The Face Knife

The Face Knife* believes that the optimal ending sequence for a film should include either an extended dance number, or a death, or both (though I haven’t seen this done). There’s nothing that will leave an audience in a better, more invigorated mood that seeing someone dance their cares away. Exemplary final dance sequences include Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, Russian Ark, and the film I’d like to discuss, Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert.

Inspired by the story of St. Simeon Stylites, a 4th century saint who retreated to the desert to live atop a column in order to avoid sin. Buñuel’s film opens with the droll humor of Simon being awarded a taller, more ornate column by the monks of his order and the surrounding townspeople. Through the power of prayer, he manages to restore the hands of a thief who had them amputated**, who proceeds to use them to smack his kids. The townspeople are really not that impressed with the miracle - it’s sort of anticlimactic. Simon is not that impressed by the townspeople either - he certainly doesn’t love them at all. There’s a midget who proudly displays his goat’s full udders to a slightly disgusted Simon (mirroring the cow-milking scene in Viridiana), and a beautiful woman whom he reflexively calls a “cross-eyed hag.”

Maybe he has a good reason to be afraid of her, besides body-terror, because it’s Silvia Pinel as the Devil, to come and tempt him off his column. She enjoins him with such aphorisms as “What you have lost, consider as totally lost” and “indulge yourself until pleasure sickens you” (as she kicks a lamb). Simon, though tormented, resists all her temptations until the final one, where she brings him on an Jumbo Jet across time and space to a “black mass,” which turns out to be a rock concert. I think
Pope Benedict XVI can explain the connection better than I can:

… Rock music seeks release through liberation from the personality and its responsibility … [it is] among the anarchic ideas of freedom which today [1985] predominate more openly in the West than in the East. But that is precisely why rock music is so completely antithetical to the Christian concept of redemption and freedom, indeed its exact opposite.

Simon watches the dancers raptly, and asks Satan what the name of the dance they’re doing is. She replies that it’s the latest - and last - dance, “Radioactive Flesh.” Simon wishes to leave the club, but he can’t he’s stuck there til the end, and just as in Viridiana, the night is long and you’ve got to find something to do…

It’s a beautiful little film. The features of the monks in the desert remind me of El Greco, all elongated faces and tapered fingers. Run time is less than an hour, because the producer ran out of money. In his autobiography, Buñuel states that many sequences ended up “literally on the cutting room floor”, so perhaps that footage exists and can be used in an eventual criterion style DVD package.

As such, it’s currently not available on DVD, but if you want to check out the 3 minute 31 second version, click here for Canadian power-pop demigods The New Pornographer’s video for their song The Laws Have Changed, which is about the fact that there’s no better place to throw a party than a decaying empire.*** Buñuel was Joycore before his time.

* Don’t really like this convention, but…what else can I do?
**No wonder this is a Face Knife favorite.
***Another song on the same record (Electric Version), Chump Change, written by Destroyer main dude Dan Bejar, fits in more with the Simon of the Desert treatment, featuring lines about how “The saints in the desert use their hands”, the carnal/spiritual opposition of “there is you/and then there is your body” and a wittgensteinian injunction that “the world is that which is the case.”

1 part bedroom scene from Breathless
1 part chapter structure from My Life to Live
1 part sexual politics from Contempt
1 part whispered narration (by JLG) from 2 or 3 Things…
1 part negative photography from Alphaville
1 part advertisements from Masculin-Feminin
= most boring JLG film I’ve ever seen.

A Married Woman is currently unavailable on Region 1 DVD

The reigning Face Knife standard for judging summer special effects blockbusters is the number and quality of on-screen amputations, and by any reasonable measure, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith fails to live up to its potential to surpass the reigning champion, Sin City. Indeed, what sort of weaponry can be more hazardous to limb and other limb than the lightsabre, which as we’ve seen, is capable of cutting human bone like butter? Sadly, these campy swords were mostly used to disassemble robots - excuse me, droids, which is nowhere near as satisfying. Please consult The Face Knife Summer Movie Comparison Chart for a complete tally of amputations, along with other critical information to assist you in your moviegoing experience.

