> > But Sin City... How could they have overlooked Sin City?
>
> What's Sin City?
>
> Gri"isn't that Gotham?"shny

It's Gotham, when Batman isn't written for children. The movie was an adaptation of several comics stories written and drawn by Frank Miller, the man behind some of the best Batman stories out there (The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, etc.).

They're a series of stories set in a stinking hellhole of a city that looks and feels like the most corrupt city of the '40s was never cleaned up. It's about guys in trenchcoats protecting dames while driving big cars ("I need a hardtop with a full tank of gas. And make sure it has a big trunk") -- cars like the '59 cherry-red Cadillac convertible we all wish we owned.

The movie's black-and-white, except for the parts that need to be color (like that red Caddy). It's about bad guys doing bad things for the right reasons ("It's the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days. It's blood for blood and by the gallon").

It's film noir as though they never stopped making film noir, and all that sex and violence that was forced off the screen in the '40s is now allowed to take center stage. It's sick and twisted and funny and the best film of the year.

Stephen