My City May Be Screaming But It's Not Saying Anything

You know a movie is in trouble when the first five minutes of the flick are an action sequence and you find yourself trying your best not to be bored to tears.

You know a movie is really in trouble when those first five minutes seem like the high point of the movie.

The sad thing is that the 2008 movie The Spirit had enough talented people in its cast that it should have been a lot more memorable than it was. Then again, I always preferred the Capra-ish spirit of some of the original Will Eisner stories that allegedly inspired this flick than the "look, Ma, it's another Sin City remake" approach that dominated this flick. And even if you like the idea of another Sin City remake, I suspect that you're bound to find The Spirit a bit disappointing.

Trailer of the Week: Sin City

My favorite memory of this movie was seeing the way it managed to elicit a "oh, wow" from the usually unwowable film critic Jill Cozzi. Apart from that, my view of the movie is too complicated to sum up here. However, it must be said that director Robert Rodriguez does know how to get your attention. And just look at that cast list!

Comic Book Image of the Week

That's funny. She doesn't look like Eva Green.

In fact, the lady in the above drawing does not look that much like a white woman at all, especially given the angle from which she is drawn. I don't know whether or not that is intentional. After all, Sin City creator Frank Miller has not been shy about drawing people of color in the past. Yet he usually is not so ambiguous in his creation of such characters either. So could he be trying to tell us something by making Sin City resident Ava Lord out to be a black femme fatale? Or am I just seeing things?

After all, dark-skinned minorities are more often than not absent from most classical examples of the film noir that inspired Frank Miller's Sin City. Even Raymond Chandler's novel Farewell, My Lovely -- which made little effort to downplay the fact that its hero's office was located in a poor black neighborhood and that its first major conflict involved a white gangster throwing his weight around in a black-run tavern -- was considerably whitewashed when it was adapted for the movies and renamed Murder, My Sweet.

Then again, you don't exactly have to be a rocket scientist to guess why Frank Miller would not want his fans to instantly perceive Ava Lord as a black woman. After all, if there is anything more politically incorrect than a unrepentant femme fatale who brags about herself being evil, it's a black femme fatale who does the same thing. Yet one of Frank Miller's characters in one of the other chapters of Sin City is a black prostitute and yet another is a female Japanese assassin so it is not like he's above drawing nonwhite criminals.

I guess only Frank Miller knows for sure which race Ava Lord is supposed to be and so far he's not telling. And since director Robert Rodriguez has chosen to cast a white actress in the part, I suppose that should settle the question.

And yet I can't help but wonder what difference it would make if Ava Lord were black. Or Hispanic. Or Asian. Ideally, it should make no difference but then we don't live in an ideal world.

Then again one could argue that dark-skinned actresses have enough problems without being cast as evil women. So it should be all right to leave those roles for white people. After all, no one objected too much when the producers of the Broadway production of Miss Saigon chose to cast a white guy as a biracial and half-Asian pimp...

Oh, wait. They did.

Comic Book Image of the Week

From writer Frank Miller's Daredevil's "Born Again" story arc comes yet another reason to admire the good Captain.

Edited to Add:

Of course, if you prefer more context, there is always this group of scenes:

All the New Movies That I Have Seen

1. Batman Begins (2005).

Basically a Batman movie for people who don't like Batman, or to put it in a more charitable sense, a Batman movie for people who don't like comic books. It tries very hard to be more realistic than most comic book movies and it is certainly more realistic than the Tim Burton movies that dealt with the same subject but in the end, it just was not my cup of tea.

2. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).

A film that proves that Tilda Swinton is an acting goddess. And the rest of the cast isn't bad either. I do kinda wish that I didn't keep confusing the older girl with Violet Baudelaire but that's a failing on my part, not the filmmakers'.

3. The Dark Knight (2008).

I actually liked this better than Batman Begins though I found attempts to interpret it as a pro-Bush parable to be pretty laughable. Of course, it helps that I have a weakness for the work of comic book writer/artist Frank Miller who was responsible for the comic book novel that inspired this movie.

Hey, I Don't Remember This Show: Captain America

I just saw the movie version of this cartoon this past weekend and yet I'm ashamed to admit that I have absolutely no childhood memories of this cartoon. In fact, I owe almost all my knowledge of this cartoon's title character prior to this month to old Marvel comic books -- including the cross-over appearance he once made in Frank Miller's Daredevil. And of course, all that happened long after this cartoon went off the air.

Trailer of the Week: The Spirit (2008)

And I thought I had an odd love life...

Hey, I Remember This Show: The Green Hornet

I just saw The Spirit this week and I'm still trying to get over what Frank Miller -- a writer/artist I once liked -- did to Will Eisner's creation. So I might as well post something that will get that out of my mind.

And what better than this intro to a classic TV show which actually manages to do its version of another medium's character justice?

The narration is done by William Dozier -- and yes, he's the same guy who did the narration for the Adam West version of Batman. What can I say? The guy obviously has a very distinctive voice.

Somehow I don't remember the few episodes I've seen of this show quite living up to that intro but they weren't all that bad. And anyway, that intro is a hard act to follow, don't you think?

At least it makes you really want to see this TV show. Too bad it's not on DVD.

I hope you enjoy it.