Our segments runs 42 minutes uncut, but Robert cut 10 minutes out. Some of that had to do with gore, but on the DVD all of it will be put back in. Also, one of the biggest things for us was that this HD444 technology is brand new and nothing works! Even Avid can’t make it work right, so there is a learning curve for not only the software and the hardware, but also the technology. People call it the new film, but it’s still video technology and you have to treat it like that, because it’s not quite there yet. It’s not like Cineon. There is a whole learning curve involved, so we learned a lot. I think the next show should go a lot easier. I had a great experience on it and knowing what I know from this, I have a better idea now on how to plan it out better — blueprinting the world a little more. We were so rushed to turn in ideas for looks that we overlooked the overall blueprint. From the get-go next time, we would blueprint the entire world and make a map of where we were in the city. Overall, it’s probably one of our most challenging projects ever because of the number of shots and that it was all green screen. I really have a deeper respect now for ILM and Star Wars films because they create so much. For Sin City, we are most proud of the fact that when most people watch it, they won’t have a clue that the city didn’t exist and they are all on a greenscreen, which is the point!”
The Orphanage — “That Yellow Bastard”
Of all the participants, Stu Maschwitz, the founding partner of The Orphanage and the vfx supervisor on Sin City, might have been the most excited about getting to play in Miller’s world. One of Rodriguez’s newer collaborators, Maschwitz says he first found out about Sin City on the Internet: “We’ve only been on one film with [Robert] before, Spy Kids 3D, but we got along really well and had similar attitudes about things. We never talked about Sin City, but I had long been a fan of the books. I read on Ain’t It Cool News about Robert’s pitch to Frank Miller and I e-mailed him right away because it was a dream project. We were asked to bid on it and were awarded the entire ‘Yellow Bastard’ segment. It was such a rare opportunity. Not only were we doing 1/3rd of the movie, but it was a contiguous chunk and it was every single shot!”

Despite his previous experience working on CGI dominant films, Maschwitz admits that the new approach is still evolving. “I am not 100% sold on what I imagine is going to become a more and more popular technique — the complete digital environment world. People are seeing a real opportunity in movies to create these impossible worlds and maybe control their budgets at the same time. Thinking purely with my visual effects hat on, it’s always better for us when we are doing the invisible work and that means keeping the audience guessing and using different techniques. It’s a big challenge to make the magic, repeating the same trick over and over again and not having the audience gets wise. It’s daunting, but in this case it was unique. We were doing things you couldn’t do another way, but in a gritty, real kind of way. I latched onto that and I didn’t want the stylization to come out of the fact that the world was going to be computer- generated. I wanted the stylization to be photographic and it became the mission statement that got us through the project.”
Unlike the other houses, Maschwitz details that their approach was very methodic. “The first order of business was to turn all of our matte painters into concept artists for a thumbnail phase, where we just did low resolution black-and-white mockups to show what the composition might look like. Then the rule was to think about how we would achieve the comic book imagery using live action and tradition lighting and gaffing techniques. We would emulate them using computer graphics, but we would rigidly adhere to a set of rules that would limit us to real world solutions.

“Robert would do things like, put a light source in the shot, because he knew that part of the shot would be removed later, but we would use the opportunity to put a practical light source back into our digital environment. We’d even take it farther than that. We have a lot of nighttime exteriors where it’s snowing outside, so we looked at a lot of films for reference that had snowy nighttime exteriors. One thing that became really obvious was that you could always tell where the light was coming from in a scene. It’s really interesting because in vfx, we have to remember that we aren’t simulating reality, we are simulating moviemaking.

“This is something that dates back to my days doing space-battle stuff for George Lucas for the Star Wars movies. We would light our computer-generated space ships as if they were models on a motion-control stage, because that is what we were simulating and what everyone knows a space ship should look like. For Sin City, those rules meant we would light our digital environments using essentially what they call photometrically correct lighting — CG lights that follow all the real world rules of light, in terms of how it falls off and how it spreads out over an area. It was interesting because a lot of the artists on my crew were resistant to that, because they felt like they were being robbed of some of their tools. I was trying to get them to think like a gaffer on the set, rather than some impossible CG maneuver. I wanted to give them a set of parameters, so it didn’t look like it was being put together without any rules.
“What I found is that people become more creative when you give them limitations and they did some amazing work,” he continues. “If an artist wanted a tree be a black silhouette against a white sky at night, it was easy to do because we would put a volumetric light back there that would rim light the trees, but would also fill up the air with light and therefore create the comic book silhouette. If our camera shook and if we panned across a light source, we’d have a little aperture flare come in from the light that is just hiding off the frame. We were going through a lot of manual effort to put in the kind of artifacts of live action filmmaking that we wouldn’t be able to control if we were doing it for real. So what that means is that we achieved the stylization look, but we worked through real world limitations to get there.”

Like the other houses, Maschwitz says their creative freedom on the film was an amazing opportunity. “I actually don’t do a lot of vfx supervising for anyone other than Robert. Working with him is that rare collaboration because he is so open to working with others and he can do that because his own vision is so strong and he doesn’t have to micromanage. His vision of a film is broad is enough to encompass other people’s ideas. Every time we had a question about how something would look, Robert would very politely say, ‘Go look at the comic book.’ They shot essentially every frame of the comic book, and used that as a starting point and branched off from there. Frank was the one more interested in branching off and doing different things and Robert was really the stickler. We were handed a bunch of green screen material and we were charged with reuniting all that with the comic book images that inspired the angles and lighting.

“I also think Robert allowed us to push the Sin City look maybe farther than the other sequences because ours was last and by that time, the audience was going to be in it. We had a lot of conversations on how far we get to push it and the rule became to do what Frank does when he draws the pages, which is that he pencils in the whole thing in complete detail and then he goes through a lighting phase where he brings out the ink and he may black over huge areas, but you can tell in the final image that it is an abstraction of something that is real. It’s the beauty of black and white, which forces you to participate by filling in the missing information.”

Getting that look means The Orphanage had to push themselves into new areas of R&D. “We pulled out every trick in the book, from adding little bits of camera shake to aperture flares and even making our dolly speed slightly uneven with relationship to the actors. We would maniacally horde our reference for things like when what a Ferrari headlight looks like when it’s six inches away from a Panavision lens, or what snow looks like when it’s kicked in your face and it’s backlit by taillights. My mantra to the artists was open the lid to your computer and pour some dirt into it. Robert would see the shots and he knew we were working overtime to make things work. The falling snow is a perfect example. There were a bunch of really fun things that we knew were going to be hard, like splattering blood and simulating vehicle animation, but the one thing that snuck up and bit us was snow. It’s quite a feat to do motion blurred snow with depth of field that can be properly backlit and interact with an environment that may be coming from any number of sources. You have 3D snow that has to be lit and fall, land gently on something that doesn’t exist and disappear in a graceful way and it’s in every single shot! We tried using stuff that we already knew how to do to achieve that and kept hitting walls and halfway through the production we implemented a Houdini Mantro pipeline to simulate and render the snow. It’s the first time we’ve ever used Houdini and it won’t be the last. It wound up being one of those great things that the extra effort paid off in spades.”

Discussing their delivery timeline, Maschwitz adds, “We were in Austin during the second week of July and we were in full shot production from the end of July and we delivered final shots in early February. It was a mountain of work,” he sighs. “It was 560 shots. It was broken down between 3D artists doing full digital environments, compositors and matte painters and a lot of crossover responsibility and a whole team just to do falling snow. We also delivered HD masters during the whole process, knowing full well that when they started the HD assembly that there would be changes, which was a pleasure to go back and do.”

Tara DiLullo is an East Coast-based writer whose articles have appeared in publications such as SCI FI Magazine, Dreamwatch and ScreenTalk, as well as the websites atnzone.com and ritzfilmbill.com.

source:
http://vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=57c5ed8a&atype=articles&id=2447&page=1#

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

christians give sin city a perfect score

east_bay_gray — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 19:22:25 GMT

http://www.capalert.com/capreports/sincity.htm

"Every other 'shalt not' in the Bible was likely violated in this film."

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 2 replies

YEA!

tiffanyrose — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:18:04 GMT

I have been a Frank Miller fan since I first picked up an Elektra way back in the mid 80's. I got all the books that I could get my hands on back then when I was a teenager. Now that I'm an "adult" I had forgot how much I loved his books. I'm glad I found this tribe so I can refresh my memory a bit before I see the movie. I haven't read the books since they came out!

I'm going to go to my mom's house and see if I can find them out, and pray that the creeps who stole my comic book collection from my years ago didn't get them. I think all my Miller books were safe at my mom's (with the Elfquest and Love & Rockets)! The Miller books had their own "home" since they were so awesome!

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 4 replies

Sin Is In at the Box Office

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 04:47:43 GMT

Sin Is In at the Box Office
Source: BoxOfficeMojo , Edward Douglas April 3, 2005

The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with the studio estimates for the weekend. Be sure to stay tuned there for the final figures on Monday.
http://www.comingsoon.net/boxoffice/2005/apr1.php

This weekend, it was all about Frank Miller's Sin City. Directed by Miller with Robert Rodriguez and his pal Quentin Tarantino, and starring Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and dozens more, the question this weekend was never whether it would be #1, but how much an R-rated black-and-white movie based on a little known comic book could make. In this case, it earned an estimated $28 million opening weekend, more than last year's Hellboy, either of the two Kill Bill films or Rodriguez's last movie. It averaged $8,706 in 3,230 theatres across the country.

Also opening this weekend was the Barbershop spin-off, Beauty Shop, starring Queen Latifah, which took in an estimated $13.5 million, just barely outmanouvering the Bernie Mac/Ashton Kutcher comedy, Guess Who for second place. Having opened on Wednesday, Latifah's estrogen-laden comedy has grossed just over $17 million so far. Still, the latter held up well in its second weekend with an estimated three day take of $13 million, taking it just over the $40 million mark.

The CG animated family comedy Robots also held up well, keeping its fourth place spot for a second weekend in a row, as it crossed the $100 million mark in its fourth weekend.

Sequelitis has set in, as Sandra Bullock's Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous didn't hold up too well from its Easter opening, making just over $8 milion. Likewise, The Ring Two continues to lose business, as it took another large tumble in its third weekend, earning less than $6 million. The two sequels have earned $31 million and $68 million respectively.

Expanding into 1,111 theatres across the country, the Kevin Costner and Joan Allen dramedy The Upside of Anger, directed by Mike Binder, moved into the Top 10, earning just over $4 million, and nearly doubling its box office to just under $9 million after four weeks.

The Disney ice skating movie Ice Princess, starring "Buffy" star Michelle Trachtenberg, rounded out the Top 10 with $2.5 million in its third weekend and just under $19 million total.

In limited release, Agnes Jaoui's French drama Look at Me opened in 6 theatres in New York and Los Angeles, making just under $75,000 its opening weekend, an average of $12,500 per theatre. The Baja 1000 documentary Dust to Glory from filmmaker Dana Brown grossed just under $17,000 in just two theatres.

Click here for the full box office estimates of the top twelve films:
http://www.comingsoon.net/boxoffice/2005/apr1.php

source:
http://www.comingsoon.net/news.php?id=9030

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Interview: Robert Rodriguez, Jessica Alba and Benicio Del Toro for "Sin City"

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:30:27 GMT

Interview: Robert Rodriguez, Jessica Alba and Benicio Del Toro for "Sin City"
Posted: Monday March 28th, 2005 1:10AM
Author: Paul Fischer
Location: Los Angeles, CA
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/sincity.php

While so many comic book adaptations have been treated with cynical indifference of late, Robert Rodriguez may have re-energised the genre with his eagerly awaited Sin City. The Sin City in question, is a violent city where the police department is as corrupt as the streets are deadly. In this movie, we follow three stories, the central of which is Marv, a tough-as-nails and nearly impossible to kill street fighter who goes on a rampage of vengeance when a beautiful woman, Goldie (Jamie King), he sleeps with for only one night is killed while lying in bed with him. Chatting together ion a Los Angeles hotel room, Rodriguez, along with two of the film's co-stars, Jessica Alba and Benicio del Toro, talked to the media. PAUL FISCHER reports.

Question: How do you choose what you want to direct?

Robert Rodriguez: It just depends on how it grabs you, it's got to be something that excites you. It's why I pursued Frank just like a wild dog, trying to find him to do this movie, because once I got it into my head that it was possible, and I did a test and I saw what it was looking like, I knew I wouldn't get this excited about another project for a long time. I had to hunt him down and find him and convince him somehow that we're going to do this movie, because I could already see it and I wanted to do it really bad, so I just felt right. That's why nothing would get in my way, and then the DGA goes, 'Oh, you can't do the movie like that,' I go, 'I'm leaving.' I cannot stop now, this is like a train that's rolling, and everyone jump aboard, because it's just too new, it's too right, and it feels like that way for everything, the Spy Kids movies as well. I just felt it was a way to do something about my family in a way that was entertaining, by just making them spies, this is my family as spies, basically. And this new movie that I'm doing, my little kid came up with, my seven-year-old. The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lavagirl. We were playing in the swimming pool and I'm playing shark, and he said, 'You're shark dad and I'm shark boy. Hey, let's make a movie about shark boy and I'll be the shark boy,' and I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' So we were drawing it out and it became this movie, and I got real excited about that, again to work with my family on a movie for other families. And so I thought, 'This is something that I can wake up in the morning and work on, this is going to be - put all our imagination into. So it really, the ideas, the bad ideas or the ideas that you don't get excited about fall away, and the ones that come forward, are the ones that get your blood pumping and get your heart pumping, and the ones you can't sleep until you do them. Those are the ones that keep me up all night, and keep me working.

Question: Did the CGI heavy Sky Captain show the way for movies like Sin City?

Robert Rodriguez: They were kind of built at the same time, I had just done a bunch of movies on green screen, I'd done the Spy Kids movies, in fact even the props weren't there, because it was all simulated from the game, even though they said that was the first movie done on green screen, I'd actually already had been doing that. But when I did Sin City, I hadn't seen any materials on Sky Captain, I didn't really know they were doing a green screen movie with HD, I'd already been doing that for a while. But I shot the test and I went and showed Frank the material and it's very different, because we were shooting on green screen not just to save money, which is why they were doing that, but it was really the only way we could capture these images and get that black and white style, because if we shot it in a real environment, all its things just go gray, because they are all mid-tones. We had to isolate the actors from the background in order to create that very stark black and white - to create a black and white that you've never seen before, because if you watch a black and white movie it's really gray and white, because of all the mid-tones. We had to get rid of all of those, the way Frank did with pen and ink. So I realized this is going to be a total exercise in things I've been doing, but that's why I felt comfortable doing it, because I had already done a lot of stuff as a photographer and as a effects supervisor, coming up with these ideas.

Question: For the actors - can you talk about seeing yourself in that environment for the first time and do you have a favorite scene?

Benicio Del Toro: You know, it met the expectations when I saw the movie - it surpassed it. What happens when you're in a movie for me, I just come in and work for five days and I'm out, I just basically know one story. Usually when I see a movie it's the other stories that attract me more than my story, I'm looking at my story going, 'Oh, no.' But it's the other stories - it's just hard to pick one moment, I really enjoy the underwater stuff. I don't know, there's something about it -

Robert Rodriguez: Did you find it easier to watch yourself, Mickey did, because he was in make up and he was really playing a character - did you find it easier to look at yourself because you're really playing someone so different and look different, because he found - I got him to be able to come watch himself on the HD monitor, he said, "I never could have watched, but this is different. I'm literally looking at somebody else."

