Sin City aka
Frank Miller's Sin City (2-disc) [Blu-ray]
(Frank
Miller & Robert Rodriguez, 2005)

Review by Leonard Norwitz
Studio:
Dimension Films & Troublemaker Studios
Blu-ray:
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
Disc:
Region: ALL ( verified
by the
Momitsu)
Theatrical Runtime: 2:04:03, Extended Runtime: 2:21:45
Theatrical Disc Size: 42,446,851,048 bytes, Extended Disc
Size: 40,754,964,870 bytes
Theatrical Feature Size: 29,428,832,256 bytes, Extended:
31,092,486,144 bytes
Average Bitrate: 31.63 Mbps, Extended: 29.25 Mbps
Chapters: 28
Case: Standard Blu-ray case
Release date: April 21st, 2009
Video:
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Resolution: 1080p
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
Bitrates:
Theatrical
Audio:
Theatrical:
DTS-HD Master Audio English 4281 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 4281
kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Dolby Digital Audio English 448 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 448 kbps
DUBs: Dolby Digital Audio Portuguese 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz /
640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
/ Dolby Surround
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
/ Dolby Surround
Extended:
DTS-HD Master Audio English 4255 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 4255
kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Dolby Digital Audio Portuguese 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640
kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Subtitles:
English, Chinese (traditional + simplified), Portuguese, Spanish, none
Extras
• Disc 1: Cine-Explore: PIP: green screen footage & original
art
• Theatrical cut w/ commentary by Robert Rodriguez & Frank
Miller
• Theatrical cut w/ commentary by Robert Rodriguez & Quentin
Tarantino
• 5.1 Audio Track featuring the Austin audience reaction
• Disc 2: Recut-Extended-Unrated Version of the Feature
• Disc 2: "Kill 'em Good" Interactive Comic Book in HD
• 15-minute Flic School (15 min.)
• All Green Screen Version (12 min.)
• The Long Take (14 min.)
• Sin City: Live in Concert at Antones (9min.)
• 10-minute Cooking School (10 min.)
• How It Went Down: Convincing Frank Miller (6 min.) *new
• Special Guest Director: Quentin Tarantino (7 min.)
• A Hard Top with a Decent Engine (8 min.)
• Trench Coats and Fishnets (8 min.)
• Making the Monsters (9 min.)
• Booze, Broads & Guns (11 min.)
• Teaser & Theatrical Trailer
Comment:
A few strands of melodrama have been pulled from Frank
Miller's graphic novels and plaited together-just about-into
a coherent comic-strip film. Miller himself co-directs, in
collaboration with Robert Rodriguez (plus a little help from
Quentin Tarantino), and there is certainly no letup, or
pulled punches, in the heightening of style. The movie is in
monochrome, splashed with occasional color, and the sheer
force of overkill-the ear-crunching sound level, the
disturbingly joyful violence-turns a sequence of horrific
events into a stream of unfeeling comedy. The plots offer
vengeance upon vengeance: cops against child-killers, cops
against priests, hookers against cops, thugs against
everybody. The cast is a blast, including Bruce Willis,
Michael Madsen, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, a bewitching
Carla Gugino, and a renascent Mickey Rourke. Most of them
enter with sweat and gusto into the spirit of the
thing-fortunately so, for without such eagerness the movie
would feel merely cruel. What it has to tell us of life, let
alone suffering, beyond the savage enchantment of the movies
could be written on the head of a bullet.-A.L. (4/11/05)
-
Excerpt from Anthony Lane at the NEW Yorker located HERE
[Intro]
The Movie : 9
When I bought the Recut version of the movie on DVD I
decided to wait a year before watching it so as to minimize
my concerns that making four short stories out of a single
movie might be problematic. So I may as well indicate my
strong preference for the theatrical version since the Recut
amounts to four separated stories from a seamless original
and not the other way around, despite their origins to the
contrary. The segment titled "The Customer is Always Right"
with Josh Hartnett is too short and disjointed to have any
meaning, yet works perfectly as a frame for the theatrical
cut. Another difficulty with the Recut is that we recognize
incidental actors here and there who just happen to be in
the scene but play no dramatic role in it. In "That Yellow
Bastard" when we see Mickey Rourke's character sitting at
the bar as Willis' character walks in, we feel an instant
recognition of his importance, but in fact he's just sitting
there, a derelict from another episode. If you did not
recognize the actor and only saw this cut of the movie and
not the theatrical, before or after, it would work, but
that's not a practical reality. On the other hand, the one
misstep Rodriguez makes in his theatrical version is to
include a voiceover for Clive Owen in the middle of Marv's
episode "The Hard Goodbye". It's the only place he
interrupts the narrative in this way and it distracts in
flow more than it offers in content.
