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| Wednesday, April 6, 2005 05:27 PM |
| The Theme for Today's Post: Men Being Hurt, Badly |
 by Fëanor |
- Well, I feel like I'm a little late chiming in on this, as many of my friends have already blogged about it, but I guess I'll talk a little about Sin City now. If you've read or seen anything about it at all, you already know it's a brutal, violent, stylized film. It's not so much an adaptation of Frank Miller's comics. It pretty much just is those comics, as a movie. It's easily the best comic-book-to-movie adaptation I've ever seen--which is, admittedly, not saying all that much (the previous best would probably have to be Batman; I also very much enjoy Superman II, but I can't honestly say it's a good movie).
Sin City is also a film noir--it's in stark black and white (with the occasional flash of garish color) and it's filled with brooding narration and freakish characters who are corrupt in pretty much every way you can imagine, and are in really twisted relationships with each other. The movie is filled with stars, too, including Bruce Willis, who, as usual, gets the shit beat out of him, although surprisingly not as much as some of the other characters. The film has multiple storylines (which remain pretty much separate from each other, despite a few shared characters), which are all pretty much repetitions of one basic story: a man, who himself is of questionable morality, makes a wrong turn and ends up in the middle of a complex maze of corruption and evil. A woman he loves is also trapped in this maze, and he will do anything to free her. And by "anything" I mean one or more of the following: torturing and/or killing a whole lot of people, getting framed for crimes he didn't commit, and being horribly killed himself.
I mentioned the film's narration. It's a huge part of the comic, and a basic part of any film noir. But there's really quite a lot of it here, and it's not always necessary or well written. Same for the dialogue. This bothered me a bit, but not too much. In general, I thought the film was fantastic--loaded with horrendously fascinating characters, exciting action, interesting stories, and a really twisted sense of humor.
Basically I think that if you like the comic, you can't help but like the movie. It's pretty much the same thing.
- Some time between getting out of my car to go buy my ticket for Sin City, and heading into the super market across the street to eat my lunch before the movie, my phone's screen stopped working. Every other part of it functions perfectly, but the screen will now show me nothing but emptiness.
I've had video problems with the phone in the past; sometimes the screen would sort of "roll" up like old TV screens, so that the top was in the middle and the middle was at the top; sometimes it would stretch out and become distorted. And sometimes it would go blank, like now. But it always got better after I fiddled with it a bit (by which I mean, took the battery out and put it back in, turned it on and off, etc.). I hadn't had any trouble with it for months, though, and then all the sudden the screen just crashed completely and won't come back.
Luckily, I can remember the menu system well enough to do most important things, like answer calls, switch the phone from vibrate to ring, and call my wife. (No, I don't remember her number; yes, I do remember how to search for it.) But I have called somebody by mistake, and I do miss the calendar. Unfortunately, if I buy a new phone now (according to the surprisingly helpful and honest fellow at the Cingular store), it'll cost me a minimum of 100 dollars, and it'll suck. If I can wait until the end of May, I can get a really sweet one for practically free.
So I'm going to try to wait it out! Just don't be surprised if I call you by mistake in the next month or so. Oh, and if you have an old phone you don't need anymore, let me know.
- Sunday night, poppy and I and a few friends went to see a Phantoms game. (That's hockey, people. The one on ice, with the puck.) It was pretty cool. I had some Coors Light, and we ate a tasty pretzel and some french fries. (Live sports is really about the eating for us.) Plus, there was fighting and stuff, and our team won. They really kind of kicked ass, actually; it wasn't much of a contest.
Unexpectedly, we also got to see some blood in the audience. Near the end of the game, a puck flew up off the ice and hit this dude sitting a few rows ahead and to the right of us. It hit him right in the middle of his forehead. He kind of flailed a bit and started bleeding, and they had to grab somebody's sweat shirt and put it to his head and then lead him slowly up out of the stands.
It was a little disconcerting, I have to say. We flinched a bit after that whenever the puck came up off the ice.
- I can't remember when I watched my tape of the "Battlestar Galactica" season finale, but it was some time this weekend. Anyway, it was pretty awesome. I was watching it happily, la la la, all kinds of crazy stuff was going down. And then (SPOILERS AHEAD!!!), near the end, Boomer and her copilot get back from blowing up the base ship, and Adama is congratulating them, and Boomer raises up her hand to shake his, but there's a gun in it, and blam, blam.
Dude, I nearly had a heart attack. My hands shot out and clutched the air, and I said something like, "Glrkarkagh!"
I mean, I know they won't kill Adama...yet. It's too early, he's too important. Plus, Boomer shot him in the stomach, giving him a classic "good guy" wound. Good guys always get shot in the stomach, the arms, or the legs, so they can survive. But still--that was a shock. And I love it that the show can do that; that it can totally shock me.
- Now, I'm off to movie night after a busy day at work. Hopefully I'll have another entry for you folks tomorrow. Peace.
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