Benicio Del Toro: I've seen Mickey watch himself, and that's an extreme. I happened to be in a screening room, Mickey Rourke was sitting in front of me, and it was a movie that he was in and I was in and I really saw him shrinking in his seat. I'm going 'What about me?' But, yeah, I think it was easier. You know, the movie has that world that grabs you so hardcore, and I think good movies make it easier for you to watch yourself, if you suffer from that same thing that Mickey has, and which I do too. I find it hard for me to watch myself on the screen, kind of boring really. But the movie has such a world that grabs you that it was a ride and you just took it and enjoyed it.

Jessica Alba: I just felt like I was a little line in this piece of music, it was beautiful from beginning to end, I was like, I want to rewind it and see the whole thing all over again, because I don't think I got to have all the images that I want in my mind, there was so much, it was so visual, and overwhelming, and all the characters were so specific and it was great.

Question: Did you watch yourself?

Jessica Alba: I'm critical of myself, so I just kind of go like, I'm waiting for my part to be over so I can get on with enjoying the movie. That's sort of my thing, but you made my skin look nice, thanks.

Question: Jessica, talk about training for the role

Jessica Alba: I workout anyway just because it's healthy to workout, and women have health problems, especially in my family, and so I just work- out just to be healthy anyway, and so that was already a part of it, and I went to strip clubs to see how strippers do it, and I realized that - I wanted a choreographer, and Robert said no. And I was like, (sighs in frustration) 'Okay.' He was like, 'Just feel it. We're just going to play music, and you're just going to feel it.'

Robert Rodriguez: I didn't want it to be dancing, something like Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn. She wanted a choreographer, she goes, 'I don't know how to dance.' I said, 'I'm not going to have you doing dance through that one, it's a little more primal than that.'

Jessica Alba: Mind you, he's saying Salma Hayek in Dust Till Dawn, the sexiest dance I've ever seen on camera, ever. And he's like, 'It'll be like that.' I was like, 'Like that? Are you serious? I have to live up to something.' It's iconic. There hasn't been a sexier dance ever, and she wasn't naked. She was gorgeous.

Robert Rodriguez: And she was just there. You do it, and you go up there, I just knew - you just go up there and dance, you know how to dance, it's going to be something people wish they could choreograph.

Jessica Alba: He says that, but my heart was beating so fast, I was so nervous, and then I had some Texan teach me how to rope and lasso and I was out there spinning the gun,

Robert Rodriguez: You whacked yourself in the head a few times

Jessica Alba: A couple of times.

Robert Rodriguez: By the time she got to the stage she was like a pro, we were all just watching (looks transfixed)- 'Oh the tape just run out Robert,' 'Oh, oh, okay. Put on another tape, let's go.'

Question: How is this movie different from The Fantastic Four?

Jessica Alba: Yeah, Fantastic Four couldn't be more different. Fantastic Four is a family movie, I play a scientist who has a problem expressing her emotions, and her DNA was altered and when she does express her emotions she goes invisible. So when she's screaming, she goes invisible, when she's having a meltdown, she goes invisible, and she's completely frustrated, and the man that she's in love with ignores her, and she goes invisible. So that's very frustrating. It's very big and it's a huge movie for Fox and there's a lot of pressure that it does well. So it really couldn't be more different.

Question: Did you do Into the Deep before this?

Jessica Alba: It's Into the Blue. I actually got into trouble for calling it Into the Deep once. I did that a long time ago, Jim Cameron has been talking about maybe doing a comic book that involves scuba diving, or fathom, it's sort of like this girl underwater. And I had been talking to him about possibly doing something like that, and this movie came up and I hadn't scuba dived in seven months, and they were going to give me a decent paycheck to scuba dive in the Bahamas for five months. I was like, cool. Honestly, that's why I did that.

Question: What's going to be on the DVD?

Robert Rodriguez: We shot the full stories of the books, and I knew we could truncate it down knowing that we weren't going to lose any scenes, eventually they would all be available for people to see. So the DVD will come out as a theatrical cut, and then there will be a separate disc that's got the individual episodes separated, with their own title card, and you can just watch, The Big Fat Kill from beginning to end in its full cut, as a single story, and then switch over and watch The Yellow Bastard, and that's 45 minutes, I'll have all the material back in, so it will be like the experience of picking up the books, where you pick up one story and you read it from beginning to end, and it will have all the material in it. So you can shuffle your own version of the movie and watch them all separately.

Question: Did you cut things out?

Robert Rodriguez: Yeah, there were some things we'd cut out from there, just to pace it for a feature, because they weren't supposed to be three stories put together when he first wrote them, they were all separate books. So things to kind of pace it for a feature and keep it on the through line, didn't have as many - Marv, Mickey Rourke, doesn't go and visit his mom now, like he did in the book, and get his gun and things like that. But we shot all that, and it's all great stuff. It just wasn't necessary for the feature, we wanted to be more direct in that. But it's not going to feel like - when you watch that separate disc, with this material back in, like, 'Oh, I can see what that was cut.' They're really terrific scenes, action scenes, a lot of stuff that people will find - I think it's going to be somewhat revolutionary to see those kind of scenes that were cut out, be put back in another format, because they seem perfectly fine, and they were, they just needed to be taken out for the long haul of the feature. So I think it really gives another life, and another experience, more akin to reading the books, by doing that. That's what made it easier for us to say, 'Let's just shoot everything, prepare all the effects, and then if we edit stuff out we're not really cutting it out, and people are never going to see it, they'll be able to see it in a purer form, in a different format.

Question: Will it be a package

Benicio Del Toro: A package. A package.

Robert Rodriguez: A package. And then I'm going to have another 10 minute - there'll be a 20 minute film school probably for this one, because there are so many things - and I'll have another 10 minute cooking school, it's be a Sin City breakfast tacos. I'll show you how to make a homemade flour tortilla and the best meal you could probably ever learn.

Question: For all three of you, what from your Latin heritage bleeds into your work?

Benicio Del Toro: His pizza and jalapeno that Robert makes, it bled into my work.

Robert Rodriguez: I cook a lot. I finally found someone who eats as much as me. Homemade pizza from a pizza oven with jalapenos on them.

Benicio Del Toro: Is that a Latin dish?

Robert Rodriguez: It is now.

Jessica Alba: And that restaurant, oh my goodness. The best Mexican food I've ever had, other than my grandmother's, of course.

Robert Rodriguez: (sounds like) Fonda San Miguel in Austin. One of the best Mexican - it's like an interior Mexican restaurant.

Jessica Alba: It's so authentic and so good. Can't hear question - something about doing the school part of the DVD, when he had done special effects on it before.

Robert Rodriguez: Yeah, this kind of movie, there'll be plenty. That's why I'm thinking it might be 20 minutes. Each movie's a different project. Even though the green screen is the same, how you do it is different each time and the project you do is different each time. And I think this one in particular might interest people, because when you see the before and afters you'll be astonished. It's astonishing. I've shown people and even though they've seen green screen-type things before, they went, 'That's all you had? Alexis Bledel was walking backwards to make it look like Jackie Boy's pulling up beside her, and the she's just walking in place the whole time? They're not going anywhere?' It's pretty amazing stuff that we did in a very small area that will floor people, and then they'll go, 'Wow, these actors are unbelievable.' They're like, 'You're doing this, and you're doing a performance.' It's stuff you would never have to do, but we did, because we had limited means. And I think that's fascinating. Was there a balance that you had to get style from overwhelming the story?

Robert Rodriguez: No, the thing about the book is that they go hand-in-hand. To have made a regular movie out of Sin City would have robbed it of how much the images worked on you, because that's what I've always loved about them is that they were great stories on their own, but also the images are what really hits you first. And that's the affect it's had, people see a trailer and they say, 'This looks unbelievable,' because the visuals hit them. They're not getting any story, they're just getting the visuals, and so then you know it's working, because it goes hand-in-hand, that's what is so great about Frank's books and what's made him so enduring, and so astonishing in the comic world, is that they're very complete as stories and very original stories, but then the visual element is also revolutionary. So that's why I wanted to make a movie out of it, because I thought if I could put that on the screen, people have never seen that before, it'll be a really new experience for them. Does it worry you that what's being done digitally later that that could overwhelm your performances?

Benicio Del Toro: No, I don't know if I'm competing with palm trees and stuff like that, but I did feel like usually in movies less is more, but in this movie - or one of the reasons to do it in some ways was that to do more is more. More over-the-top, what we call over-the-top, it's conducive for that, it's a comic book and the wizard was stimulating (I think he meant stipulating) that every morning. 'Yeah, why don't you do that? Okay.'

Robert Rodriguez: They would be in the world. He would look at the panels and go, 'Okay, I get my hand cut off here, but in the next panel I've got the gun again. How did I get it out of my hand? Maybe I should go chew my fingers off the gun.' That was his idea. They were coming up with ideas to fill in the panels.

Benicio Del Toro: And then maybe I should take the hand and put it into my pocket.

Robert Rodriguez: And I said, 'For later.' We were laughing about that.

Benicio Del Toro: He was like, 'Yeah, that's a good idea, get your hand and put it in your pocket.'

Robert Rodriguez: So that's why he was like shuffling around, getting his hand, sticking it in his pocket, that wasn't in the book but it's sort of in between the lines, because the book jumped from panel to panel. And it was very creative of them to come up with things that helped the story and really filled in the story, and filled in the character and the whole reason to shoot on green screen was to really strip away the background and the effects to really make what was really important, important - which was the performances and the actors, because that's how his comics are. Sometimes it's just black behind an actor in the comic of the character, so that you're really just looking at their eyes or the performance, and the characters need to be what pops out more. That's what people are going to walk away from here, is how unique the yellow bastard is, or Elijah Wood character is, or Jackie Boy or Nancy, you think about the characters, you're not thinking about all that other stuff.

source:
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/sincity.php

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Rodriguez & Miller Sin City Audio Interview on NPR

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 14:53:42 GMT

Rodriguez & Miller Sin City Audio Interview on NPR
Source: 'clevername' April 1, 2005

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4569989

NPR.org has posted a great interview with Sin City Directors Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller conducted by writer / director Kevin Smith. Below is a excerpt:

The dark and violent comic Sin City is now a movie. Director Robert Rodriguez says that even on the page, artist Frank Miller's stories had a cinematic quality. To learn more, NPR asked director Kevin Smith to speak with Rodriguez and Miller.

Sin City relates life in a hard-boiled town full of self-interested citizens and tough-talking cops. In the film as in the graphic novels, everyone has an angle, from crooks to femme fatales. The movie also shares the stark, yet evocative, mostly black and white palette of its print counterpart.

Rodriguez and Miller collaborated closely on the film adaptation, sharing director and producer credits. In addition, Rodriguez served as the movie's cinematographer and editor, while Miller wrote the screenplay.

To read the full article and to hear the entire Extended Audio of Kevin Smith Interviewing Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, follow the link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4569989

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'PAGE TO SCREEN' [Interview with Frank Miller]

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 01:31:16 GMT

'PAGE TO SCREEN'

By Aaron Hillis
http://movies.channel.aol.com/franchise/pagetoscreen/sin_city/miller.adp

Moviefone How did you get approached for this adaptation?

Frank Miller Therein lies a tale. Robert Rodriguez really wanted to make this movie, and I really didn't want to make it. I just felt that 'Sin City' was my precious baby, and Hollywood would just slap a happy ending on it and turn it into a run-of-the-mill action movie. He kept at me, and eventually we met. There he was, in this giant cowboy hat, in a saloon in Hell's Kitchen. He showed me on his laptop that he had already done a bunch of really gorgeous, black-and-white and color shots just using people like his sister, some of his crew, and himself. I was intrigued, but then I turned him down again.

MF Why was that?

FM Well, same reason. He seemed like a really nice guy with the best intentions, but I thought there would be some of those "dark gods of Hollywood" that would mess it up. I didn’t want to have that memory of my creation. But the man does not give up. Not too many days later, he calls me up and says, "Hey, I got an idea. How about I fly you out to Austin to do a test for a day, from one of your short stories. I’ll get some friends, show you my technique, and we’ll see after that if you’d want to do it." So he takes all the risk, and the worst thing that could happen is that we end up with a cool DVD to show our friends. You can't turn down an offer like that! So I went to Austin, and the first person I run into was Josh Hartnett. And then Marley Shelton. Test, my butt, this was the first day of principal photography! [Laughs.] I didn’t think we could shoot a three-page story in a couple of days, but we shot it in 10 hours. I got to work with actors and see how the technology worked, then the fish hook was stuck in my palette. He reeled me right in. But the prime reason why I really went for it was that Robert was not kidding, he wanted to translate my book rather than adapt it. That's the way he put it, because it's not changed. The words and pictures are from the book. It's ruthlessly faithful.

MF What kind of technology was involved?

FM It's digital, CGI. This is the 'Star Wars' of crime movies. The actors are all real, there aren't any Yodas running around, but the city itself is a creation of computers. It combines a lot of the mystique of the old black-and-white stuff like Fritz Lang and Orson Welles. Cutting-edge modern technology. So, as they do in my book, the cars do fly 10 feet off the ground. When Marv runs and jumps from building to building, he can jump 20 feet.

MF How much of the film, besides the actors themselves, was digitally created?

FM There was one major working set, which was the saloon that all the locals go to. That was a real set. Other than that, there was very little [that was real]. The way we shot was that if an actor was using a prop, or obviously sitting on a chair or something, we had that as a real element. But if the actor was walking across a street or running down an alley, odds are there was no alley there when we shot it. That's all created later.

MF The movie is based upon three separate tales: the first 'Sin City' story, 'Big Fat Kill' and 'That Yellow Bastard.' What made you decide on those storylines?

FM It was Rodriguez's suggestion. What intrigued me is that I’ve fielded at least a dozen previous offers for 'Sin City.' The movie people have wanted this for a while. [Rodriguez] was the first guy who came along with an over-arching concept which hadn’t occurred to me. Once the idea settled in, I loved it because this is going to make people feel like they've been to Sin City. They’ll see these cross-connected lives, the bar that everyone goes to, and one barmaid (played by Brittany Murphy) who is in every story. Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) is in two of them, and Marv's in two of them. It all connects, and as we worked on it, we just made it connect more and more. It’s very true to the material, but we gave it more the feeling that it was one world, that these things are happening at the same time.

MF How does this differ from other graphic-novel movie adaptations?

FM It’s utterly faithful. It looks like the books. Greg Nicotero and his team, who did the prosthetic work, set the tone by turning Mickey Rourke into my character Marv. That seemed to have started a fever among the cast. Benicio Del Toro showed up and he became, as Greg said, the first actor to ever request a prosthetic. He wanted to look more like the drawing, so they went to work on him. Then along comes [Nick Stahl's character] That Yellow Bastard, and Greg just outdid himself. I can’t talk about Greg’s magic because I wasn’t there for the making of. But I can tell you that it takes a damn long time. I think poor Nick went through three hours of makeup a day, and probably another hour getting stuff taken off. He even had the distended belly that I drew.

MF How did you and Rodriguez share the filmmaking responsibilities as co-directors?

FM It was one of those wonderful times you have in your creative life where things just seem to be right. It was very organic. There were very few arguments, and the arguments we had were productive. It was if the duties just fell naturally to one or the other. For one thing, I was able to concentrate on certain things that freed up Robert to do the million things he does. He wears a lot of cowboy hats on-set. He's the overall boss of the store, the chief camerman, and in charge of all the technical stuff. And he’s a director. So, having me around, I was able to really narrow in on certain aspects [and be] the point man for what 'Sin City' was. It was the rare case of an author being in that position, especially a comic-book author.

MF Working backwards from the 'Sin City' movie, were there film directors who inspired your graphic novels?

