SINS of Commission

SIN CITY: RECUT EXTENDED UNRATED SIN CITY's second release on disc in less than 12 months adds additional flavor to our movie going experience of the film, but it also raises interesting questions about the nature of film.

When SIN CITY (Dimension Home Video, 2005, two discs, $39.95, 1.85:1 enhanced, English Dolby Digital 5.1, English DTS 5.1, Spanish subtitles, close captioned, 208-page book THE HARD GOODBYE, four-page insert, released Tuesday, December 13, 2005) came out on DVD last August 16, 2005, there was no ambiguity about the fact that it was a "beta" version of the film on disc, well known to be scheduled for supplanting later by a bigger special edition. Not every movie gets this kind of deluxe treatment, but enough do to cause a certain amount of cynicism within the breast of the loyal movie and DVD fan. The fact that they can never seem to get it right is also continually disturbing, where "they" means the big studio DVD manufacturers and distributors, and "it" means a DVD as a finished product with a solid transfer and supplements that enhance one's experience and knowledge of the film.

It's an old song with multiple verses that are all the same as the first. In the long history of platters, be they vinyl, CD, or DVD, the owners of the intellectual property are content to sell you the same content over and over, that same narrow slice of pop art while all around lay fallow thousands of additional songs or albums or movies or TV shows to peddle. Sure, the companies have their problems, such as getting rights to this or that song or image. But they are also operating under the perception that the consumer favors newness, color, great sound. Silent era films are for the most part relegated to small independent companies, while most classics such as Sturges movies and European films are the province of specialty labels such as Criterion, which consequently have to price high their discs in order to realize a profit. When the studios pull out the stops, such as with Warner's THE BIG SLEEP or Paramount's SUNSET BOULEVARD, there is no topping them. But these instances are irregular. For the most part, the studio-manufacturers-distributors, often derided as mere MBA bean counters with no experience in the art of film, in fact have the same philosophy as their elders in the film business of yore, which is to open big, get as much money the first weekend as possible, and run.

But all this supposes movie is a solid anti-Berkelian thing, when in fact it is a Wittgensteinian theoretical thing of agreed upon dimensions and qualities. Is THE BIG SLEEP the thing in the cans or the digital device? Or is it the transitory image on the screen we spend half our experience of it reconstructing mentally? Is THE BIG SLEEP the film released in 1946? Or is it the version shot and then shown to servicemen in 1944? Or is it the reconstruction invented for the 2000 DVD release? What is TOUCH OF EVIL? The 97-minute version of 1958? The 108-minute version of 1975? Or the 1998 "reconstruction" based on Welles's contemporaneous notes? Or is it really just in those notes themselves, a dream of a film instead of a film itself?

What would make an informed DVD consumer happy? Which of those three TOUCH OF EVILS will do? In reality, he would probably want a three to four disc set with all extant versions of the film, plus yak tracks from Jonathan Rosenbaum or Robert Carringer, and a disc with the documentary that Curtis Hanson made about the film's locations. Universal could also spin off a one-disc version with the best of the four-disc set. But it isn't going to do it. Universal tried it once already and nobody liked it. They probably believe that they wouldn't be able to sell enough to realize a profit on the release. They don't blamethemselves for failing to do a thorough job.

The advent of DVDs has only served to remind us of how fluid the definition of a movie is and always has been and in fact is going to continue to be. Multiple DVD releases of the same movie are simply a commercial exploitation of an inherent paradox of the art form itself, which is that it is ever mutating, never standing still, and doesn't really exist in a tangible form. Like a play that has to be enacted by living beings and a painting that is otherwise a collection of incoherent daubs of paint, a film both fails to exist in any tangible form and also relies on our mental interpretive visual perceptions in order to exist. Movies are perceptual objects.

SIN CITY, like many a contemporary film, doesn't even consists of photographs of things that exit in the real world. It is a composite of real actors against digital backgrounds composed later. In essence it is a cartoon. It's an animated feature, with live actors surrounded by drawings.

