Sin City and comic book movies

Went to Frank Miller's Sin City Friday night. This movie kicked serious ass. The most faithful adaptation of any comic book ever. It gave me chills.

I had read the first Sin City graphic novel years ago. To be honest, I was more of a fan of Miller's superhero work. I won't retread his legacy. Google his name and see the effect he's had on not just comics, but movies.

Most of the crowd didn't know what to expect. When the first hard boiled dialogue came out of Michael Madsen's mouth ("You've got a bum ticker Hartigan!"), the audience snickered. A few minutes later, they were immersed in Miller's world and lapping up the noir.

It was dead on except for one thing: Jessica Alba's decision to do her scenes clothed. I'll admit I'd love to get a look at Ms. Alba naked, but that wasn't the heart of my complaint. By the time her segment of the story happened, we had already seen plenty of breasts, so it was out of place for her Nancy character, a stripper, to dance with her clothes on. Made zero sense.

Robert Rodriguez used the graphic novels as storyboards and did not take a screenwriting credit. After all, he merely transcribed Miller's words into script form.

I will be seeing it again.

My buddy Larry suggested I do something on comic book movies. It's a bit hard for me to do because I enjoy seeing my old favorites up on the screen so much. I'm way more lax on comic movies. That said, critics pretty much loved Spider-man 2 as much as I did.

Sometimes it takes movies to get people to take comics seriously. Comics get zero credit as being a serious art form. People hear "comic book" and think costumed heroes. That's tru to a certain extent. Where would pop culture be without Spider-man, Batman and Captain America? Is there a bigger American icon than Superman?

American Splendor and Ghost World were both comic book adaptations. This fall, Terry Zwigoff and Dan Clowes (Ghost World) return with the screen version of Clowes "Art School Confidential".

Craig Thompson's Blankets is begging to be made into a film. It won best of awards from many main stream pubs (Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly). The autobiographical story of a fundamentalist Christian teen losing his virginity, losing his greater innocence, discovering his manhood and deciding to drop his beliefs. It's almost TOO personal to be made into a film.

There was a recent discussion on my comic art collecting group. Someone brought up the fact that we collect "comic art". Why not just say "art"? Excellent point.