FM Oh yeah! I love film noir and crime fiction. Sam Fuller is a big favorite of mine, arguably my favorite director. There are more obvious ones, like Orson Welles and Fritz Lang, and little known ones like Robert Siodmak, whose 'Criss Cross' is wonderful. Roy William Neill is another one. I eat this stuff up.

MF Would you ever consider making any of your other works into film?

FM Sure. Now that I've seen it can be done. Working with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, I realized there are some executives out there who not just get it, but let you do it. They’ve been wonderful. The suggestions they’ve made have been very useful. If I could work with this squad again, I’d do it in a second. [I'd like to work on] 'Hard Boiled.' And the entire 'Martha Washington' saga, I’d love to do it piece-by-piece like they did with 'Lord of the Rings.' Just let it be the epic it wants to be.

MF This sounds like a real labor of love. Do you think directing is now going to influence your graphic novels?

FM It will probably make my comic books less cinematic because I'm scratching that itch. And now I want to explore the ways the two forms are different. A lot of people in comics refer to them as movies-on-paper, but I never thought of them that way because it demeans comics. Comics can do things movies can't, just as movies can do so many things that comics can't. The way I’m playing with it intellectually is [in] trying to explore the difference between the two.

MF Do you have your next project lined up?

FM I'm about 120 pages into a new Batman graphic novel. It's called 'Holy Terror, Batman!' and it's Batman vs. Al-Qaeda. [Laughs heartily.] I am shameless.

source:
http://movies.channel.aol.com/franchise/pagetoscreen/sin_city/miller.adp

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A Film Offers Buckets of Blood in Three Designer Colors [By DAVID M. HALBFINGER NYTimes]

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:04:12 GMT

A Film Offers Buckets of Blood in Three Designer Colors
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

March 31, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/movies/31sin.html

****WARNING SPOILERS****

LOS ANGELES, March 30 -If Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" shocked audiences with up-close gore, and his "Kill Bill" movies racked up record numbers of spurting arteries and flying body parts, his pal Robert Rodriguez's "Sin City," which opens in 3,300 theaters nationwide tomorrow, may set a new mark for its stomach-churning versatility.

Try this for range: cannibalism, castration, decapitation, dismemberment, electrocution, hanging, massacres, pedophilia, slashings and lots and lots of torture.

"Blood for blood, and by the gallons," vows Mickey Rourke's vengeful character, Marv, in what proves to be no exaggeration.

The film's release by Miramax's Dimension Films, the genre label started by Bob Weinstein, comes at a time when Mr. Weinstein and his brother Harvey are ending their relationship with The Walt Disney Company and when Disney is decidedly reemphasizing movies geared for children and families in its overall portfolio.

But the family-friendly entertainment company says it is hardly turning its back on the extremely violent fare that helped make the Weinsteins and their protégés Mr. Tarantino and Mr. Rodriguez famous. Dick Cook, the Disney studio chairman who will choose a new Miramax chief sometime between now and July, said he would not handcuff the post-Weinstein Miramax from making similarly violent pictures.

"We're not going to put, at least going in, any restrictions or anything else on what the new Miramax might look like," Mr. Cook said in an interview. "I'd rather it be organic and grow, and I think it'll develop its own taste. But I don't want to, at least going in, preclude anything. It would certainly not be very smart of us to do that. I think by nature of the things we choose to do, the product will define who and what we are, as opposed to trying to single out certain things as appropriate or inappropriate."

The makers of "Sin City," which is based on the noir-to-the-nth-degree comics - or, more aptly, the graphic novels - of Frank Miller, say that the nonstop violence was hardly the point of the exercise.

For Mr. Rodriguez, whose earlier bloodbaths include "From Dusk Till Dawn," "El Mariachi" and "Desperado" - he is also the creator of the "Spy Kids" franchise - the point was to render Mr. Miller's books more faithfully than any comic has ever been on screen, using the latest digital technology to transport viewers into the comic books' world.

"If you look at the original books, it's taken right off the pages," Mr. Rodriguez said at the party after the film's premiere here Monday night. "Those books always hit me. And I didn't want to go back and rethink it too much, because it never bothered me before - they were so stylized and so abstract. I mean, when you see the white blood gushing - that's pretty straight from the book."

There is white blood, and yellow blood, and plenty of red blood, too: Mr. Rodriguez said he injected the real color at times to make clear that characters getting beaten to a pulp were, indeed, feeling pain.

He noted that the movie actually combines three of Mr. Miller's books - weaving plots about Mr. Rourke's brute, another tough guy played by Clive Owen and a brutal cop played by Bruce Willis - "so it's pretty relentless." He added, "It's like sitting and reading three very violent comics back to back to back"

Mr. Rodriguez said that the Motion Picture Association of America had not asked for a single change before giving "Sin City" an "R" rating. "They're usually the most squeamish, but they got the stylization, they got the abstractness of it and it was obviously not a realistic movie."

For Bob Weinstein, meanwhile, the gore in every scene is secondary to the romantic underpinnings of the three plots. "If all there was was the violence of the comic book, nobody would be making this movie including me," he said by telephone Wednesday. "What transcends it is these are three lugs who happen to be in love with these women in very different ways - the knights in dirty armor. Bruce Willis is the protector, Clive Owen is fighting for the honor of the women of the streets and Mickey Rourke was framed. It's about the lengths they will go for redemption and revenge. That's the core of it, and that's what Robert and Frank got, and that's what every film noir piece has. And people love that."

Of course, not every film noir piece shows the heads of five prostitutes mounted on a wall, or a dog eating the legs of a still-live boy, or a man ripping out the genitals of another man, or - but never mind.

Mr. Weinstein added that, despite the appearances of stars with youthful fan bases like Jessica Alba, Brittany Murphy and Elijah Wood, neither the film nor its marketing were aimed at under-age filmgoers. "We're not looking for a 14-year-old audience here," he said. "That's not part of the plan at all. Jessica Alba skews to the men in all of us, from 12-year-olds to 55-year-olds." If "Sin City" does prove the next battlefield in the culture wars, though, its critics may have some trouble presenting a unified front. The reviewer of the film for movieguide.org - a self-styled "ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles" - seemed a tad conflicted.

After cataloguing everything from the film's "pervasive pagan moral worldview" to its "33 obscenities, but no F-words" and every kind of violent act, the reviewer summed up the film as "abhorrent" but worth three stars, calling it "engrossing" and calling Mr. Willis "very fun to watch."

"Filmmaking virtuosity aside," the reviewer hastened to add, " 'Sin City' is despicable."

source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/movies/31sin.html

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Sin City on YAHOO!

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 04:52:55 GMT

the features on YAHOO have been up dated with more clips, photos from the premiere:
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/sincity.html

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Sin City World Premiere Red Carpet Interviews

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:01:44 GMT

Sin City World Premiere Red Carpet Interviews

Source: 'Robert Sanchez'

March 29, 2005

Sin City had it's World Premiere last night at Mann's National Theater in Westwood, Ca. and the entire cast was there.

IESB has posted several video interviews with the cast and crew including: Frank Miller, Clive Owen, Michael Madsen, Rutger Hauer, Powers Boothe, Alexis Bledel, Jaime King and Composer John Debney.

http://www.iesb.net/movies2/movie032905b.php

Follow the link above to see the full interviews and keep posted on other upcoming interviews from the featured players.

Also 'Markman713' says the official SIN CITY site has been updated with access to "the books" and has addaed a screensaver which is not yet downloadable and access to "fan central".

http://www.sincitythemovie.com/

source:
http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=2785

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Wanna see the Austin Premiere of SIN CITY with Goldie and Yellow Bastard?

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:34:32 GMT

Wanna see the Austin Premiere of SIN CITY with Goldie and Yellow Bastard?

http://www.comics2film.com/FanFrame.php?f_id=12241

Hey folks, Harry here - in addition to this premiere just being fun as hell... In addition to Goldie and Yellow Bastard and Robert Rodriguez... the coolest reason to be at the Paramount screening is that Rodriguez is setting up microphones all over the Paramount to record sound for a special plan of his. What exactly? He'll announce at the Paramount. But be a part of history - and have a great fucking time with a movie that'll kick your asscheeks up to warm your ears. Here ya go...

AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY PRESENTS REGIONAL PREMIERE OF 'SIN CITY'

WITH ROBERT RODRIGUEZ, SPECIAL GUESTS IN ATTENDANCE

(Austin, TX) - Austin Film Society (AFS) and TippingPoint are proud to present the regional premiere of Dimension Films' FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY from Austin-based director Robert Rodriguez, Thursday, March 31, at 7:30 p.m. at Paramount Theatre. AFS welcomes Rodriguez and stars Nick Stahl and Jaime King to this exciting event.

The evening will include a Q&A with Rodriguez, Stahl and King following the screening and a post-premiere party at Stubb's BBQ, 801 Red River, featuring the music of singer/songwriter Patricia Vonne.

Red carpet arrivals will begin at 7 p.m.

Robert Rodriguez (SPY KIDS, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO) and comic book icon Frank Miller co-direct SIN CITY, based on the series of graphic novels created, written, and illustrated by Miller. SIN CITY is infested with criminals, crooked cops and sexy dames, some searching for vengeance, some for redemption and others, both. The movie incorporates storylines from three of Miller's graphic novels including, "Sin City", which launched the long-running critically acclaimed series, as well as "That Yellow Bastard" and "The Big Fat Kill."

Rodriguez, whose groundbreaking and boundless imagination have already changed the way movies are made has, along with Miller, translated these legendary stories from page to screen by remaining absolutely faithful to the look, feel and dialogue of the books.

SIN CITY stars Bruce Willis as Hartigan, a cop with a bum ticker and a vow to protect stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba); Mickey Rourke as Marv, the outcast misanthrope on a mission to avenge the death of his one true love, Goldie (Jaime King); and Clive Owen as Dwight, the clandestine love to Shellie (Brittany Murphy), who spends the night defending Gail (Rosario Dawson) and her Old Towne girls (Devon Aoki and Alexis Bledel) from Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro), a tough guy with a penchant for violence. Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Michael Madsen, Carla Gugino and Michael Clarke Duncan are also part of the ensemble cast.

Proceeds from the event will benefit the artistic and educational programs of the Austin Film Society.

Tickets are $35 for Orchestra seating and $25 - $35 for Mezzanine and Balcony seating. Tickets are available only through the Paramount Box Office, open Monday through Saturday noon to 5:30 p.m., online at www.gettix.net, or by phone at (866) 443-8849, open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

All tickets include screening, Q&A and after party.

VIP packages available for purchase only through the AFS website at www.austinfilm.org. VIP packages include Orchestra seating at the screening and admission to the VIP area at the Stubb's after party with complimentary beer and wine and BBQ buffet.

Austin Film Society would like to thank Dimension Films for bringing the premiere to Austin, presenting sponsor TippingPoint and sponsor the Austin Chronicle. AFS thanks Cirrus Logic, HEB and Applied Materials for year-round support.

SIN CITY is rated R for sustained strong stylized violence, nudity and sexual content including dialogue. The film opens nationwide Friday, April 1. For more information on the film, visit www.sincitythemovie.com.

TippingPoint, a division of 3Com, is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth Application Protection, Infrastructure Protection, and Performance Protection for corporate enterprises, government agencies, service providers and academic institutions. Our innovative approach offers customers unmatched network-based security with unrivaled economics, ultra-high performance, scalability and reliability. TippingPoint is based in Austin, Texas, and can be contacted through its Web site at www.tippingpoint.com or by telephone at 1-888-TRUE-IPS.

Austin Film Society, celebrating 20 years in 2005, promotes the appreciation of film and supports creative filmmaking by screening rarely seen films, giving grants and other support to emerging filmmakers, and providing access and education about film to youth and the public. Through Austin Studios, which AFS opened in 2000 in partnership with the City of Austin, AFS helps attract film development and production to Austin and Texas. Gala film premieres and the annual Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards raise funds as well as awareness of the impact of film on economy and community. The Austin Film Society is ranked among the top film centers in the country and recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts and Directors Guild of America.

For more information on Austin Film Society, visit www.austinfilm.org

source:
http://www.comics2film.com/FanFrame.php?f_id=12241

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 1 reply

Sin City Promotion on Conan, Leno and Letterman

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 03:53:12 GMT

Tuesday, March 22
The Late Show With DAVE LETTERMAN:
Jessica Alba (Sin City)
Brian Greene (Book "The Fabric of the Cosmos")
Queens of the Stone Age

Wednesday, March 23, 2005
LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN 2037:
CLIVE OWEN, STEVE CARELL, THE FABULOUSMOOLAH THE GREAT MAE YOUNG All New

Thursday, March 24, 2005
LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN 2038:
BENECIO DEL TORO, KINGS OF LEON All New

Friday, March 25, 2005
LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN 2039:
JESSICA ALBA, MIKE BINDER,QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE All New

Monday, March 28, 2005
THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO 2900:
ROSARIO DAWSON, STEVE CARELL, FRANKIE J

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 2 replies

Sin City: A Film Review by James Berardinelli

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:17:36 GMT

Sin City
A Film Review by James Berardinelli

United States, 2005
U.S. Release Date: 4/1/05 (wide)
Running Length: 2:03
MPAA Classification: R (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1

Cast: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Jamie King, Brittany Murphy, Benicio Del Toro, Nick Stahl, Elijah Wood, Michael Clarke Duncan
Directors: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino ("special guest director")
Producers: Elizabeth Avellan, Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Screenplay: Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez
Cinematography: Robert Rodriguez
Music: Robert Rodriguez, John Debney, Graeme Revell
U.S. Distributor: Dimension Films
http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/s/sin_city.html

Sin City is the most visually inventive comic book adaptation to make its way to a movie screen. While other directors have attempted to remain faithful to the look and "feel" of their source material, Robert Rodriguez has taken things a step further, by using Frank Miller's graphic novels as storyboards and immersing the audience neck-deep in the noir currents of Miller's den of iniquity. It's easy to get lost in Sin City. There's something to appreciate around every corner - the gritty characters, the uncompromising story, and, most of all, visuals to astound and amaze. "Eye candy" doesn't even begin to describe what Rodriguez has accomplished.

Black-and-white is the best format for film noir, and Rodriguez recognizes that - not that anyone would mistake this picture, with its kinetic energy and restless camera, for a relic of the '40s or '50s. However, what the director offers here is b&w with bells and whistles. Sin City is full of color flashes - the red of a dress or a woman's lipstick, the blue or green of someone's eyes, the blond of a hooker's hair, the orange of fire, or the yellow of a lowlife's skin. Then there's the blood - and there's a lot of that. Blood is either represented as a florescent white or, more frequently, in its natural color. In fact, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to describe Sin City using the old cliché, "black and white and red all over."

With a movie of this ilk, where the style trumps substance, it's easy to come up with something that engages the eyes more than the mind. Fortunately, that's not the case here. Rodriguez and Miller give us a rogue's gallery of memorable heroes and anti-heroes, and make sure that all three of the film's primary episodes are fast-paced and engaging. There's a little of Pulp Fiction in Sin City, both in the hipness and the sense of discovery. Pulp Fiction provided a bigger jolt, but Sin City isn't far behind.

Aside from the decision to shoot in black-and-white, there are plenty of things to announce Sin City as modern-day noir. There's a running voiceover narrative that's about a pulpy as one can imagine, right to the frequent use of the word "dames" to describe women. (Sin City exists out of time, in a world where elements of nearly every decade of the last century are represented in one way or another.) Ties and coats flap in the breeze, with the latter billowing behind running men like bat wings. And nearly every cool character in the film drives a convertible (unless a "flat-top" is specifically requested) and smokes without concern about the health risks. (Of course, for characters that get shot six or seven times, then come back for more, conventional medical issues don't pose much of a problem - although Hartigan has angina.)