At this point, you know what you’re getting into when you go to see a Star Wars film, and any reasonable individual has lowered expectations with regard to plot, characterization and particularly dialogue. Still, it’s nearly impossible for anyone with any remote sense of storytelling to not gripe about the construction of the film. Lucas actually has a fairly compelling central theme, and with a little wit the film could even have functioned as commentary as political satire. Sure, some ersatz Kracauer will undoubtedly read Sith as a digital mirror to the Bush regime, much as Fritz Lang’s Mabuse were more or less spuriously read retroactively as a foretelling of the Nazis (the genesis in the adventure serial form being a nice point of comparison between the two series).

Still, one has to give credit to Lucas for using the last movie of his series to highlight the ultimate nature of the Dark Side/Jedi allegory, finally bringing out the essential dichotomy of the social and moral universe of Star Wars (and our own): the eternal struggle between Asshole and Douche (and Hammett). Beside Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Star Wars can be seen as a key text in the development of Asshole and Douche (and Hammett) theory. Indeed, it is possible to model this dynamic superstructure as Asshole and Douche (and Vader), as counterintuitive as this may seem.

While I’m sure at this point any serious student of human behavior is aware of the major characteristics of Asshole and Douche (and Hammett) theory, a quick refresher might be in order. In simplest terms, Asshole and Douche (and Hammett) posits that within every human relationship between two people, one person occupies the Asshole position and the other, the Douche. The main theoretical model for this theory is the band Metallica, where the long-lasting and fruitful cooperation between Asshole James Hetfield and Douche Lars Ulrich is a great example of the monetary and spiritual haul that can result from maximizing one’s position as Asshole and/or Douche, in conflict with an Asshole or Douche who is also maximizing his or her potential. The struggle between Asshole and Douche and the resulting synthesis is the crucible of every collaboration creative act.

Broadening the scope to include more individuals within a group dynamic, the Hammett (or Vader) position soon appears. The Hammett is a latent Asshole or Douche whose tendencies towards one pole are sublimated under the stronger Asshole and Douche tendencies of two of the other group participants. The Hammett, in the classical sense, takes the path of least resistance - without effort, without conflict, an Asshole or Douche tending individual will slip down to the Hammett position - there’s a gravitational pull to Hammett that affects even the strong willed. Usually, a Hammett will think he is satisfied, but rarely gets his own way and therefore suffers. Some Hammetts can unconsciously use their position as a bargaining chip in the greater Asshole/Douche conflict to maximize their power, but once they realize that they are doing this, become either an Asshole or a Douche.

George Lucas, or perhaps his rumored script doctor Tom Stoppard, who is undoubtedly well-versed in Asshole and Douche (and Hammett), has given Asshole and Douche (and Hammett) a new archetype, a new way of modelling the third position that is a new synthesis between the ways of Asshole and Douche. In effect, the “prophecies” that Mace Windu speaks of are actually true - Anakin Skywalker brings balance to the force by being the synthesis of Asshole and Douche.

Clearly, the Jedi are a collection of Douche tending people. Any organization that has a council is clearly Douchetacular, and the whininess underlying the character of, for example, Obi Wan Kenobi, clearly indicates Douche tendencies. Each of the main Jedi Douches tries to out-Douche the other, not through direct competition but through influence on Anakin, the designated Hammett. Yoda’s lordly Douching batters Anakin into submissiveness, until he realizes that in order to maximize his potential within the Douche hierarchy of the Jedi, he must embrace his inner Asshole, perfectly modeled by his soon to be mentor, Palpatine. When Anakin and Palpatine first interact, the arch-Asshole’s injunction to “Do it!” - cut off Count Dooku’s head - and Anakin’s quick acquiesence shows the boy’s thrall under the power of the greater Asshole. Soon enough, Anakin is laying waste to Douche and Douche alike, the Jedi Douche factory being unprepared for the assertiveness of Asshole. Even his lover, uber-Douche Padme, is overpowered simply by a trace of Asshole, resulting in a supreme feat of Douchery when she dies of heartbreak after childbirth, abandoning her children in the ultimate selfish move.

Anakin, or Vader, in his role as a proactive Hammett, is still trapped in that role because he’s in the thrall of the Emporer. It was not his body but his Douche nature that was preserved by that shiny plastic helmet. He is a walking nightmare of self-involved Asshole/Douche conflict until his son, Turbodouche of the galaxy, removes his helmet and frees the Douche spirit.