While I really don't consider the Recut edition to be a
viable movie, I do think it is interesting enough to watch
once, if for no other reason than to see how brilliantly
Rodriguez and Frank Miller adapted and melded the original
stories which, we should remember, were separately published
to start with. And given that the actors are working
against a green screen without much context to help them
along, I think the Academy missed an opportunity by not
nominating Robert Rodriguez for Best Director. I mean:
Jessica Alba, for all her sex appeal, has never given a more
believable performance. Whose fault is that, I ask you?
Image: 9/10
NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were
taken directly from the
Blu-ray disc.
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
The first thing we should keep in mind about the image for
this movie is the shape of the intended grayscale. In this
case we have a pretty good idea what that is: Rodriguez
wanted to remain as faithful as possible to the graphic
design of Frank Miller's original comic, while observing the
requirements of a theatrical presentation. The comic is
just black and white – no gray. You can well imagine that
wouldn't go down very well for a feature film. It's an
imaginative idea, but why pay A-list actors if they are only
going to be seen in silhouette? In some of the extra
features we can see how the original full color HD image is
transmuted into a high contrast black & white image, in
which we can expect to find little detail in the shadows –
even less than a typical noir film.
To cut to the chase here, this Blu-ray offers one hell of an
image. Textures seduce and surfaces glisten. Shading is
sinister. There is often something palpable about the tone
of surfaces, be they faces, leather and vinyl jackets, car
paint, even digitally drawn backgrounds. The image appears
to be slightly oversharpened, but this, as with the edge
lighting, seems entirely in character with the intent.
The bit rate of the less expensive, single-layered Canadian
is typically half that of the other two and has a slight
greenish cast, but still looks highly resolved compared to
the DVD. The Canadian movie is brighter throughout, often
permitting more dimensionality as a result. We can see
deeper into the shadows, which may or may not be desirable,
given the dramatic content. The advantage to the higher bit
rate of the Japanese and Disney editions is hard to discern
because of the difference in brightness, but I still thought
I perceived a subtle advantage in terms of resolution and
density. We would expect a digitally derived image to score
big on Blu-ray, and so it does. No other artifacts,
enhancements or blemishes – only a subtle fine grain. The
contrast is very high as is intended, so I repeat: don't
expect a long grayscale.
ON PREVIOUS EDITION:
Come April 21 Sin City will be now available on
different Blu-ray production from three countries: Canada, Japan and the U.S. The
Japanese is similar to the new U.S. Disney in respect to
image, but not audio. Both the Japanese and Canadian are one
disc and contain only the theatrical version of the movie.
Only the new U.S. Disney contains both versions of the movie, as
did the Recut-Extended-Unrated DVD set. The bit rate of the
less expensive, single-layered Canadian is typically half
that of the other two and has a slight greenish cast, but
still looks highly resolved compared to the DVD. The
Canadian movie is brighter throughout, often permitting more
dimensionality as a result. We can see deeper into the
shadows, which may or may not be desirable, given the
content. The advantage to the higher bit rate of the
Japanese and Disney editions is hard to tell because of the
difference in brightness, but I still thought I perceived a
subtle advantage in terms of resolution and density. The
Japanese uses a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix. Both the Canadian and
Disney are DTS HD-MA 5.1, which I feel is to be preferred in
this case.

Canadian Blu-ray TOP
- Japanese Blu-ray
BOTTOM

CLICK EACH
U.S.
BLU-RAY
CAPTURE BELOW TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
Audio & Music: 8/8
The Japanese is similar to the new U.S. Disney in respect to
image, but not audio. The Japanese uses a Dolby TrueHD 5.1
mix. Both the Canadian and Disney are DTS HD-MA 5.1, which
I feel is to be preferred in this case.