The movie attracted an impressive array of talent, including some of the biggest up-and-coming names in Hollywood, as well as a few established stars, and one has-been on the comeback trail. A lesser movie with this kind of high-octane cast could have become bogged down by the "spot the star" syndrome, but Sin City engrosses to the point where we're no longer watching actors with names, but the characters they are playing. For example, when we see Elijah Wood, we're not thinking of Frodo Baggins. And Bruce Willis isn't John McClane. More than anything else, that's a testimony to how well Rodriguez does his job.

There are three lead male characters - one to anchor each of the trio of episodes that form Sin City's structure. For the most part, these individuals do not cross over and invade each other's stories, although the same cannot be said of the other personalities inhabiting Basin City. Bruce Willis plays Hartigan, a tough-talking cop at the end of a career in a place where honest guys like him are hard to find. Before accepting his pension, however, Hartigan wants to solve one last case and save an 11-year old girl from the clutches of a serial murderer/rapist (Nick Stahl). He succeeds, at least to a point, but pays a terrible price in the process.

Elsewhere in the city, the burly, ugly Marv (Mickey Rourke) finds comfort in the arms of a beautiful blonde named Goldie (Jamie King), but when he wakes up the next morning, he discovers that she has been murdered and he has been framed for the crime. Determined to avenge her, Marv pursues a violent, murderous course that takes him to the heart of Basin City's power structure, and seals his fate.

Finally, there's Dwight (Clive Owen), a wanted man with a new face who helps out the city's prostitutes when they accidentally kill a sleazeball cop, Jack Rafferty (Benicio Del Toro). Rafferty's demise threatens the uneasy truce that exists in Old Town between the mob, the police, and the hookers. Dwight agrees to hide the body before the cops figure out what has happened, but a group of mobsters have other ideas, and kidnap Dwight's girlfriend, Gail (Rosario Dawson), as a means to thwart him.

Another notable performer is Jessica Alba, whose career is in the process of going from red-hot to white-hot, as the stripper Nancy. Although she shows less skin than either Carla Gugino (as Marv's lesbian parole officer) or Jamie King, her allure more than makes up for it. (Alba apparently attended the same stripper school as Natalie Portman - the one where the clothing stays on.) Model-turned-actress Devon Aoki has a role that doesn't challenge her thespian skills. She says nary a word but does some nasty things with swords and other bladed instruments.

This is very much Rodriguez's film - like most of his other projects, it was "shot and cut" by him. He is quick to give Frank Miller equal credit, indicating that although the camerawork was his, Miller's contribution was so great that he deserves to be recognized as a co-director. The Director's Guild disagreed, and Rodriguez ended up resigning over the dispute. Quentin Tarantino is listed as a "Special Guest Director," whatever that means. Apparently, Tarantino shot one (or more) of the film's scenes, but I couldn't begin to guess which one. Any contribution by the Kill Bill filmmaker blends seamlessly into the overall production, never calling attention to itself.

Rumor has it that some of the studio executives behind Sin City were looking for a way to get the film a PG-13 rating. Having seen the final cut, it's mind-boggling to believe that such a watered-down version was ever considered. The violence in this movie may be stylized, but there's far too much of it for the MPAA to consider a PG-13. Plus, there's plenty of nudity: Jamie King bears her breasts and Carla Gugino spends about 50% of her limited screen time wearing little or nothing. I'm glad Rodriguez stuck to his guns; a PG-13 version of Sin City would have been a crime. The one that exists is a pleasure.

© 2005 James Berardinelli

source:
http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/s/sin_city.html

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From 'Spy Kids' to 'Sin City': Film director Robert Rodriguez answered questions submitted by NEWSWEEK.com readers.

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:14:29 GMT

MSNBC.com

Movie Forum: From 'Spy Kids' to 'Sin City'
Film director Robert Rodriguez answered questions submitted by NEWSWEEK.com readers.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Newsweek
Updated: 4:57 p.m. ET March 25, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7242096/site/newsweek/

March 25 - Director Robert Rodriguez ("Spy Kids," "From Dusk Till Dawn") was so set on making a movie version of Frank Miller's ultraviolent graphic novel "Sin City" that he invited the author to a test shoot in Austin, Texas. Miller caved. When he arrived, he found actor Josh Hartnett and a fully rigged set waiting for him. "This was no damn test," Miller recalls. "This was the first day of principle photography." And so "Sin City"—starring Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke and what seems like the past six cover models of Maxim magazine—was made. It's gory stuff, but it's also a visually arresting blitzkrieg with action so bare-knuckled you'll leave the theater spitting out teeth. Rodriguez answered questions submitted by NEWSWEEK.com readers about the making of "Sin City" and his other movies.

Westminster, CO: I love your movies, but I hate comic books. Will I like "Sin City"?
Robert Rodriguez: You will be "Sin City"’s biggest fan. I like comics, but am not a big comic book fan. I always found Frank’s books to stand apart from other comics. What we ended up with is something that will entice cinema fans. It’s very different from anything you’ve seen before, and will be exciting in a new way. You won’t be able to point to it and say, “comic book.” It seems to be from another planet entirely.

San Francisco, CA: Robert, I saw that you were active in pushing for low-cost digital shooting and production in your previous features ("Spy Kids," "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"). What unique cost-saving tricks and high-tech filmography have you employed during the making of "Sin City"?
Robert Rodriguez: Just about everything. We shot on green screen like on "Spy Kids 3" in order to create a world that doesn’t exist. It also saves a lot of time to shoot digital. Bruce Willis was on [the] set 10 days. We’d get around 60 set ups per day. That is very fast. It’s what allows us to make a movie that has as many effects shots as a “Star Wars” movie, but done for a fraction of the cost.

Detroit, MI: I love the central role that family takes in many of your movies. What is your definition of "family values?" Does that come into play with "Sin City?"
Robert Rodriguez: "Sin City" is a series of morality tales and love stories told in the darkest ways. I have a lot of family values in my own material, but since “Sin City” is Frank Miller’s creation, his emphasis is more on telling gritty stories about our inner darkness.

Apex, NC: Do you see any connection between "From Dusk Till Dawn" and the "Spy Kids" series?
Robert Rodriguez: Only that they were both fun to do and are a mix of genres. In fact just about all my movies mix different genres.

New York, NY: What are your own favorite movies?
Robert Rodriguez: I haven’t updated my list in a while, so this is ancient, but some of the top movies in my top 100 are: "Vertigo," "Jaws," "Godfather," "Notorious," "Heat," "Terminator," "Road Warrior," "Escape From New York," "The Thing," "The Shining," "Blade Runner," "Night of the Living Dead," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Sunset Blvd," "Some Like It Hot," "Close Encounters," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Akira," "Rock All Night," "Kiss Me Deadly," "Wolf," "What’s Up Doc?," "Near Dark," "The Hitcher," "Paper Moon," "Double Life of Veronique," "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein." To name a few.

Austin, TX: What is the deal with "A Princess of Mars"? Will it get made? Will you direct?
Robert Rodriguez: “Princess of Mars” is being made by Kerry Conran right now (“Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”). Should be very cool. I was working on it for about a month but had to leave the project when I left the [Directors Guild of America], since “Princess” was already being developed by the studio which is a Directors Guild signatory. But no biggie, I hear George Lucas wanted to make “Princess of Mars” once but couldn’t get the rights to it, so he made “Star Wars” instead. That’s what I should be doing, more of my own projects.

San Antonio, TX: Did you see “Savvy” at SXSW? What do you think?
Robert Rodriguez: I didn’t get to SXSW at all this year, I was so slammed finishing “Sin City,” and the upcoming "Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D." That’s what happens when you start making movies, you run out of time to see other movies.

Los Angeles, CA: Hi, Robert. I've been a fan for many years and I love your work. I'm also a fan of Frank's and I'm excited to see your version of “Sin City.” One of my favorite Miller tales is “The Dark Knight Returns!” I'm hoping that with the success of “Sin City,” Frank might consider a movie version of that famous Batman tale with you at the helm. Any chance of that happening?
Robert Rodriguez: I love “Dark Knight Returns” as well—they’ve just done so many Batman movies, I’m more interested in doing another “Sin City.” I think Stallone and Bruce Willis would make great Dark Knights if they ever did make Frank’s version of the movie. It would take an iconic actor like that to play such an iconic character.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Hi Robert, I'm a screenwriter in Brazil and I would like to know what is harder for you to write: to create a plot, later the characters to [create] the history; or to write dialogues for the characters?
Robert Rodriguez: It’s all difficult! There’s nothing more intimidating than a blank page, you have to really battle to write a script and it never seems to get any easier. I find that the case with most writers I know. And each script is a very different writing experience, so you can’t even draw on past experiences to help you.

Brooklyn, NY: Can't wait to see “Sin City.” I heard that [Quentin] Tarantino directed a scene. Was that payback for the music you wrote for "Kill Bill"? What if he had screwed the scene up? What would you have done then?!
Robert Rodriguez: Quentin is such an amazing director, there was no chance of him screwing anything up, I was more afraid he’d make the scene too good and make Frank and I look like bums, and that’s exactly what happened. I figured it wouldn’t hurt the movie to have a sequence that was too good, though. And yeah, it was payback for me doing the score for “Kill Bill 2.” But also I wanted him to experience what it was like to shoot in hi-def with actors on a green screen. He really enjoyed it.

Boston, MA: It seemed to me that "The Incredibles" owed a lot to "Spy Kids." I know that you (sort of) work for Disney, but did you think the same and if so did it bother you?
Robert Rodriguez: It was strange seeing “Incredibles,” because I know they’d been working on it for so long, and a lot of ideas are similar. I’m sure they felt worse seeing my movies come out with similar ideas to what they were working on! I know Brad Bird and the guys from Pixar, it wasn’t that they were borrowing ideas from “Spy Kids,” but the fact that we’re fans of the same type of material. We love classic Jonny Quest and James Bond movies, which were really our inspiration for both “Spy Kids” and “Incredibles.” The rest are coincidences. Brad Bird and I both had been working on our projects independently for 10 years.

Austin, Texas: How hard or easy is it to adapt from a comic book into a movie and what elements of a comic do you hope to translate to the medium of film?
Robert Rodriguez: It’s hard to make the images Frank conjured up when you compare it to drawing. It only took Frank pen and inks, with moviemaking, we need all the tricks in the book and new ones to make it happen and to get the feel of his books. We tried to translate everything to cinema, all his visual ideas, and I think we were successful. But it took a lot of trickery.

Highland Falls, NY: What do you lose by being out of the Directors Guild? And what does it mean to have a "special guest director?" Is it a “Four Rooms” (underrated, especially your [Antonio] Banderas sequence) vibe type of thing?
Robert Rodriguez: We just made up our own way of working on this movie. Frank and I were always on set together and tag teamed the actors as far as directing went. I operated the camera as well as did the lighting and effects, so we were always right there with the actors. Quentin came in for a few days to direct certain sequences. We let him take the director reins when he was there. It was terrific fun for the actors to have a “special guest director” those days. Being out of the Directors Guild just lets me have the freedom to experiment like that in the future. What I lose is pretty superficial stuff, like I don’t get insurance, residuals, can never be nominated for a directing Oscar, and can’t make a movie developed by a studio. I prefer the freedom.

New Orleans, LA: I actually have three questions for you. Two suggested by my husband. 1: Judging by the previews, this is the most comic-book-looking film ever made. Was it difficult to get funding for such a stylistically unique film? 2: How can we, his fans, repay you for getting Mickey Rourke back in mainstream film? 3: Do you have any plans to work with Mickey Rourke again?
Robert Rodriguez: 1: It was easy actually, but that’s because I work with Bob and Harvey Weinstein. They believe in the artist and let me make the movie, no questions asked, even though they didn’t understand it completely when I started it.
2: A lot of it has to do with Mickey. Quentin and I both wanted to cast him in "Dusk Till Dawn," but he was not acting any more at that time. But he realized that acting was his main love and came back to it. I was able to work with him on “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” and he really proved to me that he wanted to come back to acting, and was a hard worker. I was anxious to do something else with him, and “Sin City” was the perfect fit.
3: I’d work with Mickey again in a heartbeat. He’s one of the most tortured souls I’ve ever met, and that really comes through in his work.

State Road, NC: When are Tito and Tarantula going to record an album? What great music.
Robert Rodriguez: They are amazing. They’ve been actually recording a lot in Europe where they have an even bigger following. They do so well out there, they hardly play in the States, which has a much stranger music business.

New York, NY: You are obviously capable of switching genres and styles from film to film. Is there yet a genre or style that you have not attempted that you really want to?
Robert Rodriguez: I’d love to do a romantic comedy. My favorites are "What’s Up Doc?" and "Some Like It Hot."

London, England: What are the technical challenges for a self-taught hands-on filmmaker like yourself in making a movie like "Sin City," which is so reliant upon CGI?
Robert Rodriguez: I self taught myself CG a number of years ago, because I could see that was where the industry was going. It’s good to be versed in all technologies, it really gives you the freedom to create anything. By knowing effects, I can make a movie like "Sin City" very guerrilla style, where people tend to think that effects movies take a lot of planning. When you know effects and CG you can make up shots on the spot and really improvise.

Santa Clara, CA: Hello Robert, I am waiting with great anticipation for this watershed of a movie. One question, very interesting casting choice (and one the I love wholeheartedly BTW) was casting decidedly British actor Clive Owen as Dwight. What was the impetus for such a choice?
Robert Rodriguez: It was hard to find someone that was a good physical and character match for Dwight. I’ve always wanted to work with Clive, and showed Frank the John Woo-directed BMW short film on the Internet. I said, “This is the guy I think is Dwight.” Frank said, “If you think it’s him, cast him, you’ve been right so far ... ” It was a leap because I had never met Clive, but there was something in that short that made me believe he was the guy. People say I have a good eye for casting, but I’ve usually found it to be more of a gut feeling than a visual impression.

Dallas, TX: My daughter and I really enjoyed your "Spy Kids" series ... will there be more? Will you be making more movies geared toward kids? We sure hope so.
Robert Rodriguez: There are no more "Spy Kids," for the kids are no longer kids. But I do have a new family film that I’m very excited about, and in fact I wrote it with my 7-year-old, so it’s very authentic to a child’s imagination. It is called "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D." and it comes out this summer. I think families will take to it at least as much as they did to the "Spy Kids," if not more. It’s a very special project.

Alexandria, VA: Was there ever a moment during the shoot when you had to curb your own ideas about how a certain scene should play out in order to stay true to Frank Miller's vision, or was it more of a give-and-take relationship?
Robert Rodriguez: There wasn’t much give and take. I really wanted to make Frank Miller’s "Sin City," not Robert Rodriguez’s "Sin City." I make my own movies all the time, I really loved Frank’s books and wanted to make the movie as much like his book as possible. I was the one actually keeping it very true to the book, because I just really value those first ideas as being the most authentic and vital. It’s easy to start changing things, but I feel you just make it different, not better. I remember Frank coming up to me and saying, “Hey, how about we do a silhouette shot here?” I said, “I don’t know Frank, I think what you’ve got in the book is better, you’ve got WHITE silhouettes, no one does that!” He looked at his book and said, “You’re right, that is better. I like your discipline.”

Grand Forks, ND: Any future collaborations with Frank Miller? Possibly bringing Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" graphic novel to screen?
Robert Rodriguez: I would do another "Sin City" with Frank. We’re hoping to do that. Frank owns the rights to his "Sin City," but the "Dark Knight" he doesn’t.