The message of George Lucas’s trilogy is thus that being a Douche is somehow objectively better than being an Asshole (really, can you think of a bigger fictional Douche than Luke Skywalker), which is absolutely untrue. The Emperor, in this case has it right - Asshole and Douche are two sides of the same thing, and the key to balance is to know which role is yours to play in a given relationship, and become a better Asshole or a better Douche within the relationship. Star Wars is nothing more than a tool of Lucas’s foul and false Douchism, the Jedis being the Douchist majority and thus writing the rules of history.

(A better telling of nearly the same story is perhaps the Conor arc on Angel (Conor is practically the same character as Anakin but given more life), with Angel remaining a Douche (of course) and Holtz is the Asshole position to Conor’s tortured Hammett. )

Luis Buñuel film in which Fernando Rey plays an aging lecher. Okay, that’s a feeble joke. Look for a “Which Buñuel film am I watching?” flowchart to completed sometime this summer.

Viridiana is a blasphemous film about the consolations and proper uses of religion.The titular character is a novice nun who returns to the world one last time before taking her vows in order to spend some time on the estate of her widower uncle Don Jaime (Rey), who has sponsored her entry into the convent. As with most of the characters played by Rey in the Buñuel canon, Don Jaime is very wealthy and inflamed with lust by any young woman, and as such he tries to tempt Viridiana to marry him and stay with him. The night before Viridiana is to return to the convent, Don Jaime asks the naif if she would do him a favor, which consists of wearing his dead wife’s wedding dress and shoes, which we had seen him caressing earlier. With the help of his maid and some drugs, Don Jaime prepares to ravish Viridiana only to find that he cannot go through with it. In deep shame, he kills himself, though Viridiana only finds this out as she is about to board the bus back to the convent.

Viridiana inherits the estate, but she has to share it with Don Jaime’s out of wedlock son, Jorge, who is a typical modern smoothy who wants to bring electricity and modern farming methods to the estate.

Viridiana wants to use her wealth to help people, and starts a home for some begging invalids. This doesn’t turn out to well, as as soon as they are left unsupervised, they throw a raucus party culminating in a tableau vivant of Leonardo’s “Last Supper” and dancing to Handel’s Messiah, the only phonograph record Don Jaime had, which he used to play the organ along to.

As the beggars give in to their urges, one of them says of his cohorts “Let them sin…it’s good for the soul….then they can repent.” which to me is pretty much the summation of any functional version of Christianity. The rules-based ascetiscism Viridiana learned in the convent and tries to apply to real life is just not practical for human beings.

In the wonderful ending, (which, apparently Buñuel adapted from the censors’ suggestions) Jorge invites a chastened (but ready to become unchaste) Viridiana to play cards with him and maid, with whom he is already having an affair (unlike his father, who remained faithful to his dead wife, or so we are led to believe). A rock and roll record blares on the phonograph, with the chorus “Shake your cares away,” and Jorge explains the rules of the game to Viridiana, and that they play cards because the “nights are long and you have to fill them somehow.” The consolation of other people, of being the bride of the world rather than the bride of Christ, is the only option left to us, born sinners who would certainly not be able to deal with paradise even if it were given to us. It seems a little odd for me to use a film banned in Spain and other countries for blasphemy as an example of the kind of religion I find attractive, but I really see a kinship between the themes of this movie and the earthly spirituality of a Dostoevsky or Bresson, and I don’t think that Buñuel would necessarily think that that’s a bad thing.

Viridiana is currently unavailable on Region1 DVD

I usually don’t laugh very much during Buster Keaton films (not that I’ve seen a lot). The enjoyment I get from a film like The General is not akin to that I get from most comedies; rather, it’s more along the lines of amazement or astonishment. I kind of mutely but raptly watch Keaton rapidly hop on to and off of his locomotive or leap through a burning trestle and splash in the river below or trip over a sword. The funniest moments of Keaton’s films - meaning where I’m most likely to laugh - are the close-ups, where he looks blank or perturbed or nervous, like when he accidentally shoots a cannonball straight up in the air and has no idea where it’ll come down.

The General is an acknowledged classic and I’m not going to belabor the joys of locomotive chases (though I would like to know how they did some of the tracking shots - another train running parallel?) and flaming boxcars. What I kind of want to talk about, though I have no historical backround in this, is The General’s place in the “cult of the South” that cinema seems to have in a large part aided and abetted. Keaton’s character is a southern railroad engineer who tries to be first in line to enlist when the Civil War starts. Sure, narratively he’s enlisting merely to impress his ladyfriend, but why is he Southern in the first place? Why couldn’t he be a Northern engineer? The faded romance of the lost cause of the South shows up time and a time again in the most romantic of Western characters - such as John Carradine’s gambler in Stagecoach or all the permutations of Doc Holliday. Not until John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in The Searchers do we (and I haven’t seen THAT many films, so correct me) get an idea of what fighting for a morally wrong cause does to a man, the corruption of this sort of honor.

