Sin City

Sin City is a series of comics by one Frank Miller, set in one Basin City, universally known as Sin City following the importation of a large number of prostitutes in the 19th century. It's rotten to the core and violent as hell, and that's where Miller's pulp-fiction stories come in: incredibly foul murders, betrayals and revenge; car chases and gunfights; eery farms and low dives; cops (bent and honest), gangsters, hookers and - of course - hard-boiled heroes.

Miller's artwork is striking: it's hardly surprising that shades of grey have no place in such a monochrome world, but there's neat little uses of color scattered through it - blue eyes, a red dress, a rather twisted individual's horrible yellow skin.

So how did it translate to film? The answer is, very well indeed.

The film contains the three graphic novels Sin City, That Yellow Bastard and The Big Fat Kill; it opens with the short The Customer Is Always Right (albeit adapted with a nod towards The Babe Wore Red). The very end, not in any of the books, represents the sole significant variation from the books. The choice of stories means we don't get to see much of Dwight's background, though I don't think that's really a problem.

It's largely black and white (which does mean greys too, in cinema) but with occasional eyes, clothes, etc colored; occasionally it slips into white on black sillhouette, emphasizing the comic look even more. Nearly every scene is recognizable as coming straight from the books; the characters are by and large visually recognizable, not just playing the right parts. Mickey Rourke as Marv in particular I thought was impressively close. I was pleased to note that the cars move just like in the book l-)

It's the most obsessively faithful film adapatation of a book I've ever seen. I offer that not as a good or bad point, but just as something that is; though, in this case, it works incredibly well.

I spotted a few changes; in some cases down to left and right being switched; and probably necessarily, the odd line here and there is cut. The bigger changes are that someone lives a bit longer than they do in the book; the layout of Kadie's seems rather different (possibly a consequence of it having to have a well-defined layout in the film) and Nancy wears a bit more than in the books. The farm seems to be missing its windmill (or whatever it is).

In some ways it was a shame knowing exactly what would happen next at every point - I think watching the film cold would have been a rather different experience. (Possibly some of my readers can comment.)

Beer festival photos

Some pictures I took at the beer festival