Diamond Bar, CA: Are you concerned at all that the majority of the audiences will react negatively to the "comic book" look of the movie?
Robert Rodriguez: I don’t really think it’s a comic book look, since Frank’s comics are so unique, they stand apart from other comics as well. I think the visuals are so compelling, that people can’t really label it as a comic book look. It really is something new visually that will excite fans of cinema. I think anyone that likes movies will really enjoy the visual storytelling we do in this movie. It feels very unique and unlike anything seen before.

Miami, FL: If it turns out that you need to make cuts to earn an R rating, can we expect an unrated version on DVD?
Robert Rodriguez: We didn’t have any problems with the MPAA, actually. They are usually pretty squeamish, but they found this movie to be so stylized and abstract that the violence was not a problem. They didn’t ask us to cut anything.

Washington, DC: I am a big fan of your movies. I could watch "Desperado" over and over again and my boys (11 and 8) could watch all three "Spy Kids" in a row. I am also a big comic book fan. What other comic books do you enjoy/read regularly/would consider translating to the screen?
Robert Rodriguez: I’ve had the rights to Mike Allred’s "Madman" for a number of years and would like to turn that into a movie as well as doing another "Sin City."
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7242096/site/newsweek/

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Monsters' Ball: A comic-book avatar and a maverick filmmaker team up for the delightfully depraved 'Sin City.'

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:13:01 GMT

Monsters' Ball
A comic-book avatar and a maverick filmmaker team up for the delightfully depraved 'Sin City.'

Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7241781/site/newsweek/

March 28 issue -

The first dozen times Frank Miller got called about turning his legendary, and legendarily violent, "Sin City" graphic novels into a movie, he didn't flinch. He turned them all down cold. "This was my baby," says Miller, 48, nursing a beer at his favorite pub in New York City's Hell's Kitchen. "And I know what they do. They turn everything into a bromide with a happy ending." Director Robert Rodriguez ("Spy Kids") was the 12th "no." The Austin, Texas-based auteur had been an early fan of the comic, often purchasing the same issue twice because, in his excitement, he'd forget he already had a copy at home. In late 2003 he chased down Miller at the very same pub to make his pitch. Miller was impressed—and said no.

Weeks later Rodriguez, a broad-chested, 36-year-old perpetual-motion machine, called again with a proposition: "Fly to Austin and we'll shoot a test. If you don't like it, we've still got a cool little DVD." Miller caved. When he arrived, he found actor Josh Hartnett and a fully rigged set waiting for him. "This was no damn test," Miller says. "This was the first day of principal photography." Rodriguez gleefully owns up. "Hey," he says, "that's what would convince me to do it." Miller was in.

The film version of "Sin City"—starring Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke and what seems like the past six cover models of Maxim magazine—could inspire a sadistic drinking game: one sip for every severed hand, two for an arm or leg, three for each decapitation. Weaving together three of Miller's underworld fantasias, the movie seeks out the line between an R rating and an NC-17, then toe-tickles it for 135 minutes. It's gory stuff, but it's also a visually arresting blitzkrieg with action so bare-knuckled you'll leave the theater spitting out teeth. The entire film is a digital painting in stark black and white with dashes of color, like a hyperreal film noir. Frame for frame, it doesn't merely resemble the comic book. It is the comic book. "I didn't want to make Robert Rodriguez's 'Sin City'," says the director. "I wanted to make Frank Miller's 'Sin City'."

source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7241781/site/newsweek/

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Miller's Double Crossing: Robert Rodriguez and a starry cast re-create Frank Miller's Sin City comics frame by noirish frame

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:07:25 GMT

Miller's Double Crossing
Robert Rodriguez and a starry cast re-create Frank Miller's Sin City comics frame by noirish frame

By RICHARD CORLISS
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1042479,00.html

Monday, Apr. 04, 2005
No need for clocks, weathermen or juries in Basin City--Sin City to you. It's always night, always raining and every dispute is resolved personally, often by a bullet to the groin. Men are the walking wounded, with scarred faces and psyches. Women are trophies, to fight for, possess or smash. Noir doesn't get gnarlier than in the corpse operas of Frank Miller's graphic novels or Robert Rodriguez's ultra-vivid movie of three of them.

Inspired by the finest 1950s junk fiction--Mickey Spillane's gun-crazy P.I. Mike Hammer and Al Feldstein's EC SuspenStories comics--Miller tells tales of misfit heroes seeking redemption by rescuing damsels in distress. Hartigan (Bruce Willis, untoppable at slipping into the skin of doomed tough guys) is a cop on a mission to save sweet Nancy (Jessica Alba) from a serial killer. Marv (Mickey Rourke, whose fallen-angel smile peeks through pounds of makeup) is an ex-con avenging the death of the one beautiful woman who ever did him a favor. Dwight (sturdy, haunted Clive Owen), on the lam from the law, protects the city's only honorable citizens: the hookers.

You will be reminded of Pulp Fiction, with its three overlapping stories, its code of honor among thugs, even a grisly-comic car ride with a corpse. Aptly, that scene was "guest-directed" by Quentin Tarantino. It's just one rule that Sin City flouts. The film has no script credit, and Rodriguez resigned from the Directors Guild so Miller could co-direct. But the film follows one rule explicitly: it is the comic book. Same dialogue, points of view, settings, same black-and-white look dabbed with splashes of blood--except the movie moves and makes noise. Lots of noise; beautiful moves.

The cool thing about this digital scare-scape is how fidelity to Miller's vision liberated Rodriguez and the cast. Everyone has a great time playing it hard and fast. For all its astronomical body count, Sin City is brazenly, thrillingly alive. --By Richard Corliss

source:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1042479,00.html

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Rough Justice: The visually stunning Sin City has grit to spare and a thrilling undercurrent of morality.

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:02:48 GMT

Movie Review

Rough Justice:
The visually stunning Sin City has grit to spare and a thrilling undercurrent of morality.

By Ken Tucker
New York Metro
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/movies/reviews/111577/

If Raymond Chandler and Daffy Duck could have produced a child, Sin City would be their baby. Hard-boiled dialogue issues from the mouths of characters who are treated like Warner Bros. cartoons—whacked at, hacked up, pummeled, yet always ready to bounce back to yap a new wisecrack. Mickey Rourke, his face and body festooned with small white Band-Aids after a fight, says of a foe, “I’m gonna give him the hard good-bye”—that is, a long, slow death. (And what a face Rourke presents here as the pill-popping Marv: Rourke’s own scarily wizened visage is actually rendered less scary yet more grotesque in heavy makeup that forces his forehead to slope into his nose with no pause for indentation; he looks like a chunk of granite abandoned by a sculptor.)

This Marv wants to avenge the death of Goldie, a prostitute he adored. In overlapping plots, an aging cop with “a bum ticker,” played by Bruce Willis, takes one last case, hunting down a pedophile, and Clive Owen’s Dwight seeks to protect an abused barmaid, Shellie (Brittany Murphy), holding a razor to the eyeball of her assailant (Benicio Del Toro) and politely introducing himself to Del Toro by whispering in his ear, “Hi, I’m Shellie’s new boyfriend, and I’m out of my mind.” The cinema-class allusions (razor-eye: Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou; aging cop: name your Clint Eastwood movie) combine neatly with Sin City’s strikingly original look—not a knockoff of film noir, but footage that’s inky black and iridescent white, with occasional tiny, surprising splashes of color (the blue eyes of the hooker played by Gilmore Girls’ Alexis Bledel; Owen’s bloodred Converse sneakers). The movie is extensively digitalized—the actors were frequently filmed against green screens and plopped, courtesy of computer graphics, inside everything from nightclubs to cars, all added afterward. Yet Sin City throbs with a textured grunginess that was lacking in last year’s similarly techno-heavy but wanly slick Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Don’t be put off by the fact that it’s the new millennium’s umpteenth comic-book adaptation: Sin City, based on writer-artist Frank Miller’s black-and-white graphic-novel series, may be fizzy entertainment straining for the dark-night-of-the-soulfulness that gave Chandler’s detective novels their resonance, but it’s also one of the most witty, and, yes, moral movies of the year.

The slashing opening credits announce that Sin City was “shot and cut” by Miller and Robert Rodriguez, with Quentin Tarantino getting a nod as “guest director” for one scene. Sin City melds both parts of Rodriguez’s sensibility—his fondness for over-the-top gore (Once Upon a Time in Mexico) and a childlike playfulness in matters of technology and adventure (his Spy Kids trilogy). Frank Miller’s comic-book work has been nihilistic even when it was most emotional (as in his revisionist Batman book, The Dark Knight Returns), but Rodriguez displays a humanism that can burst past the genre boundaries of the thriller and the multistar blockbuster (the movie wedges in Elijah Wood, Powers Boothe, Jessica Alba, Carla Gugino, Michael Madsen, and Michael Clarke Duncan).

Thus there’s real conviction behind numerous characters’ variations on the sentiment Marv mutters—“It really gets my goat when guys mess up girls.” There’s the saucy fun of making the gang of dancer/hooker/S&M girls into a band of gun-and-bow-and-arrow-toting superbad chicks, led by Rosario Dawson with a triumphant grin. There is also the relatively discreet way the kidnapped-child subplot is handled. I detest using the expressions of terrified children onscreen for any purpose, but in Sin City, that fright is spare and fraught with the full, awful implications of what it means to threaten innocence. The violence is modulated according to the scene: Yes, when the scenes pit tough guy against tough guy, there’s lots of bloodlust (limbs lopped, sharp objects inserted into skulls), but when it comes to the perv played by Nick Stahl, the movie earns its name: This city will be cleansed of the sin of hurting any victim rendered helpless.

Lest I make it sound as though Sin City is virtuousness merely tricked out in kink, let me assure you that when Owen requests a car—“a hardtop with a decent engine, and make sure it’s got a big trunk” —he’s not thinking about hiding smiley-face birthday balloons in the back. Any movie that can claim “Yeesh!” as a catchphrase—used to encapsulate unspeakable, appalled comic disgust—is up to some very naughty things. But it’s also a satisfying puzzle whose pieces fit together neatly in the end. Rodriguez has taken Miller’s often aimlessly anarchic material and given it shape, propulsion, a purpose: to suggest that sin is real, that certain existential struggles really can be reduced to (literal) black and white, that loners can band together to defeat evil. And that you shouldn’t feel guilty at experiencing a shivery thrill when Bruce Willis shoots off a guy’s ear, because the filmmakers have thoroughly convinced you that meting out such a punishment was really the only way to go.

Sin City
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.
Dimension Films. R.

source:
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/movies/reviews/111577/

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Dark Night Returns: Black and white and red all over

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 19:49:24 GMT

Dark Night Returns
Black and white and red all over

by J. Hoberman
March 29th, 2005 1:30 PM
Village Voice
http://villagevoice.com/film/0513,hoberman,62513,20.html

Sin City
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller
Dimension
Opens April 1

The sun never shines in Sin City —but then Sin City doesn't really need light. Although populated by a gaggle of Hollywood meat puppets, this slick and brutal Robert Rodriguez adaptation of Frank Miller's famously "grim and gritty" graphic novels is strictly post-photographic.

Reality is virtual. Shot on DV in black-is-black and white-on-white with strategic swatches of color —most often blood-red —Sin City has its digitally enhanced performers cavorting through hyper-noir CGI "sets." The atmosphere is the landscape, and the narrative as well. Sin City tells three intertwined tales of the world's toughest town —a place populated by crooked cops, corrupt pols, depraved priests, pedophiliac cannibals, and a super-abundance of bodacious thong-snapping bondage babes.

Even a sweet little girl grows up to be an exotic dancer in a low-life dive, and every pickup is a prelude to murder. The movie's three protagonists are the last good cop in Sin City (Bruce Willis), a surgically altered private eye (Clive Owen), and most spectacularly, the hulk-like, borderline-psychotic killing machine Marv (Mickey Rourke, rendered unrecognizable with a prosthetic profile). Their thought balloons rule, in voice-overs spiced by hard-boiled bons mots: "Then it hits me like a kick in the nuts."

Nuts it is, fellas —and ain't it cool? A female stream of consciousness is about as likely to be found in Sin City as a rainbow sign or a visit from the Teletubbies. Chivalry, however, is not dead. Each of the three stories (which include Miller's first, starring Marv) is predicated on a 12-year-old boy's fantasy of the lone, misappreciated tough guy protecting or avenging some vulnerable little lady —even, or rather especially, if she's a kickass Amazon hooker in full circus regalia.

Miller, who has a cameo as a degenerate padre, is a comic-book god for his 1980s reinvention of Batman, among others things, and Rodriguez reportedly quit the Directors Guild to ensure that the artist got co-credit; his approach to Miller's material is nothing short of reverential. Sin City aspires to be a living comic book and it certainly has a look. Everything from Marv's iridescent bandages to the wounds that explode like Day-Glo bird shit is a design element. The filmmakers have taken evident pains to approximate Miller's aggressively stark high-contrast palette —no shades of gray —and fondness for dynamic, receding planes. But movies are not comics, and once the shock of recognition wears off, this literalism has an oppressively overwrought effect —not unlike the hyper-real Plan Nine reconstruction in Tim Burton's Ed Wood.

Sin City's loop-the-loop narrative structure owes something to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. (People more acute than I have noticed some peculiar temporal inconsistencies —the fan sites will no doubt tell us if these are intentional.) But Sin City lacks the human interest, not to be confused with humanism, that Pulp Fiction had in abundance. As if to underscore the fact, Tarantino guest-directed a scene. It's readily recognizable as the only one in which the dialogue has the slightest conviction, and the actors (Owen and Benicio Del Toro) seem to play off each other, even if one is the other's hallucination. It also has the subtlest use of color and is the only scene that made me laugh.

Not that Sin City doesn't invite you to chuckle —there is, after all, an underwater perspective of Del Toro being dunked in a toilet bowl. The problem is that the humor is less predicated on violence than sadism. Limbs are sliced, jaws cracked, faces regularly beaten to a bloody pulp. There's an exceptionally graphic electric-chair scene —"Is that the best you can do, you pansies?" the executionee laughs as the top of his head sizzles off —and, in another quasi –money shot, Rosario Dawson bites a chunk out of a stoolie's neck. Played for laughs, it's an image that evokes the EC horror comics of the early '50s —as do the decapitated heads that are regularly held up by their hair.

Pulp Fiction by rote, Sin City ultimately twists back into its first story. But more than just the narrative comes full circle —in a way it's the history of pulp. All the visual ideas that the savvy comic-book artists of the '40s swiped from Citizen Kane return as the zombie accoutrements of pure digitalia. For all its graphic splendor, watching Sin City is like spending two hours in a state-of-the-art wax museum. Rodriguez loves his material so much that he embalmed it.

source:
http://villagevoice.com/film/0513,hoberman,62513,20.html

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Rewind: Can 'Sin City' Overcome Black-And-White Film Bias? [MTV article]

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:04:25 GMT

Rewind: Can 'Sin City' Overcome Black-And-White Film Bias?
Audiences are resistant to black-and-white film despite its visual power.

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1499136/03282005/story.jhtml

Director Robert Rodriguez took a lot of daring chances in adapting Frank Miller's brutally noir "Sin City" for the big screen, but perhaps the biggest was keeping the graphic-novel series' color scheme. By making the movie black and white with simple splashes of color, the filmmakers (Rodriguez graciously invited Miller to sit in the director's chair with him) risk alienating a young audience that, for the most part — and sadly — hates black-and-white movies.

There's a puzzling resistance to black and white by many nacho-munching mainstream audience members. If the argument against the two-tone scheme is that real life is in full color, then shouldn't they also rebel against any element that's not realistic? Hey, you can't find a parking space in front of your building in New York! Wait a minute, Tom Cruise isn't that tall! Hold on — nuclear physicists don't look like Denise Richards! Whoa, vampires don't exist! I want my money back!