I wonder if anyone’s done a study of the depiction of the Conferacy in cinema and how it contributed to the cult of the South that still survives with the stars and bars decals and such. Clearly, there’s a good deal to be said about it.

Review of a new Keaton biography in the Washington Post, and I cannot believe i didn’t watch The Playhouse, which is on The General DVD.

Hypothetically speaking, if I were to tell you that I really liked and respected a film, because I thought it was realistic, and I used the term realistic without any irony or other ulterior motive - speaking totally sincerely here, - and I would want to see it again sometime, just me and it, just - hypothetically speaking - would you get weird on me the next time we hung out? No, no, that’s okay. I’m sorry. i didn’t mean to put you in that position. Sorry. Let’s just forget it. Why that long face? Are you going to get weird on me? Weren’t we having a good time, talking about movies? Can’t we still have a good time? Not that I would want to force you to have a good time… No, I’m NOT FUCKING WITH YOU!

Funny Ha Ha is a story about people who can never say what they really mean when they really mean it, because they’re so concerned with hurting other people’s feelings that their own emotions are submerged under a series of verbal and physical tics. Case in point is Marnie (Kate Dollenmeyer), an aimless 23 year old college grad who can’t stop apologizing for having feelings, and who can’t stop touching her face like an even coltishier version of Wiley Wiggins in “Dazed and Confused” (though the characters probably have a little more in common with Linklater’s Slacker, though, you know, not as smug and isolationist. Or is that me?)

Marnie has a crush on Alex, this computer programmer boy, and everybody knows about it, including Alex. When Alex finally becomes apparently available, Marnie is too afraid of rejection and “things being weird” to make a move on him. Although her feelings for Alex linger, abetted by the most aggressive passive aggressive behavior ever committed to film, she tries to work them out through a checklist of self-improvement projects like “don’t drink for a month,” “go outside more often,” “learn to play chess,” and everyone’s favorite “fitness initiative!!”[sic], along with a friendship with a former coworker, Mitchell (played by the film’s writer and director, Andrew Bujalski) who thinks he is hopelessly in love with her and whom she is just using for attention, though she probably doesn’t even know that.

There was this awful buzz-phrase going on a few years ago called “quarter-life” crisis, and if it weren’t denigrating to the film I would slap it on it, but unfortunately, that sort of sums up the simultaneously transient yet static nature of a lot of people’s post-collegiate experience. Lives and emotions are in flux, yet they seem strangely caught in patterns. Maybe you’re still living with your college girlfriend even though you think you have a crush on one of your other friends, like one of the characters in the film. Maybe you’re prematurely burned out with your job. Maybe the only way you can express emotions is by acting like a child in public.

I don’t want to spoil how the film ends, because the final scene cuts off quite unexpectedly and in my opinion, quite brilliantly. I would hope it cuts off just before Marnie stops submerging her emotions and finally “calls bullshit” on the way other people treat her, the little and big slights and general disrespectful behavior that we think we have to put up to remain friends with someone. In fact, in my “director’s cut” of the film, it ends with her plunging her hand deep into the chest cavity of one of the other characters, pulling out his heart and showing it to him, her face spattered with little drops of blood. But maybe that’s because the last couple of movies I saw in the theater included Oldboy, Sin City and Save the Green Planet, and want this film to fit in with them in my summer movie chart. ( though, apparently, this film has been on cable and was premiered at film festivals in 2003 - hah! Don’t have to include it!)
Funny Ha Ha is currently playing at Cinema Village in New York City, in a Lilliputian screening room.)

First off, the infamous octopus eating scene? Really cool. I’m not some sort of raw food iconoclast and I don’t self-identify with Renfield or anything but I can see that after a decade and a half of fried dumplings, one would want to eat something fresh, you know what I mean? I suppose the symbolism of the octopus has to be linked with the other being that protagonist Oh-Dae Su promises to eat alive - his tormenter, the guy who kept him imprisoned for 15 years without explanation and who must have metaphorical tentacles in every corner of Oh-Dae Su’s life, but just as Oh-Dae Su chokes on the octopus, he….

