Frank Miller, king of grit

Ronin, Sin City, and Dark Knight Returns all leave me with a dirty feeling.  Because every one of his stories are filled with the filth of the streets.  And the art isn't meant to be pretty.  Most of the time it's not.  But Frank does one thing I rarely see others do.

He creates a cinematic story through graphic novels.  The pace from frame to frame is like a movie, only it can't be a movie because it probably wouldn't capture so much detail.  Even Ronin, which I felt was his worst book, still felt like I was reading a movie. 

I just saw a poster for a Sin City movie.  I know I'm going to be dissapointed.

>>1

Have you seen the Sin City trailer? I haven't actually read the comic, but the movies (based on the trailer) looks pretty damned cool.

I haven't even read the comic but that trailer looked amazing.

The comic is breathtaking, artistically.  I don't know if they could come close even with CGI.  Use Google, search for "Sin City" and "Frank Miller," and you'll see.  Look here, for a start:

ttp://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/features/sincity/sincity.asp

The writing is kind of an acquired taste--it's all very, very dark film noir sort of stuff, very bleak, very nihilistic.

To give you an idea, the very first Sin City story, back in 1990, was about a broken-nosed middle-aged ex-boxer named Marv who supports himself by renting himself out as low-level Mob muscle, in a wretchedly corrupt, dying, post-industrial wasteland called Basin City.  Marv is gigantic and almost superhumanly strong and tough, though also rather stupid--he's your basic hulking brute.  Anyway, Marv is in a bar, and the most beautiful woman he's ever seen comes to him and all but throws herself at him.  Marv is not real bright, but he knows he's one ugly SOB, which makes him wonder--but he doesn't question.  He goes away with the woman, who calls herself Goldie.  For the first time in his life, he has sex with an attractive woman without having to pay money for it.  And while he's showering off afterward in the hotel room, someone comes in and kills her--and the cops show up just as he's finding the body (and he thrashes the absolute shit out of most of them, then runs).  It turns out Goldie was a high-class call girl, on the run from the Mob, and she was going to ask him to protect her.  Marv knows she didn't love him, but he doesn't give a fuck.  A pretty girl was genuinely nice to him for the first time in his life, and Marv will stop at nothing for vengeance.  He wants not only to avenge Goldie, but to get back at the people who framed him for the murder--and because, deep down inside, a part of him that he has spent his whole adult life pushing away is telling him that what they did to her was an injustice, and that he is obligated to carry out vigilante justice because it is good, right, and proper, and because the system is utterly corrupt from top to bottom.  Marv is not used to thinking in terms of right and wrong, but the situation has forced him to rethink the way he views the world.  Marv dies at the end, but not before killing a huge number of people, including the man who gave the orders to have Goldie killed.

THAT is Sin City.

And Frank Miller's art is gorgeous and perfect for it, rich dark shadowy chiaroscuro.  Every panel is gorgeous and every line is perfect--and I really don't know if mere film could capture this kind of beauty.  It'd have to be filmed in black and white, with lots of intense contrast, to give it that 1940s film noir feel, but I don't know if any director today would be willing to make that kind of artistic choice.

I already anticipate a ghastly, garish, big-budget monstrosity like that "Dick Tracy" movie that had Madonna in it.  Gah.

yeah frank miller is amazing. i recently read a comic by him called "hard boiled" which was really cool, if incredibly violent and depressing. its a series of stories about this guy who is really a robot, and keeps getting his brain washed and getting all these different fake personalities, and then assassinating people. anyway, yeah, i cant possibly imagine a movie capturing one of his comics. i mean, they could not possibly be even a tenth as violent, and it would be very difficult to capture the correct atmosphere.

actually, i thought that bladerunner did a pretty decent job of capturing that kind of super gritty atmosphere.

The movie, it owned, without a doubt.

>>5
If you thought Hard Boiled was awesome then you should get down on your knees and thank Geoff Darrow (currently working on Shaolin Cowboy) for all of his hard work.  All Miller did on that book was hand him a skeleton of a script that basically consisted of "This guy is a robot and kills a bunch of people"...

I'm amazed.  The directors actually based the Sin City movie on the comic.  Not just the idea of the comic, but nearly every panel.  Take that, Daredevil.