Sin City
Apologies for a lengthy absence - it's quite a busy time. Some stuff about the G8 coming up in the next few days, hopefully.
On less serious matters, I saw Sin City on Thursday, and it's fantastic. In lieu of a review, below is an email I sent to the BBC about the review of the film Jason Solomons (standing in for the usually fantastic Mark Kermode) did of the film on Radio 5 Live on Friday...
Dear Sir,
I am writing to plead with you not to let the idiotic Jason Solomons on your show ever again. His review of Sin City was nothing short of an atrocity. First, he judges movies by their titles, complaining he disliked the title of 'Monster in Law,' and again "if you call your film 'Sin City,' I think you should have something to say about sin." This is idiotic - as your programme discussed a few weeks ago, you can't judge a film by its title - look at 'The Shawshank Redemption'!
"The film is very confusing," he moaned. Quite simply, it is not; all four strands are connected in very obvious ways. Even though they are not told in chronological order, anyone old enough to see the film (ie over 18) should find no difficulty in following it; in this respect, the film is less taxing than 'Pulp Fiction,' not least because everything that happens in the film is described by narration - one could sit through the film with ones' eyes closed and still follow every twist and turn. In this context, the admission of confusion is damning.
"If you're gonna put so much violence up on screen I think you should have at least a comment on it." Solomons has clearly missed the entire point of the film, which is that a) it is meant to be comic-book pulp - an exciting tale of good characters and bad - not a flimsy morality-tale and b) the film is sufficiently grown-up not to shove a moral "message" down its viewers throats. That Rodriguez is "not one to probe the human heart" is arguably true, but any reviewer who considers this a valid criticism should seek another line of work. "I didn't really understand why these men were walking around," he finally admitted, suggesting that "the style is everything, the substance is nothing," and complaining that the film wasn't funny. Solomons tried to take the film far too seriously, forgetting that it is closely based on comics (or "graphic novels.") Because he so totally missed the point, his criticisms could not transcend extreme superficiality. Perhaps his announcement of 'Annie Hall' as his favourite film of all time should have been an early warning of this.
The poverty of his review is summed up in his complaint that "The broads...are not very empowering...they don't exist, they're kind of large-breasted bustiers...they just don't exist, these people." This is nothing short of stupidity. The "broads" are a group of prostitutes who take care of each other, protecting themselves from exploitation by pimps and drug dealers, using violent means to do so. This might not be very attractive, but it is undeniably empowered. That the women don't look like "real" women is also an odd complaint. This could be said of at least 90% of Hollywood productions; in this case, there is actually a valid excuse - it's based on comic books! Complaining that these womens' appearance is unrealistic seems akin to criticising the Superman, Spiderman or Batman films because their characters' powers don't occur in the real world. Solomons should reserve his outrage for ludicrous exercises like Disney's digital reduction of Lindsey Lohan's breasts, carried out "to avoid offending audiences," The Sunday Times reports. (John Harlow, "Prim Hollywood's 'digital boob jobs,'" Sunday Times, 29 May 2005, p. 23.) Such exercises in puritanism are a far greater risk to womens rights and liberties, as their bodies are made "offensive," and so must be concealed, or altered. James King was a little disappointing, but a far better stand in for Kermode.
This is not a simple matter of disagreeing with Solomons about Sin City - I often disagree with Kermode - the point is that Kermode is at least coherent, even when he is wrong, while Solomons is simply vacuous. Please do not subject us to more of him.
On less serious matters, I saw Sin City on Thursday, and it's fantastic. In lieu of a review, below is an email I sent to the BBC about the review of the film Jason Solomons (standing in for the usually fantastic Mark Kermode) did of the film on Radio 5 Live on Friday...
Dear Sir,
I am writing to plead with you not to let the idiotic Jason Solomons on your show ever again. His review of Sin City was nothing short of an atrocity. First, he judges movies by their titles, complaining he disliked the title of 'Monster in Law,' and again "if you call your film 'Sin City,' I think you should have something to say about sin." This is idiotic - as your programme discussed a few weeks ago, you can't judge a film by its title - look at 'The Shawshank Redemption'!
"The film is very confusing," he moaned. Quite simply, it is not; all four strands are connected in very obvious ways. Even though they are not told in chronological order, anyone old enough to see the film (ie over 18) should find no difficulty in following it; in this respect, the film is less taxing than 'Pulp Fiction,' not least because everything that happens in the film is described by narration - one could sit through the film with ones' eyes closed and still follow every twist and turn. In this context, the admission of confusion is damning.
"If you're gonna put so much violence up on screen I think you should have at least a comment on it." Solomons has clearly missed the entire point of the film, which is that a) it is meant to be comic-book pulp - an exciting tale of good characters and bad - not a flimsy morality-tale and b) the film is sufficiently grown-up not to shove a moral "message" down its viewers throats. That Rodriguez is "not one to probe the human heart" is arguably true, but any reviewer who considers this a valid criticism should seek another line of work. "I didn't really understand why these men were walking around," he finally admitted, suggesting that "the style is everything, the substance is nothing," and complaining that the film wasn't funny. Solomons tried to take the film far too seriously, forgetting that it is closely based on comics (or "graphic novels.") Because he so totally missed the point, his criticisms could not transcend extreme superficiality. Perhaps his announcement of 'Annie Hall' as his favourite film of all time should have been an early warning of this.
The poverty of his review is summed up in his complaint that "The broads...are not very empowering...they don't exist, they're kind of large-breasted bustiers...they just don't exist, these people." This is nothing short of stupidity. The "broads" are a group of prostitutes who take care of each other, protecting themselves from exploitation by pimps and drug dealers, using violent means to do so. This might not be very attractive, but it is undeniably empowered. That the women don't look like "real" women is also an odd complaint. This could be said of at least 90% of Hollywood productions; in this case, there is actually a valid excuse - it's based on comic books! Complaining that these womens' appearance is unrealistic seems akin to criticising the Superman, Spiderman or Batman films because their characters' powers don't occur in the real world. Solomons should reserve his outrage for ludicrous exercises like Disney's digital reduction of Lindsey Lohan's breasts, carried out "to avoid offending audiences," The Sunday Times reports. (John Harlow, "Prim Hollywood's 'digital boob jobs,'" Sunday Times, 29 May 2005, p. 23.) Such exercises in puritanism are a far greater risk to womens rights and liberties, as their bodies are made "offensive," and so must be concealed, or altered. James King was a little disappointing, but a far better stand in for Kermode.
This is not a simple matter of disagreeing with Solomons about Sin City - I often disagree with Kermode - the point is that Kermode is at least coherent, even when he is wrong, while Solomons is simply vacuous. Please do not subject us to more of him.
posted by UK plc at 12:49 PM
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