I suspect that the audio mix here is faithful to the
theatrical intentions. It lacks the kind of focus that we
get from other comic-derived sources such as Wanted
or Spiderman. Rather Sin City opts for a more
immersive experience. Voices are given as much attention as
effects, perhaps more so. Each actor's voiceover has his
own unique aural character. Mickey Rourke as Marv sounds
like he's really in our head, whereas Clive Owen (Dwight)
and Bruce Willis (Hartigan) are placed more forward, though
differently miked. Josh Hartnett (the hit man) is almost
whispered. Gunshots, car, window and wall crashes are clear
enough, just more generalized in location. Rodriguez' music
score is perfectly suited to the noirish atmosphere. The
bass throbs, sometimes deeply in our nether regions.
Operations : 6
The menu indicates you can move seamlessly to the other
extra features from Cine-Explore. Not quite. First of all
the only other extra features on this disc are audio tracks,
so why these are inaccessible from Cine-Explore is something
of a puzzlement. On the other hand, the Cine-Explore
feature is a complete meal in itself and really designed to
be watched in its entirety and separately. You can indeed
exit for either of the two remaining audio tracks, but you
can't get back in where you left off and you can't listen to
either of the other audio tracks while Cine-Explore is
engaged. Indeed, you can only access Cine-Explore from the
beginning of the movie (from which you can scan or chapter
skip as desired.)
I do not object that there are no chapters within each story
on the Recut. There is, this time around, a Play All
function and, though the credits play through at the end of
each one, we can always skip ahead with the remote if we're
so inclined.
Extras : 9
As near as I can tell, all the bonus features from the
2-disc DVD box are imported onto this Blu-ray, with the
exception of the video game "Kill 'em Good" (which has been
replaced with a fancy-shmantzy game that I could never quite
get the hang of. It looked like it had potential, but
either I or my remote failed miserably. Of course, the
200-page reprint of Book One of Sin City: "The Hard
Goodbye" is also not included either, nor should we have
expected it.
But what takes pride of place and Best of Show for any
Blu-ray I've seen so far is this disc's new Cine-Explore
feature. This covers all the relevant material in such
depth and is so well executed that there is precious little
reason to investigate further. I exaggerate, but not by
much. The Picture-in-Picture material supported by the main
audio commentary with Rodriguez and Miller, moves from
Miller's original art work to green screen footage to behind
the scenes footage and other bits in a constantly evolving
self-guiding presentation. Unlike Universal's U-Control,
this feature proceeds entirely on auto-pilot. You don't
have to do anything but sit and enjoy. In fact, you can't –
except advance or fall back by scanning or chapter skip.
Not only is this feature interesting in terms of content it
is also satisfying in its graphic design. It is this
dynamic design that keeps us involved as we anticipate how
the frame will be used next. There are times when the
entire frame is made use of, sometime with a single image.
At other times several PIP images are mounted. Every now
and then the feature film takes the center stage, but most
of the time, it remains in the background, while enough of
it is excerpted or green-screened or whatever so that we
always know where we are in the movie. Brilliant!
The remaining featurettes, mostly ported over from the
2-disc DVD set, several of which duplicate each other and
the commentary, are all manifest in standard definition
(letterboxed as well, if memory serves). While in generally
good to very good image quality, I was irked to learn that
the ones grouped together as the "Rodriguez Special
Features" were all shot in HD, so their appearance in 480
struck me as a bit insulting (and is the only reason this
category does not get a "10.") I missed a larger, more
highly resolved image on a couple items especially: the
9-minute Live in Concert segment that features Bruce Willis
and the Accelerators at the cast party at Antones. Sooner
or later some producer will get the bright idea to offer
music clips that were shot in HD in both an HD image and
uncompressed audio. The 12-minute all-green screen sped-up
cut of the movie would have been much easier on the eyes if
shown in HD. The Rodriguez Features are all hosted by the
director whose informal manner I found most engaging. He
struck me as a man without the sort of ego we imagine comes
with the territory. He is gracious, inclusive and
informative. His 15-minute Flic School is perhaps the
densest and yet most informative piece on digital production
I've ever seen on disc.
Recommendation:
10
Whether you agree with my assessment of the Recut version or
not, Disney's 2-disc Blu-ray is a triumph – one of the best
HD releases this year. The image is luscious crystal and
the Cine-Explore feature shows how this sort of thing can be
done. Thumbs and toes way up.
Leonard Norwitz
April 15th, 2009
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