To that end, color in movies is almost never realistic. Whether through use of filters, lighting, special films or (most of the time these days)

Editor's Picks: Monochromatic Marvels
"Eraserhead"
"Psycho"
"Night of the Living Dead"
"Manhattan"
"Raging Bull"
"Schindler's List"
"Ed Wood"
"Pi"

computer enhancement in post-production, filmmakers almost always play with color to achieve a dramatic effect. The entirety of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" was computer enhanced to give the film its coppered-brown tint, mimicking an old photograph.

Many can't disassociate black and white from an anachronistic aesthetic. The thought is, "They can do color, so why do black and white?" as if color is better, rather than just different. What many color-saturated filmgoers don't realize is that black-and-white movies remained commonplace for decades after color-film technology became the standard. Sometimes it was because of budgetary restraints, but it was also often an artistic choice.

Sometimes it was a happy marriage of both, as a lack of money forced the filmmakers to use the cheaper black-and-white film, but it ended up being the best choice cinematically. George Romero's groundbreaking 1968 zombie movie, "Night of the Living Dead," wouldn't have had the same visceral impact had it been in color. The same can be said of the only horror film from that decade that was more influential: Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Hitch made the 1960 film using the crew from his TV show, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," to prove to Hollywood that low budget didn't have to mean low quality. So affecting was the film that many viewers swore the movie went to color during the shower sequence (it didn't).

Many classic black-and-white movies have indelibly stamped images upon us that would be impossible to imagine in color: the bare-bulb-lit depravity of Stanley and Stella Kowalski's run down New Orleans hovel in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951); the rain-soaked tarmac at the end of "Casablanca" (1941); the chess game with Death in "The Seventh Seal" (1958); Robert Mitchum's malevolent preacher chasing the children in "Night of the Hunter" (1955); the Beatles at the outset of their world reign being chased by screaming fans in "A Hard Day's Night" (1964).

Some of the most visually memorable films of the past three decades have been crafted in black and white by directors often dubbed "visionary."

The black and white of David Lynch's "Eraserhead" (1977) is maybe the most important aspect of that film's surreal identity. Sometimes black and white is used to evoke an era in addition to mood, as in Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull" (1980), Lynch's "The Elephant Man" (1980) or Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" (1994). Sometimes it's used to create a timeless quality, ironically making Woody Allen's very '70s film "Manhattan" feel both classic and contemporary 26 years later (too bad the same can't be said of his 1998 black-and-white stinker, "Celebrity"). The black and white of Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" (1971) creates the stark, cold, depressed feel of being trapped in a dying 1950s Texas town. Darren Aronofsky used the scheme to amplify the absolutism of numbers as well as the single-minded obsession and paranoia of mathematician Max Cohen in 1998's "Pi."

At times, black and white can feel like a hollow pretension, a grab at respectability. Steven Spielberg filmed 1993's Holocaust drama "Schindler's List" in black and white (which only makes sense, as that seems to be how he views the world). Of course, the impact of the tone was completely negated by the prince of popcorn movies' pandering use of color on the little girl's red sweater, insulting the intelligence of the audience and adding to that film's long list of grievances (call me a heretic, but I don't think Spielberg's made a great movie since "Jaws" ... but that's another column).

It's strange that the failure of the film colorization movement didn't make more people realize the beauty of black and white. For those of you who missed it, back in the late '80s, as computer technology was beginning its growth spurt, some geniuses (Ted Turner chief among them) decided that maybe old movies would be accepted by the masses if they were shown in color.

To that end, tons of classic films, including "It's a Wonderful Life" and "The Maltese Falcon" were "updated" from black and white to a color that was not lifelike, but rather flat and uniform, lacking gradation and subtlety. The original cinematography was, for all intents and purposes, rendered moot. Cineasts rebelled. Vocally. And, amazingly enough, most of the general public agreed: Colorization didn't make old black-and-white movies feel modern; it just made them confusingly out of place. The effect was not unlike seeing Grandma clad in Sean John. And while the technology has improved, the demand for colorized films today is almost nonexistent.

Still, most people seem to side with the metaphor of the black-and-white-to-color transitions in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) and "Pleasantville" (1998). Those movies insinuate that black and white is dull and lifeless; color is exciting and vibrant. Well, that's a subjective opinion, but photographers Diane Arbus, Ansel Adams, Helmut Newton and Berenice Abbott would have to disagree. Disliking black and white displays a lack of vision on the part of the viewer rather than the artist.

Maybe impressionistic films like "Sin City" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" will open some minds as well as some windows for more movies with a daring visual palette. Who knows, maybe someday Ted Turner will feel the need to have some computer nerds make a black-and-white version of "Gone with the Wind."

Check out everything we've got on "Sin City."

Visit Movies on MTV.com for more from Hollywood, including news, interviews, trailers and more.

— Karl Heitmueller

source:
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1499136/03282005/story.jhtml

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Best Buy to Promote Sin City

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 06:07:42 GMT

Best Buy to Promote Sin City

Starting March 27, electronics chain Best Buy will give out free DVDs promoting April 1 theatrical release Sin City, says Video Business:

Consumers will be able to get the teaser DVDs--which contain a trailer, behind-the-scenes interviews and scenes from the film--with the purchase of any CD, DVD or videogame. Also included are promos for Dimension movies currently on DVD and $50 worth of Best Buy coupons toward purchases of those titles. The giveaway will be featured prominently in the March 27 circular.

The giveaway lasts a week and Best Buy will give out about 150,000 discs. The chain did something similar with Hellboy last year, when they gave out 300,000 teaser DVDs for the movie.

source:
http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=2756

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Sin City Soundtrack

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 05:24:51 GMT

Sin City Soundtrack:
http://www.bo-films.net/webzine/article.php3?id_article=393

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Clive Owen on Charlie Rose March 28, 2005

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 07:59:01 GMT

Clive Owen on Charlie Rose March 28, 2005 promoting Sin City:

Charlie Rose
PBS 13 Mar 28 11:30pm
Series/Talk, 60 Mins.

Episode #11061.
Actor Clive Owen; Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.
Original Airdate: March 28, 2005.

will repeat the next day in the afternoon:

Charlie Rose
WNET Mar 29 01:30pm Add to My Calendar
Series/Talk, 60 Mins.

Episode #11061.
Actor Clive Owen; Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

Original Airdate: March 28, 2005

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Rosario Dawson Lays it Down (And Kicks it in the Head) [an interview with MTV]

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 04:23:58 GMT

Rosario Dawson Lays it Down (And Kicks it in the Head)

an interview with MTV:

http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/interviews/d/dawson_sincity_050323/

As Gail, the ruthless leader of the gun-toting, fishnet-stockinged, street-walking denizens of Frank Miller's pulp-noir epic "Sin City," Rosario Dawson is one mean cookie.

Not sweet. Not soft. Mean. But it's not just the whips and chains and handcuffs she wields, or the skimpy leather outfits that she almost wears, that lend her power. As written by comic book legend Frank Miller, and brought to life onscreen by co-directors Miller and Robert Rodriguez ("El Mariachi," "The Faculty," "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"), Gail is a new take on an old stereotype: Instead of the hooker with a heart of gold, she's the hooker with a heart of black ice. That she somehow makes that combination far sexier than it sounds says a lot about her skills as an actress, and it says even more about the beautiful, adrenalized, nightmarish world that Miller, Rodriguez and the all-star cast have created. MTV News' Larry Carroll talked with Dawson about power games, gender confusion, and life after playing the baddest girl in a very, very bad town.

Photos: Frank Miller's "Sin City"

More "Sin City" Photos ...

MTV: "Sin City" seems like one of those movies that must have brought you back to when you were a kid, dressing up, playing games — all that kind of stuff. Were you and the other women fighting over who had the biggest gun, or who had the best outfit?

Rosario Dawson: I didn't have to fight over that, because I did have the best outfit and the biggest gun. [Laughs] The only thing that I probably would've really enjoyed doing that I didn't get to do was dance in Jessica Alba's chaps. Chaps are super sexy. But it was fun because when we were shooting the film, this big biker rally was in town. So Frank [Miller, the writer and co-director] and I would have beers in the hotel lobby and watch the girls press themselves, topless, against the atrium elevator, which was clear glass. And I was like, "Well, this is a biker convention. There are chaps everywhere. Now I feel like it's played out, so I'm glad I'm wearing this other outfit."

MTV: So you guys fit right in.

Dawson: Definitely. Texas was really fun.

MTV: One of the other things about the whole noir and pulp legacy is that the knee-jerk reaction is to view women in the genre as objects. But in this movie, the women are using their sex as a means of gaining power and control, to compete with the men.

"There's a lot of nudity, male nudity — at least in the comics ..." — Rosario Dawson

Dawson: Well, the men have the same thing going on. There's a lot of nudity, male nudity — at least in the comics, not so much in the movie version. But the two [types of sexuality] kind of match. The men have that stereotypical leather-jacketed, big-gun voiceover thing going on. "I'm in so much pain and I have to do this thing and it's gonna cost me my life." You know, there's a nice juxtaposition between the two characters [Dawson's Gail and Clive Owen's Dwight] and how they both kind of go and do the same thing in the movie, but they each do it in a very feminine or masculine way. The men can be very sensitive in their voiceovers, while the women don't have any voiceovers. They just go ahead and do what they have to. And I don't think that there's ever a moment where you suspect that these women would not be able to handle themselves in any situation. They're femme fatales, for sure, which is cool.

MTV: And what would the world be like if women could dispense their own justice?

"Sin City" Clip: What does Clive Owen really want from Rosario Dawson — a car or a kiss?

More "Sin City" video ...

Dawson: Well, women can dispense their own justice. It's about just taking that power for yourself. So it's nice to be able to watch things like this movie. I mean, I like romantic comedies and all that kind of stuff. But seeing a klutzy woman walk around and be insecure in front of a guy in order for him to be able to handle her sexuality? Like she's beautiful, but she doesn't know it, so it's cute? No. I want to see a woman walk in there and be like, "What? I have breasts and you're staring at them. Hmmm. Interesting." You know? And I like someone who's going to keep pushing through. I think that's a much more interesting character to play. Unfortunately, though, they're not usually lead characters. But in something like this, in Frank Miller's world, every woman would be like that. And I like that.

MTV: You're also starring in "Rent," based on Jonathan Larson's Broadway musical. What's been changed in the movie version, and what's been kept from the original play?

Read: "Bad Girls Make Good: Alba and Murphy play it cool in 'Sin City'"

Dawson: You know, you're gonna get all the classic songs, and we have a lot of the original Broadway cast appearing in the movie. But we also have Jonathan's family's approval on everything, and they've been there every step of the way. It's been a real labor of love for everyone, trying to stay as close as possible to the spirit of the play. I mean, you really can't touch it: It's a Pulitzer Prize-winning play! We haven't added anything, but mostly have just taken some things out, so that it's not a six-hour movie. We're all definitely sad that we had to get rid of some of the songs, but it's been an amazing experience.

source:
http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/interviews/d/dawson_sincity_050323/

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Sin City Clips and interviews on iFILM

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 06:33:32 GMT

Sin City Clips and interviews on iFILM:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2660643?htv=12

all clips and trailers on moviebox:
http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2005/STUVWXYZ/SinCity/trailer.php

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Robert Rodriguez on Sin City

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 19:43:35 GMT

Robert Rodriguez on Sin City

Source: Andrew Weil

March 22, 2005
http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=8880

Robert Rodriguez, co-writer and co-director of Sin City, told ComingSoon.net about his first impressions of making the movie. "It's probably the hardest I've worked on a movie. I thought it was going to be easy - hey, just copy what's out of the book, and there you go. It is a lot of work. I think somewhere near the end I realized - it's funny because it's sort of a trilogy all released the same day, so it was kind of like doing three movies in one."

The film, though thoroughly violent like its source material, encountered no problems from the MPAA. "Actually, we had no problems with MPAA or anything like that. I think it had to do with the stylization of it and also the comic - when you read the comic book, the stylized world and abstract nature of some of his ways of depicting violence or action translated directly to the screen, and we had no problems because it became so stylized and such it's own world. I mean you really go into Sin City when you watch the movie and then get transported to that world. That's why I felt it important to visually make it as much like the book as possible, because that was the effect of the book. I found it very easy to read and very powerful… That is it so over-the-top and stylized like in the book. That's what helped temper it was that it was so black and white, so abstract, so representative that it's easier to watch than if it were realistically rendered. I think the tone of it has really changed it. I never got any flack for "Desperado" at a time when people would criticize guys like Quentin for cutting an ear off off camera, I was mowing down people in my movies and nobody said anything about the violence because of the tone. And I think that's the same thing for this. As violent as it is, like in the comic, it felt tempered by the stylization. That's why we didn't have any trouble with the MPAA or anything."

Rodriguez worked with writer of the graphic novels, Frank Miller, as his co-director. "It was very complementary. I wanted him to be a director rather that just there as a writer, a producer, because I felt if (it) just came to that, they might just stick him in the corner and feed him a sandwich every once in a while. But if he was a director, everyone would have to listen to him. I didn't want it to be Robert Rodriguez's 'Sin City'. I loved the book so much, I wanted it to be as close to something that he would do in the movie as possible. And it was very complementary. I tried not to do any contradictory directing. If he told an actor one thing, I wouldn't tell them the exact opposite... He let me handle all the visual stuff. He was really there working with the actors, knowing the characters so well. I didn't know everything about the characters cause it's not all in the book, a lot of it's in his head, and they loved to be able to know where the character was going in future volumes, or what he was thinking when he put it together, and how it should be performed."

Rodriguez discussed his casting of Bruce Willis as the hardened cop, Hartigan. "He is the character in the book. He's like that. That's why I thought of him. This is Bruce Willis... that laconic retiring cop, the knight in shining armor. I couldn't think of anyone else to play him, and he was the first guy we went to. And Frank was just thrilled. He thought that would be perfect, so he looked at a couple of minutes of it, and said, 'I'm in. I know he loves film noirs. I think he's perfect for that world. He fits right in.'"

Rodriguez talked about working with special guest director Quentin Tarantino and which sequence he shot. "He was great. Originally, I had thought there would be more shorter stories in the movie, as well when I first told him about it and then it ended up being the longer ones. So, I told him 'Well, you can direct one of the sequences' because Frank (Miller) originally issued them in small issues.' That's why you always see these characters die every ten minutes because he always wanted you to come back to the next comic book. So, each book was made up of several smaller issues. I had to basically do an issue which was where Benicio and Clive were in the car together and Benicio's got the gun barrel and he's talking. It was Quentin's idea to have him speak in an outer voice, where it was voice over, to actually speak it out. He did something kind of like that in "Reservoir Dogs" and Clive didn't know until the day. Quentin was like 'Wait a minute. All this monologue that you were going to do with voice over later, you should do it on the set. Can you learn it real quick?' Clive really impressed the hell out of Quentin. That's all he ever talks about is the fact that Clive went away for five minutes and did the whole monologue right there off the cuff. Especially since he's trying to do an American accent so he had to figure that out as well right there on the day. Quentin came in so prepared. Frank and I had been shooting already. This was our last episode. He was afraid he'd be unprepared so he over prepared and made Frank and I look like bums. He came in with every shot written up, all this visionary stuff…We just blasted through it. He had a blast doing it."