Let’s stop here for a second. Part of the tendancy I like to call creeping Fincherism, beside the over-fondness for sick greens and mauves in the production design and the desire to move the camera like a spastic playing a car racing video game, is the purposeful insertion of plot “spoilers” (to use the geek argot) that preclude any serious discussion of why or why not a film works, story-wise, unless you want to give the game away to potential viewers. On the one hand, placing the viewer on the same epistemological level as the protagonist (various levels of ignorance) is, you know, in line with certain of my modernist sympathies, but on the other hand, how many times can one’s fictional world get TURNED UPSIDE down before the gesture becomes rote and meaningless? There is a certain kind of nihilism evident in this tendancy - that the agent in the world of the film will never, ever know anything until it’s too late - never know who is controlling their fate, why their fate is being controlled, and just how extensive fate is being controlled. As far as that goes, it’s sort of baby-grade existentialist, but then the conventions of narrative filmmaking require that the plot MUST be explained, and heck, its the work of a superheroically intelligent and/or rich individual WHO FUCKS WITH YOUR REALITY, man, and I can’t abide by that. There’s no DUDE like that, just like you don’t like in God’s potemkin village. The “reveal” is philosophically and cinematically meaningless, and as such these films more or less suck. There’s no need to treat your audience like children in order to build “suspense.” I’m firmly on the side of dramatic irony, where the audience knows more or less what’s going to happen to the protagonist but is forced to look on in horror as he tries and fails to avoid his fate. THAT’s suspense.

So what do you get from Oldboy besides this Fincherism? Not a whole lot. The plot, as such, doesn’t make a lick of sense, unless you buy that there are people out there who really CAN control you and have the whim to do it. The violence can be excrutiating, and the denouement, well, is totally expected and gruesome. It’s a well made film, within the context of it’s genre, but I certainly don’t think it’s a very good film.

Sometimes I fear there’s something a little wrong with me. While New Order played the Joy Division classic “Love Will Tear Us Apart” all I could think of was how strange it was that that song had become an audience sing-along, a slightly gloomy old chestnut, and that this crowd of aging Long Islanders was communally singing a song about isolation, a song about the inevitable and terrible estrangement intimacy inspires when it starts to deteroriate. Can you really sing “There’s a taste in my mouth/as desperation takes hold” with a big fucking grin on your face, and then turn and high-five your neighbor? I suppose you can, and hooray, that’s the magic of Pop music. It takes pure, romantic poetry and turns it into a party. Sorry to sound precious but fuck, that’s an intense song about intense feelings. I don’t think listening it to should be an occasion to remenisce about how great WLIR was when you were growing up in Hicksville in the 80s. * That’s a song that MEANS something. Somehow, if that song was to be played live, I would want it to absolutely FLATTEN the audience.

But New Order has grown beyond that, 25 years beyond, and they were clearly enjoying themselves playing live. Bernard Sumner danced like a big goofy sissy and a muscle-shirted Peter Hook struck rock star poses at the lip of the stage, as the crowd sang along to “Regret,” True Faith,” “Temptation,” and three other Joy Division tunes besides the one that flipped the switch in my brain from enjoying the music to thinking about what it all MEANS. Damn you Pop and your conundrums. You are a fickle mistress.

I think I’m in the minority of preferring the guitar-heavy version of New Order, and they had a lot of that on offer this concert. For most of it, there was some heavy ax-slinging, but during the final encore of “Blue Monday” Hook played these goofy drumpads that made laser noises whenever he slapped them. It was a good end to the set - it was fun and silly and over the top and nothing like Joy Division.

Openers Dragonette were the awful 80s prom band from my nightmares, where I’m forced to be John Cusacks ill-groomed sidekick in perpetuity. Speaking of which, Matthew Perpetua of Fluxblog DJ’d between sets, and he played “Theme from Sparta FC” by the Fall for me, which was ever so nice of him. Matthew, the 40-ish volunteer firefighter types in front of me loved “U Got the Look,” so you should always play that.

* not that I’m so pure about how I use my music. For instance, I regularly exercise to the Jesus and Mary Chain. Surely Jim and William Reid’s hairdos are rotating in their graves.

