Sin City DVD: Review By chupnick

If you haven't seen this film, rent this DVD! Robert Rodriguez directed a true masterpiece. The film is based on Frank Miller's amazing comic novels. These are graphic stories about a dysfuntional city of whor*s, mobsters, dirty cops, killers and cannibals. To mention who's in this film would be a who's who of Hollywood, but I'll give it a try: Jessica Alba, Alexis Blidel, Rosario Dawson, Michael Clark Duncan, Mickey Roarke, Bruce Willis, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen - that's just mentioning a few.

I had the chance to sit down with Robert Rodriguez who talked about how the concept of a complete green sceen film. This is what he had to say:

"It was gradual; in Spy Kids, I did a little on green screen and on Spy Kids 2, there was a little more sequences that were done in green. And then for Spy Kids 3, it was in the video game so it had to be done all in cg; we didn't even worry about props, they would just hold their hands out and I would put a prop in there so it would look like it was generated by the video game. And that was so much fun that when I went to look at Sin City, I thought 'Oh I know how to do this now, it's all green screen, it's the only way to photograph this; you can't photograph, you can't bend light like that on a normal set, you have to do it green."

This DVD is the bare bones version of Sin City. The full widescreen film is on the DVD as well as a behind the scenes look at how Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, and Quentin Tarantino made this film. There is one line from Robert that struck as why this is such a masterpiece. During an interview on the DVD, Robert says "I don't want to make Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, I want to make Frank Miller's Sin City cause I love that material so much."

During my interview with Robert, he talked about why he's releasing this version first and the special edition DVD which will be out later:

"Usually, I just put out one. With this one, they're putting one out which is just bare bones cause I didn't have time to finish my DVD extras; the second will be a double disk with all the goodies on there. It has everything on there; it has a 20-minute film school, a new cooking school - Sin City Breakfast Tacos, it'll have the best - people always complain when they watch DVD's that they don't get an audience, well the best audience is in Austin, especially for a movie that was made there cause we show the premiere with all the actors there in a 1500-seat theater. And it was a big deal there; I recorded the audience at 5.1 so if you want to experience it with an audience, you can just click on it, so that'll be cool. When Quentin recorded his sequence, I just let the tape roll while he was recording or shooting. So for an hour, there's some 20-minute uninterrupted takes of his sequences where he goes in front of the camera and talks to the actors and directing and you hear the whole sounds of the set - it's like you're sitting on the set seeing the movie being shot from the point of view of the camera all uninterrupted and that's really cool. You get to see how Quentin works with the actors and how the movie actually gets made."

So you can choose for yourself if you want to check this version out or wait for the special edition.

The film is wide screen and enhanced for 16 X 9 televisions. On tv, the film looks as amazing as it looked in the theater. Visually, Sin City is stunning from the first scene to the last scene. The colors, that aren't black and white, jump out of your tv.

The sound is Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound. It sounds awesome, even when the characters whisper, you can hear them speak as if they're in your living room.

There are five different covers - one is the standard cover with the movie poster of Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, and Mickey Roarke. Then your specialty pairing covers: 1, Bruce and Jessica; 2, Mickey and Jaime King; 3, Clive and Rosario; and 4, Benicio and Brittany Murphy. The discs are also specially made with the different characters as cover art.

My final thoughts on this particular DVD are if you've never seen Sin City, rent this copy so you can see it. If you've already seen the movie, and you just want to see how brilliant it looks on your tv, rent it.

I say, wait to buy the special edition version of the DVD, but rent this version and enjoy this film again.