Sin City was shot much like last year's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, utilizing a HD green-screen effect. Rodriguez discussed the differences between the two films. "They were kind of both (made) at the same time. I'd just done a bunch of movies on green screen; I'd done the Spy Kids that were; that even the props weren't there, because it was all assimilated from the game. Even though they said that was the first movie done on green screen, I actually already had been doing that. But when I did 'Sin City', I hadn't seen any materials on 'Sky Captain'; I didn't really know they were doing a green screen movie with HD. I had already been doing that for a while. I shot the test and I went and showed Frank the material and, it's very different because we were shooting on green screen to; not just to save money, which is kind of why they were doing that, but it was really the only way we could capture these images and get that black and white style; cause if you shot it in a real environment, all these things just go grey, cause they're all midtones. You have to isolate the actors from the background in order to create that very stark black & white; to create a black & white that you've never seen before, because if you watch a black & white movie, it's really grey and white, because of all the midtones. And we had to get rid of all of those, the way Frank did with pen and ink. So, I realized 'This is going to be a total exercise in things I've been doing.' That's why I felt comfortable doing it, cause I'd already done all this stuff as a photographer, as an effects supervisor, coming up with these ideas."

Rodriguez has a very elaborate DVD planned for the movie already. "We shot the full stories of the books, and I knew we could truncate it down, knowing that we weren't going to lose any scenes; eventually they would all be available for people to see. So the DVD will come out with the theatrical cut, and then there'll be a separate disc that's got the individual episodes separated with their own title card, and you can just watch The Big Fat Kill from beginning to end, the full cut. That's a single story, and then switch over and watch The Yellow Bastard and that's forty five minutes. It'll have all the material back in. So it'll be like the experience of picking up the book, where you pick up one story and you read it from beginning to end. And it'll have all the material in it. You can shuffle your own version of the movie and just watch them all separately… And then I'm gonna add on a twenty minute film school, probably for this one, cause there's so many things and I want another ten minute cooking school to be 'Sin City breakfast tacos'; which I'll make a home-made flour tortilla, and it's the best meal you can probably ever learn."

source:
http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=8880

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Three Women of Sin City

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 19:42:17 GMT

Three Women of Sin City

Source: Andrew Weil

March 22, 2005
http://comingsoon.net/news.php?id=8883

Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, and Brittany Murphy star in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City, opening April 1st. ComingSoon.net discussed many aspects of the visually arresting movie with the women.

The film places women in a power position, which Rosario Dawson believes is the reason women will flock to see the film. "Are women going to want to see it specifically for that reason? I think absolutely. When she's standing there and he actually punches her across the face, and she actually tries to chop his pecker off... all the women working in Old Town - we take care of ourselves. We are very in control of what we are. We know what our assets are. We make money off of it. We call the shots, which I think is really powerful. It's a very even keel sort of strength between the men and the women. The guys get their balls ripped off and the girls get to do it and will. It's a pretty tough town on both sides."

Jessica Alba and Dawson found it refreshing to work in front of a green screen for the entire shoot. "I'm not very experienced in theater," said Alba. "The only training I really had was David Mamet's theater company, the Atlantic Theater company. And all I did was go on these little stages and imagine things, but they were in small rooms so the difference is you still had to shout and project your voice, but everything was little bit bigger and the same with Robert, it's very specific. He fine-tunes your performance so its kind of a marriage of film and theater I felt."

"It was just incredible," said Dawson. "You're standing there in this outfit, just completely naked and vulnerable to everything and this crazy dialogue. With Robert's experience - I was kind of lucky because I came out on the very last segment of shooting, so I was there three months into it and actually saw a lot of other footage, so I got the benefit of being able to look at it and go - okay, this does look really amazing, I'm just going to do whatever he tells me to do."

Alba's character, Nancy, appears completely nude in the comic book, but Alba decided to opt out for the film. "I looked at the graphic novel and all the pictures. I then found out she was a stripper and was bottomless and topless and, nudity was an option. We could have done it if we wanted to, it absolutely was an option. Robert said that we could do it if we wanted to and obviously it would have been more authentic. I just felt like dancing around with a lasso and chaps was going to be sexy enough, I think being nude, for me, would have been distracting and I really couldn't be bottomless for my dad. He would disown me and freak out."

Brittany Murphy and Dawson both work with Clive Owen in the film. "Clive's a stunning actor," said Murphy. "Benicio and Clive were the only actors who were actually in the room with me when I was there. What a joy to work with Clive Owen, I mean really. Any girl…or any boy would. He's an extraordinarily talented man and I learned a lot from him.

"It was wonderful," said Dawson. When I saw (Clive) in 'Closer' afterwards, I completely understood because your sense of humor is just wicked. I just had so much fun working with you. It was such a crazy character, such crazy dialogue. We both laughed about it then went gung-ho for it. It was funny. The first time I walked out in my outfit, I had this robe on and everyone was being really good about covering up. I remember, I was taking it off and you're like 'Okay, so I've got to act with that?' and I'm like, 'Yeah, exactly, I've got to act with this as well.' We're doing these scenes and he's backhanding me across the face and it was so amazing. He was so game. I was so game. It was awesome."

source:
http://comingsoon.net/news.php?id=8883

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Owen & Del Toro Talk About Sin City

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 19:41:09 GMT

Owen & Del Toro Talk About Sin City

Source: Andrew Weil

March 22, 2005
http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=8881

Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro play Dwight and Jackie Boy, respectively, in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City. ComingSoon.net talked to both actors about their roles in the film, based on Miller's graphic novels.

Owen and Del Toro talked about coming on board the project. "I was just thrilled to be asked to be involved," said Owen. "Robert sent me the graphic novel with a 10-minute thing that he's already filmed and it looked hugely exciting. I wasn't familiar with Frank's work at all, and I read the graphic novel, The Big Fat Kill, and thought it was the wildest most imaginative thing I've come across in ages, so I was just thrilled to be asked to be involved with it."

"I was approached by Robert," Del Toro said. "I think we met at the Vanity Fair thing and he said something really strange, like 'Don't cut your hair.' And my hair was pretty long; I go, 'OK.' Then I met him here at the Four Seasons and he showed me-he had done a trailer of the opening sequence of the movie and it just looked amazing. I wasn't familiar with the books; I was familiar with Frank's work in Batman and stuff and since then, my preparation was really talking to the Wizard - he got that nickname, I gave (Robert) that nickname…We just walked in and everything was green and I had seen how it looked already cause he had shown me the beginning of the movie, the opening sequence. It was like being in the office of the Wizard of Oz."

Frank Miller was greatly involved in directing the film and Owen enjoyed working with him. "Having Frank there was absolutely essential for everything. He's the god that conjured up this sort of crazy world. I saw the film yesterday for the first time, and I have to say I think this guy is a genius. I was blown away by it. It's that world. I felt at the end of the movie like I'd been taken to some extraordinary place I'd never been before, and I think Frank's vision and world is that, and this guy has just gone and created it on film."

The film was shot entirely using green screen technology. Del Toro discussed working with it. "For me, it was intimidating when you walk in and everything was green and it looked like puke. But after that it was like, it reminded me of theater-I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by. So it reminded me a little bit of that and that made it fun, going back to basics in some ways for me."

Owen's character in the film has a distinct American accent and he was forced to learn one for the movie. "It was a concern when Robert called me to ask me to do it because it was a few weeks' time and I started to be concerned about how much voice over there was, but Robert was very cool about it and said 'Listen, there's a huge amount of voice over. Don't sweat it. Just concentrate on the dialogue. We've got plenty of time.' He was so healthy about it that (I) felt completely fine about just going for it. Also, the thing about those graphic novels is it's easy to underestimate them. Frank Miller is not only a fantastic artist, but the language he uses, the dialogue that we lifted straight from the book, is really fantastic dialogue. It has the right rhythms. It's very smart and very witty. So, the whole thing was really easy because you've got such strong guidelines and the rhythm of the dialogue is dictated by what's on the page. You read it and you know how to speak it because it's got a very classic noir rhythm to it."

source:
http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=8881

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Rodriguez Defends Sin City

subfab — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 07:24:15 GMT

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?id=30650

Robert Rodriguez, who co-directed the upcoming comic-inspired Sin City, defended the film's violence in comments to reporters over the weekend. "It is so over the top and stylized, like in the book, that's what helped temper it," Rodriguez said in a news conference. "It was so black and white, so abstract, so representative, that it's ... easier to watch, I think, than if ... it was realistically rendered. It's the tone of it, I think, that really changes it."

Sin City is based on the series of noirish graphic novels by Frank Miller, who co-directed the movie with Rodriguez (Desperado, Spy Kids). The film faithfully depicts several scenes of violence, including shootings, dismemberments, decapitations and beatings. But like the comic, the violence is rendered in stark black and white and often in silhouette.

Rodriguez said that the violence is stylized in the manner of his earlier films, including Desperado. "I never got any flak for Desperado. ... At a time when people would criticize guys like Quentin [Tarantino] for violence in films for cutting an ear off, off camera, I was mowing down people in my movies and no one ever said anything because of the tone," he said. "And I think that's the same thing for this, that as violent as it is, like in the comic, it felt tempered by the stylization. And that's why we didn't have any trouble with the MPAA [which gave the movie an R rating] or anything, because it was so stylized that they just went, 'This is all right. ... You don't have to cut a frame of it.'"

But Rodriguez agreed that Sin City isn't for children. "Young people shouldn't see it," he said. "It's a rated R movie. ... I'm not making it for that [family] audience. ... I made this an R. I didn't try and trick people into making it a PG-13. ... If parents let their kids in, that's their decision. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to change how we're going to make the movie. Frank made his thing in a vacuum, ... and I wanted to do the exact same thing for cinema and suffer the consequences. If people don't go see it because it's R, that's fine. It's not appealing to the mass audience. It's really just about making the movie we want to make and telling the story that we want to do. " Sin City opens April 1.

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"Bringing The Graphic Novel To Life" an 11min Making of Clip on Yahoo

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:05:46 GMT

"Bringing The Graphic Novel To Life"
-- The stars of the movie discuss working with both famed director Robert Rodriguez as well as 'Sin City' creator Frank Miller.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movies/feature/sincity.html

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Cells by The Servant

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:27:22 GMT

Cells by The Servant
is the song featured in the Sin City Trailers:

http://concepts.bdarules.com/Cells.mp3

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Second Trailer on Quicktime

Fri, 18 Mar 2005 04:59:48 GMT

Quicktime:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/sin_city/trailer/

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'Sin City' Sizzles on ET (Sin City featured on ET 7:30pm March 14-18, 2005)

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 22:00:51 GMT

'Sin City' Sizzles

March 15, 2005
http://et.tv.yahoo.com/movies/2005/03/15/sincitybts/

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!

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!

source:
http://et.tv.yahoo.com/movies/2005/03/15/sincitybts/

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Sin City featured on ET March 14-18, 2005

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:48:38 GMT

Jessica's 'Sin City' Striptease

March 14, 2004
http://et.tv.yahoo.com/celebrities/2004/03/14/sincitytrailer/

JESSICA ALBA is poised to hit the big screen big time this year with three blockbuster movies ready to break: ''Into the Blue' (July 15), 'Fantastic Four' (July 8) and 'Frank Miller's Sin City,' first out of the gate on April 1.

While she may sport a sexy bikini in 'Blue' and disappear completely as the Invisible Girl in 'Four,' only in 'Sin City' will you find the former "Dark Angel" doing a striptease, film-noir style, for BRUCE WILLIS.

"Honestly, audiences are going to be blown away," says Jessica about her stylish new flick. "I play an exotic dancer who was kidnapped when she was a kid. If, in her wildest dreams, her knight in shining armor ever comes back, she's ready for him."

Based on the cult series of graphic novels created, written and illustrated by FRANK MILLER, the highly-stylized 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. Bruce and Jessica star in the translation of Bastard, which follows the story of a cop on the verge of retirement who takes on one final case to save a young girl who has been kidnapped by a lunatic.

Some of Hollywood's hottest faces were clamoring to be a part of this ambitious project, and those who made the cut include CLIVE OWEN, BENICIO DEL TORO, ROSARIO DAWSON, MICKEY ROURKE, JOSH HARTNETT, NICK STAHL, BRITTANY MURPHY and ELIJAH WOOD.

"When we started casting all these parts, strange things started happening; people showed up who looked like my drawings," says Miller. "In a lot of ways this movie's quite literally like having a dream come true."

A giant in the comic book/graphic novel world, Miller is credited with single-handedly reinventing the superhero genre with Batman: The Dark Night Returns and his subsequent takes on Daredevil and other well-known superheroes, including Elektra (embodied earlier this year by JENNIFER GARNER in her own adventure).

'Frank Miller's Sin City' is co-directed by ROBERT RODRIGUEZ, the man who brought audiences the 'El Mariachi' trilogy (including 'Desperado' and 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' with ANTONIO BANDERAS) and the 'Spy Kids' trilogy. The film is also co-directed by Miller and "special guest director" QUENTIN TARANTINO, a long-time pal and collaborator with Rodriguez (they first teamed up on the GEORGE CLOONEY vampire-fest 'From Dusk 'Til Dawn'). 'Sin City' was shot entirely with green screens (a process requiring no sets, only actors on a stage with props), and Rodriguez wanted to involve Miller with every aspect of the production, including sharing the directing.

"This is the first time a graphic novel will be treated with absolute respect in how it is brought to life," says Rodriguez, who pitched the idea to Miller of "translating" rather than adapting his story to the big screen. "If you look at [Miller's] books, you see that in a way they are already the best written, shot and directed 'movies' never seen in a theater."

Upon seeing the initial test footage of the movie -- which even included his name in the title credits -- a pre-cast Willis says, "I started watching it and about a minute in I said, 'Whatever else I see on this, I just want you to know I'm in; I want to do this.'"

Watch ET all week for some serious 'Sin City' exclusives!

source:
http://et.tv.yahoo.com/celebrities/2004/03/14/sincitytrailer/

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Trailers and TV Spots

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 15:22:24 GMT

All the Trailers and TV Spots:
http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2005/STUVWXYZ/SinCity/trailer.php

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Yahoo's exclusive productions stills

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 21:19:23 GMT

Yahoo's exclusive productions stills:
http://movies.yahoo.com/movies/feature/sincity.html

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

New trailer! on moviefone

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 20:43:44 GMT

http://movies.channel.aol.com/franchise/exclusives/sin_city_movie

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Official Site Launches

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:29:12 GMT

http://sincitythemovie.com/

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Sin City in Entertainment Weekly (TUESDAY, February 15, 2005)

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 03:10:22 GMT

Sin City
http://www.ew.com/ew/preview/movie/0,6115,1026380_1|99684||0_0_,00.html

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 Rosario Dawson, who plays a hooker in the $40 million marriage of crime saga and special effects. ''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, 48, whose original comic series drew fans with its 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 (played by Mickey Rourke in the movie), 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.

El Mariachi wunderkind Robert Rodriguez, 36, had been a Sin City fan since the beginning. In September 2003, the director won a reluctant Miller over with his pitch: ''I don't want to adapt Sin City,'' said Rodriguez. ''I want to translate it.'' 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 (who's acting as codirector on the film) got a $40 million green light from Miramax/Dimension. The plan was to make Marv's tale, plus ''The Big Fat Kill,'' in which Clive Owen's Dwight and Dawson's clan of 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 (Bruce Willis) with a bad heart who tangles with the titular monster (Nick Stahl) over a lasso-twirling exotic dancer (Jessica Alba).

For Elijah Wood, who plays (brace yourself) a mute cannibal serial killer, Miller's hands-on role was a big plus, especially during the greenscreen filming: ''Having the man who created this world on set was invaluable — especially since we couldn't technically see it.''And Willis? He was sold even earlier, by the ''Customer'' test: ''About a minute into it,'' the actor recalls, ''I said, 'No matter what else I see, I want you to know I'm in.'''