I still don’t know if I can forgive Todd Solondz for Happiness or Storytelling, but Palindromes is really an excellent film, his best by many miles. Stylistically and morally, Solondz has opened himself up, going beyond the closed universe of sitcom style set-ups and misanthropy that characterised his earlier work. Solondz will still never be accused of being a great stylist - can you think of a Solondz shot that doesn’t involve Philip Seymour Hoffman’s semen - but there are some great, lyrical moments in Palindromes, particularly the Night of the Hunter-inspired river escape.

Palindromes is a comedy about teen pregnancy and abortion, but it’s not a particularly topical movie, which is something I think confuses critics. They see these hot button topics (also pedophilia) and think the film is *about* these things - how could it not be - but, in the case of Palindromes (and again, I’m not going to defend Solondz’s earlier films - not a fan), they’re really metaphors for a larger message about how human beings stumble towards intimacy (not the sexual kind) with each other in a world that causes us to mistrust and hate our neighbors and ourselves. Solondz’s characters are constantly making the wrong choice, but for the right reason, and that’s what makes them ultimately lovable, their infinite fallibility. Just when you think they can’t make a worse choice, they do. In the past, Solondz seemed to dwell on this aspect of life, to mistake it for all life, all human experience, especially in the context of Suburbia, and his films often mocked the characters for their mistakes. They were cruel films, but Palindromes is uncommon in its sensitivity and gentleness, without being ever sentimental, a particularly difficult thing to do when children and childhood are part of the project. I’m tempted to revisit his earlier films, but my memories of them are too strong and too negative, so instead I’ll just look forward to his next project. Hopefully, it will be even more influence by the surrealism of Bunuel, because I think their respective humanisms have a lot in common. Both are interested in the malfunction of human desire and the way that one cannot change one’s innate drives without repression and horrible consequences*. A full-blown surreal Solondz film I think would be a revelation.

* in the vernacular, “you can’t unfry things. you can’t change who you are” (Strangers with Candy).

There’s nothing more disreputable than fundamentalism, even when the infallible holy text to which the devotee pays obeisance is the Word of a half-crazy* anarcho-libertarian with a severe design sense and a warped sense of humor. The literal, humorless** fidelity of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City (2005) to Frank Miller’s comic books somehow manages to warp to the parodic sentimentality and brutality of the source to such an extent that they’re no longer parodic - they’re bathetic. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that the take-away of Sin City (the film) is that, as two of the protagonists say, there’s some things decent people*** weren’t meant to see, but they’re necessary in the pursuit of justice. That’s a fascist message, even if we, the audience, are implicated in the category of not-decent people since we’re watching the carnage on screen and presumably getting a kick out of it.

It may be too much to expect a responsible politico-moral stance from the Rodriguez/Tarantino axis. The early films of Tarantino were dismissed as being reprehensibly violent but at least they coupled that violence with a knowing, ironic distance****. Kill Bill and Sin City are all about KICKS, but the former is not as irresponsible as the latter because the former’s mission of vigilante justice is altogether personal, while the vigilantes of Sin City are a reaction to the amoral WORLD of Noir (and presumably, early 21st century America). It’s a political statement even if it’s unwitting, even if the point of the film was to be about the art.

Which, I have to say, is pretty good. It could have been better, as Rodriguez is not a great director, but the effects were marvelous. I have no problem with the movie itself; my problem is with the project, and it’s hard to take a moral stand against something without coming off as Bill Bennett. But although my lifestyle and tastes would most likely be considered as degenerate by much of the U.S., I feel like I have to object to the mainstreaming of the ethos that lead, not altogether hyperbolically, to Abu Ghraib and the idea that being Right is license to do anything in the pursuit of justice. Sure, the protagonists of Sin City are psychologically sick but they’re be more or less normal in the context of contemporary political discourse, and the further normalization of the anti-rule-of-law position without explicit (or even much implicit) condemnation is an unwise project.
— – ———-
In addition to the faithful reproductions of comic book panels, there’s another interesting kind of reproductive dialogue going on here, with Sin City being shot on digital, produced digitally, distributed digitally and (when I saw it, though obviously not widespread yet) digitally projected. Someone want to go Benjamin on this?

* though not as comic creators seem to go
** the movie itself, however, can be funny
*** in the film, all women
****though this creeping Tarantinoism was the bane of 90s cinema just as creeping Fincherism is turning out to be the bane of the 00s.