That this approach to adaptation perfectly reflects the quality of Frank Miller's source series of comic books doesn't deflect us from the fact that movies are becoming increasingly ethereal as the means to store them privately becomes increasingly more solid. In the 1950s, a film buff such as Kevin Brownlow had to start with 8mm Blackhawk films, or severely edited versions of copyright free silent films. With luck and wealth one could graduate over ensuing decades to 35mm prints shown in one's own private screening room. Now, with enough income one can recreate, nay improve upon, the movie palace theatrical experience in one's own den.

My views on SIN CITY, movie and DVD trial balloon, are already out in the ether. The new disc has an abundance of supplements, which are unified, unintentionally, by the fact that SIN CITY is not a tangible thing, but a construct of bytes, a perceptual object. Everything about it, from the audio commentary tracks by Rodriguez with Frank Miller and Rodriguez with Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Willis, to the features on the cars and clothes, are testimony to this fundamental change in the way movies work and the way they are consumed.

Rodriguez and Miller discuss moments of curiosity and interest and how Rodriguez managed to convince Miller to do the film, while Rodriguez and Tarantino discuss how RR wanted QT to try some new way of filming, and Willis announced that the project was so cool he was in regardless of the part that he had to play. The new features on the clothes, the cars, the props, and the make up (which are mirrored in the making of book I reviewed), only serve to point up how different these basic components of filmmaking are in the new age of digital technology.

Disc one has the original theatrical release along with the yak tracks, the four making ofs, plus an audio track of Austin premiere audience's reaction, a short reel of bloopers, the teaser and theatrical trailers, "How it Went Down: Convincing Frank Miller to Make the Film," a feature on "Giving the Characters Life: Casting the film," a section on "Special Guest Director: Quentin Tarantino," and finally something called the Sin-Chroni-City interactive game which I didn't look at, but all of the other supplements are very good.

Disc two offers up the four stories of the film recut and extended with about 20 minutes of additional footage, and discreet units on the menu. "That Yellow Bastard" is 00:47:25, "The Hard Goodbye" is 00:40:52, and "The Big Fat Kill" is 00:44:53, with the book end scenes now combined into one, at 00:08:27. I've seen the film on the screen three times, and on disc three times and I didn't notice all that much different except for the addition of new scenes in the Bruce Willis (including a terrific one in which Lucille comes to lawyer Hartigan out of prison) and the Mickey Rourke stories. This is evidence of either how seamlessly the new edits work, or how bad my memory is (both could be true). The supplements here continue to be great.

There's also Robert Rodriguez's 15-minute "flic" school, which really does summarize all you need to know about how they made the project, the whole movie's root green screen takes in high-speed. "The Long Take, a 14 minute take from the scene that Tarantino directed, and "Sin City Night at Antones," an eight minute song performed by Willis and his band as a benefit in Austin, and filmed by Rodriguez. Finally there is a 10-minute cooking school with Rodriguez, who shows the viewer how to make breakfast treats. If you think that movie making is easy, study the editing of this deceptively simple segment. It also provides a nice view of Rodriguez's house (or maybe it's his office).

All of these supplements announce, if by chance we haven't been paying attention, a bold new world of movies. The home screen is now the proper site of complete movie immersion, and the film itself is a composite of elements that mix recorded live action and subtle or not so subtle digital animation. The digital revolution has re-introduced something rather lost in film since the 1960s: true grandeur, both in the lavish spectacle of action and the quiet intensities of noir.

And incidentally, if you are interested in KILL BILL, you might find my new book, KILL BILL: AN UNOFFICIAL CASEBOOK useful. It is now available in fine bookstores everywhere, or from Amazon.

Not only that, I've got a new book out on an aspect of film noir I call film soleil, titled simply FILM SOLEIL. It is sure to alter film criticism as we know it to its very core. Order it now!

And if you are interested in what I sound like, I can be heard on KBOO radio (90.7 FM) the second and the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 9 AM in the morning (Pacific Standard Time) on Ed Goldberg's show MOVIE TALK along with Dawn Taylor. It's available via streaming audio (in 20 Kbps Stereo). The next broadcast is Wednesday, January 11, at 9 AM, with the critics' ten best lists.

COMING SOON:FILM GEEK, THE PRODUCERS, RENT, a package of Hitchcock movies and TV shows, FLIGHTPLAN and REDEYE, DEAD AND BREAKFAST, REMINGTON STEEL and other TV mystery shows, many STAR TREKS, the third annual DVD Tray of Horror, and more!

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