(This is an excerpt from Entertainment Weekly's Feb. 18, 2005, cover story.)

source:
http://www.ew.com/ew/preview/movie/0,6115,1026380_1|99684||0_0_,00.html

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

RATS a Sin City Yarn

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:12:54 GMT

RATS
trt 3:30

An emaciated war criminal lives in filth as Death comes knocking on his door. from frank miller's Lost, Lonley, & Lethal comes a bone-chilling tale of revenge.

click here for Quicktime:
http://www.pitchfilms.com/video/Rats_04_high.mov

or here:
http://www.pitchfilms.com/

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Sin City Posters (Hi res)

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 08:59:17 GMT

Sin City Posters (Hi res) all 8 are up on impawards.com:
http://www.impawards.com/2005/sin_city.html

or you can find them in the photo album page 7 (oldest first):
http://newyork.tribe.net/template/pub%2Ctribes%2CTribePhotoAlbum.vm?parentid=2e759f55-bef1-43ea-82c8-069ca67711b4&context=tribe&sortby=oldest&r=10352&page=7

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Rosario Dawson on Sin City

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 04:50:55 GMT

Rosario Dawson will bring to life Gail from Frank Miller's Sin City movie adaptation. Rosario was at hand last night at the Jetta Debut party and was kind enough to give us her thoughts on Sin City. Click here for video interview. Windows Media Player Required

http://www.iesb.net/movies2/rosariodawsonvwint.php

Release Date: April 1, 2005
Studio: Dimension Films
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Screenwriter: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
Starring: Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Jaime King, Clive Owen, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Devon Aoki, Alexis Bledel, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Marley Shelton, Carla Gugino, Nick Stahl, Michael Clarke Duncan, Michael Madsen, Michael Douglas, Christopher Walken, Rick Gomez, Jason Douglas, Makenzie Vega, Katherine Willis
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
MPAA Rating: Not Available
Synopsis: Robert Rodriguez ("Spy Kids," "Once Upon a Time in Mexico") and comic book icon Frank Miller co-direct "Sin City," based on the series of graphic novels created, written, and illustrated by Miller. "Sin City" is infested with criminals, crooked cops and sexy dames, some searching for vengeance, some for redemption and others, both. The film incorporates storylines from three of Miller's graphic novels including 'Sin City,' which launched the long-running, critically acclaimed series, as well as 'That Yellow Bastard' and 'The Big Fat Kill.'

Rodriguez, along with Miller, translated these legendary stories from page to screen by remaining absolutely faithful to the look, feel and dialogue of the books.

"Sin City" stars Bruce Willis as Hartigan, a cop with a bum ticker and a vow to protect stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba); Mickey Rourke as Marv, the outcast misanthrope on a mission to avenge the death of his one true love, Goldie (Jaime King), and Clive Owen as Dwight, the clandestine love of Shelley (Brittany Murphy), who spends his nights defending Gail (Rosario Dawson) and her Old Towne girls (Devon Aoki and Alexis Bledel) from Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro), a dirty cop with a penchant for violence.

January 6, 2004
source:
http://www.iesb.net/movies2/movie010605b.php

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Rutger Hauer is Cardinal Roark in Sin City

Sun, 02 Jan 2005 06:04:12 GMT

Rutger Hauer is Cardinal Roark in Sin City

Hauer is Cardinal Roark in Sin City

Source: Lobster Charlie

December 15, 2004

Scooper 'Lobster Charlie' saw the following note from Rutger Hauer on his official website, in which the actor reveals he's been cast as Cardinal Roark in "The Hard Goodbye" for Robert Rodriguez's Sin City.

Well,things happenned rapidly the last few days.While opening mail and relaxing something popped out of the pressurecooker.SIN CITY is a black and white cartoon which is being made into a feature in Texas.Could i come and do a wacky hysterical cardinal for them.Last night i drove to the airport hoping to pay DD a fast visit which went south but she s alright.This morning fog delayed the planes.I had a ticket to London from where i hoped to fly on wit BA but decided last minute that was too tricky.Jumped on a different plane.Now in the us safely for an overnight and tomorrow onwards to Texas.Never been,darrrrn it.Luggage this time is amazingly light.Just one suit and little stuff.Sat in the cockpit for landing.Delicious.

Stay tuned to his site for more possible updates on this.

Official Site:
http://www.rutgerhauer.com/

Rutger Hauer as Cardinal Roark in Frank Miller's Sin City (2005):
http://newyork.tribe.net/template/pub%2CViewPhoto.vm/context/tribe?page=1&currentoffset=4&parentid=2e759f55-bef1-43ea-82c8-069ca67711b4&sortby&r=10352

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

New Sin City TRAILER and POSTERS: (Clive Owen as Dwight and Benicio Del Toro as Jackie Boy)

Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:01:38 GMT

New Sin City TRAILER and POSTERS Posters: (Clive Owen as Dwight and Benicio Del Toro as Jackie Boy)

New Sin City Trailer and Posters!

Source: Moviefone

December 21, 2004

Moviefone has your first peek at the great-looking new trailer for Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, the adaptation coming to theaters on April 1st. Frank Miller wrote the graphic novel series that inspired the film. The site also has up more posters which you can view here.

The film will comprise three intertwining vignettes revolving around a dark set of characters who call the fictional corrupt town home.

Click here to watch the new trailer!
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/aol/us/moviefone/movies/2004/sincity_019736/sincity_trlr_01_dl.mov

Click here for posters:
http://movies.channel.aol.com/pg_flash.adp?mode=pu_ll&gallery=sincity&debug=0&ch=movies

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 2 replies

Clive Owen on Sin City (ComingSoon.net)

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 22:32:44 GMT

Clive Owen on Sin City (ComingSoon.net)
http://www.superherohype.com/news/sincitynews.php?id=2273

CS: How was it to work on Robert Rodriguez's Sin City?

Owen: It was extraordinary. It was Robert Rodriguez, who is like [a] Renaissance man really. He's a complete one-off. I've never met anyone quite like him. He does absolutely everything. He shoots, he edits, he operates, he lights, he composes the music. He's the most amazing cook. He really pissed me off. It's an extraordinary project. He's doing this strip, cartoon, picture book, Frank Miller thing and he's been so faithful. He re-creates image by image by image. To us, it was very weird. We were just standing in a sort of green screen every day, and everything else will be added. It was an extraordinary experience, but my most overwhelming memory is how hugely impressive the whole thing he's got going down there in Texas is…I'm in "The Big, Fat Kill" (as) Dwight.

Full interview:
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=7412

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 0 replies

Sin City Promo Posters

Charlotte — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 11:23:39 GMT

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=18751

Lookin' very spiffy. I like.

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 2 replies

Sin City Trailers

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 08:11:25 GMT

check out the Sin City Footage Robert Rodriguez showed at Comic Con 2004:

http://www.movie-list.com/trailers.php?id=sincity

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 3 replies

Robert Rodriguez:Director, Screenplay, Producer, Original Music Composer, Cinematographer, Editor

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 18:03:06 GMT

Director, Screenplay, Producer, Original Music Composer, Cinematographer, Editor

Rodriguez, who credits Miller's visual style in the comic as relevant as his own in the film, insisted that Miller receive a "co-director" credit with him. The Directors' Guild of America would not allow it. As a result, Rodriguez resigned from the DGA, saying "I didn't want Frank [Miller] to be treated just as a writer because he is the only one who has actually been to 'Sin City'. I am making such a literal interpretation of his book that I'd have felt weird taking directing credit without him. It was easier for me to quietly resign before shooting because otherwise I'd be forced to make compromises I was unwilling to make or set a precedent that might hurt the guild later on." Unfortunately, by resigning from the DGA, Rodriguez was also forced to relinquish his director's seat on the film Princess of Mars, A (2006) for Paramount. Rodriguez had already signed-on and been announced as director of that film when the DGA situation took place, planning to begin filming soon after wrapping this film.

Robert Rodriguez scored Kill Bill for $1. Quentin Tarantino said he would repay him by directing a segment of Sin City (2005) for $1.

Robert Rodriguez directed parts of the scene in Pulp Fiction (1994) where Quentin Tarantino appears as Jimmy. (Rodriguez was uncredited for his directing.)

Robert Rodriguez talks to Britney Murphy on the Sin City set:
http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0407/01/sin8.htm

Article on Rodriguez talking about Sin City:
http://www.themoviebox.net/php/news/stories.php?subaction=showfull&id=1082581384

Box Office Prophets article:
http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/tickermaster/listing.cfm?TMID=1171

Robert Rodriguez Filmography:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0001675/

Troublemaker Studios:
http://www.loshooligans.com/

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 1 reply

Sin City: The Books

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 18:04:59 GMT

Story and Art by Frank Miller

Sin City (aka The Hard Goodbye) (1993)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (1993)
Sin City: The Big Fat Kill (1994)
Sin City: That Yellow Bastard (1996)
Sin City: Family Values (1997)
Sin City: Booze Broads and Bullets (1998)
Sin City: To Hell and Back (1999)

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 2 replies

Frank Miller: Director, Writer and Creator of comics, Producer

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 18:00:19 GMT

Director, Writer and Creator of comics, Producer

After a poor Hollywood experience in the early-'90s, Frank Miller refused to relinquish the movie rights to his comic works, Sin City in particular. Robert Rodriguez, a longtime fan of the comic, filmed his own "audition" for the director's spot in secret. The footage, shot in early 2004, featured Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton. He presented the finished footage to Miller with the proclamation: "If you like this, this will be the opening to the movie. If not, you'll have your own short film to show your friends." Miller approved of the footage and the film was underway.

Frank Miller on the set with Tarantino and Britney Murphy:
http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0407/01/sin9.htm

Frank Miller's graphic novel "300" will become a movie in 2006.

Frank Miller Filmography:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0588340/

The complete works of Frank Miller:
http://www.moebiusgraphics.com/index.php

Chronology of Frank Miller's work in Comics:
http://www.sequart.com/frankmillerchronology.htm

posted in Frank Miller's Sin City - 1 reply

Mickey Rourke's comeback may depend on role in 'Sin'

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 06:38:47 GMT

Mickey Rourke's comeback may depend on role in 'Sin'

By ROBERTO SANTIAGO
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MIAMI -- Mickey Rourke's soul is in Miami. It's home. It's where his family is. It's where he is able to make sense out of life.

And, most importantly, the city is his artistic muse, an emotional oasis allowing the moody, misunderstood method actor to embrace skills neglected after filming 1987's Barfly.

"l really do love Miami," said Rourke cradling Loki, an 11-year-old miniature whippet and Chihuahua mix, his constant companion over the last years. "Miami -- you can relax here."

Knight Ridder Tribune
Mickey Rourke, with his dog Loki, discusses his career, in Miami Beach, Fla., June 19.

After years of therapy, Rourke said he is close to banishing most of the negative forces that crippled his life and career.

Gone are the hoodlum friends, dysfunctional relationships and bad boy antics that made him a pariah in Hollywood.

And gone are the bad films that went straight to video.

"I have fallen in love with acting again. I care about the craft," Rourke whispered in the same feathery tone immortalized in his modern-day film noir cult classics, Angel Heart and 9 1/2 Weeks.

Patient fans who long suffered through the horrible films Rourke made in the 1990s (with the exception of The Rainmaker) should be pleased to learn that Rourke, in the last four years, has been rebuilding his career through a careful selection of memorable and critically-acclaimed character roles.

"The new generation of young directors don't care about my old reputation," muttered Rourke, chain-smoking in the lounge of the South Beach hotel he now calls home. "They remember how serious I was about acting and expect nothing less from me now. And I am not about to disappoint them."

Although he is still being cast in thug roles, Rourke can play street in a thousand innovative ways.

Steve Buscemi cast Rourke as Jan the Actress in the prison drama, Animal Factory, where Rourke stole the show as a neurotic, transvestite inmate with a lisp.

In Jonas Akerlund's Spun, Rourke plays The Cook, a wild man who runs a crystal meth lab out of a motel room.

In Tony Scott's Man On Fire Rourke portrays Jordan Calfus, a corrupt attorney who represents the family of a kidnapping victim.

And next year, audiences will see Rourke in what he hopes will be his defining, breakthrough role.

He has the lead in Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, playing Marv, a moody, disfigured, persecuted, misunderstood thug who loses the love of his life.

Marv seeks vengence but finds redemption.

It is based on the best-selling graphic novel by Frank Miller.

"When a great artist decides to pick up the paint brush again -- sometimes you see their greatest work," said Rodriguez, who recently completed the film. "Mickey is nothing short of amazing. He plays Marv on so many complex levels. Even Frank Miller said Mickey IS Marv."

Rodriguez is convinced that Marv will help bring Rourke back to the top. Rourke says this is the only role in his 25-year career that he is proud of.

As a method actor, Rourke, whose once-boyish features underwent reconstructive surgery following a 1990s boxing career, relates to Marv's disfigurement, angst and street code.

Back in 1961, a child named Philip Andre Rourke Jr. -- nicknamed Mickey by his father -- grew up in a housing project on 84th Terrace near Miami's Liberty City neighborhood.

His mother, Ann, had recently relocated from Schenectady, N.Y., with Mickey, his little brother Joey, and his sister Patty, after divorcing.

In 1967 the family moved to Miami Beach, where Rourke hung around the now-defunct Fifth Street Gym. He had a few amateur fights, but hung up the gloves after suffering two concussions. He attended Miami Beach Senior High School, where he played baseball.

After graduating high school Rourke knocked around Miami Beach, later working in the very hotel where he now lives.

Rourke hung around with a group of street punks and would have likely wound up dead or in jail had acting not come into his life.

He performed in a University of Miami production of Jean Genet's Deathwatch and moved to New York City in the 1970s, where he eventually studied at The Actor's Studio under Lee Strasberg.

After years of struggle, he got his big break when cast as arsonist Teddy Lewis in 1981's Body Heat.

Then the moment he hit Hollywood's A-list, he lost the passion for acting, turning down blockbuster roles, alienating key directors and producers.

When asked if he was wrought with self-loathing for having made it big while most of his homeboys from Miami floundered, Rourke looked stunned.

"It's a good question," said Rourke, who says he was physically abused by his step-father as a child. "But I know for decades I made a string of self-destructive choices that only recently I have been able to understand."

In 1990 while making Wild Orchid he met the love of his life, co-star Carre Otis, who divorced him several years later. It was a wrenching heartbreak for Rourke, eventually leading him into life and career-saving therapy.

By 1994, Rourke attempted a comeback, but still didn't take his art seriously. He had one amazing performance in 1997 when Francis Ford Coppola cast him as sleazy attorney J. Lyman "Bruiser" Stone in The Rainmaker, but Hollywood didn't care.

He wrote films such as The Last Ride and Bullet under the pseudonym Sir Eddie Cook, but they went straight to video. Then came a slew of films where he showed up for a paycheck.

He eventually bottomed out, finding himself alone and broke, living in a tiny bungalow above Sunset Strip with several Chihuahuas that he dressed in jumper suits.

But with the new millennium and extensive therapy, Rourke changed. And Hollywood's new generation of directors noticed.

Besides Rodriguez, Scott and Akerlund, Rourke says he has met with Guy Richie and Quentin Tarantino and hopes to work with them at some point.

But first and foremost, Rourke is happy that he has reclaimed his soul.

When he is not on a film set, he is in South Florida, caring for his biker brother, Joey, who has been fighting cancer for many years.

"Joey has been very sick, has gotten into a number of accidents ... I love him more than anyone in the world," said Rourke, fighting back tears. "More than anything else, that is why I am here."

Whether Rourke will become a leading man again rests in the success of Sin City.

"It would be nice to make a successful comeback, to get larger, better roles," Rourke said, "but even if I don't, I think I am making peace with myself, with acting and with those I love. I'm finding peace."

source:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/entertainment/2756797

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