The Movie: Yet another film that I've watched that I knew very little about. About all I knew about it was that it is based on a graphic novel (which I will henceforth refer to as "comic book", much to the chagrin of comic book aficionados everywhere I'm sure), and that it featured extreme violence. From what I've read since then, apparently director Robert Rodriguez didn't want to make a film adaptation of a comic book, but rather adapting the medium of film to become more like a comic book, more or less using the drawings as the storyboards for the film.

The result is one of the most visually stunning films I've ever seen with a very original look that I can only categorize as being "ultra-noir", with the dark parts of a frame being ultra black with ultra bright side-lit highlights. It's interesting to me that as I was watching the film I was acutely aware of this being a "live action" film with fake backgrounds, but in my recollections in my mind, the scenes seem to play out as if it were a completely animated film. I guess that is a testament to the effectiveness of the technique.

The film is actually made up of a number of short stories that are loosely tied together and all take place in the urban cesspool of Sin City. At times this gave the film a rather disorienting and disjointed feeling, but in the end I couldn't help but say aloud to myself "wow, that was awesome" -- a pretty rare occurrence when you watch as many movies by yourself as I do, haha.

And being that this film is made up of a number of short stories, there is quite a large cast here, most of whom turned in great performances, although I kept getting annoyed with myself as there were tons of people in this film that I recognized but just couldn't place where I'd seen them before, or what their names were. I think a lot of the reason, particularly with the women, is that this film did a pretty good job of making them look a lot hotter than (or at least different from) usual. My one acting gripe in this film was Brittany Murphy, who I'm sure was directed to be melodramatic (this is a comic book, after all) but she was way over the top melodramatic in vaudevillian proportions.

And true to the rumors, this is an extremely violent and gory film. Do not watch this film if you have an aversion to filmed violence!

As I mentioned before, I really knew very little about this film before I saw it. I cannot compare it to the original graphic novel as I'd never even heard of it before this film came out, but I can tell you that Sin City stands on its own as a truly excellent film made in a very original style, definitely not your average comic book adaptation!

The DVD: The video on this DVD looks fantastic. It also looks completely grainless which has me wondering if the DVD was made straight from the digital source (as opposed to being transferred from film), as I've come to learn that this film was shot completely digitally using digital cameras and of course, digital backgrounds and effects. The detail is great, bringing out the many razor sharp edges, and although this type of material (fast action with lots of sharp edges) would typically be difficult to compress, I did not notice any compression artifacts at all.

Like the video, the DTS audio was pristine, with a wonderful, immersive soundstage. I did not get a chance to sample the Dolby Digital audio. What I did sample was the lack of special features -- all you really get is a short featurette that is labeled "behind the scenes" but it was quite disappointing as it really didn't take you behind the scenes at all. It was really more of a promo for the film with some superficial interviews by some of the actors and the director as well as Frank Miller, the creator of the graphic novel series, and really the overall message of the featurette is "Yeah! We had this really great idea and now we're making it and it's gonna be awesome!". It really doesn't give you any information at all into the process behind making the film happen.

Of course, with two more Sin City movies already on the way (apparently there are many, many more Frank Miller stories to draw from), I'm sure there will be a flurry of Lord of the Rings style special editions, extended editions, and finally complete box sets of special extended editions of all the films. So while my first inclination was to run out and buy this DVD as soon as I sent it back to Netflix, I think I will just have to sit down and wait.