s promised Friday, Malaya and I did venture forth over the weekend, and we did see Sin City, and we did obtain an Ipod Mini. We even did some grocery shopping, department store browsing, and visited CostCo on a Sunday afternoon; always a perilous mission, and one that it's almost impossible to walk away from with any lingering regard for humanity.

The Sin City review is down below, but as for the rest of the weekend's fun, read on.

On Saturday afternoon we arrived at the theater an hour before showtime, bought our tickets, walked half a block to the Apple Store, and went straight for the Ipod display table. We'd made our choice in advance; we were going with the $200 4 gig Ipod mini, which didn't seem too awful a deal at $100 each. Of course we paid more than that, what with the device to let it play in the car and a cute little gimp-like leather cover, but those came later. At the time, Sin City movie tickets in my pocket, the only thing we hadn't decided on was the color. Yes, the color. You know how Apple products are, with their candy-shell exteriors. Ipod minis come in four colors... and these aren't them.

That's odd, I guess this pic from the Apple site is an old one, since currently the four colors are blue, pink, white, and silver. Maybe no one liked that metallic puke green, so they subbed in white? The silver now is lighter than the gun metalish one you see here too.  Anyway, we didn't want pink or white, and were debating between blue and silver. I didn't really care, and if the blue had been darker and less aqua, it would have been the hands down winner. Malaya and I are both very sick of silver though (is like every other new car that color now or what?), so we went with blue.

Since one of our main priorities with the ipod was to play it in the car, through the car stereo, we had to buy something more to make that possible. Some newer cars and car stereos support direct mp3 player connections, but neither mine or Malaya's are among them, which meant we had to add an accessory. A surprisingly-expensive accessory, as you've come to expect from Apple. We picked the Monster FM transmitter and charger, since we liked the feature set.

You plug it into your cigarette lighter, and the device basically converts the ipod signal into a low frequency radio wave that works on the FM band. The coolness of the product is that you can preset it to any 3 frequencies you like, and then set those frequencies on your car stereo as well. They suggest low ones, 88.1 or 88.5 or the like, or else 107.9 at the upper edge, since you're least likely to get interference from a real radio station at those levels. I never listen to the radio in my car, so it's odd that I need to now to hear my music through my ipod. If you're lucky you'll use the same FM channel forever, but likely as you drive around a populated area or drive cross country distant stations will start to bleed through your preset. With some of the other FM transmitters for the Ipod you have to manually reset the frequency, and some don't even give you the option; they just go all the time at 88.1. So we like the option with the Monster.

So Monster FM it is! Plus it charges while it plays, which may or may not ever be needed, given that the Ipod battery lasts for 20 hours. Music straight through on a road trip to Texas?

For all the money spent, we have yet to actually try the Ipod in the car, though Malaya might on her way to work Monday. I certainly will on my way to Kali Tuesday night, if she doesn't beat me to it.

Loading the music onto the device was problematic as well, since while Ipods work with PCs or Macs, we didn't realize that you can't just plug the same one into each type of computer as you like. There's different formatting for the two types of computers, so you've got to go with one or the other. Plus you've got to reformat the device and wipe it clean each time you switch, so I couldn't load up all of my music and then give it to Malaya to reformat and load hers. Since we each had plans for 2gig worth of songs on the device, and I didn't have many of her songs on my computer, and vice versa, this necessitated some switching.

Our initially thought was for me to upload my songs to a spare folder on BlackChampagne, and then she could download them and put them on the Ipod. The 30kbps upload cap imposed by our ISP buggered that though, since I would have been uploading forever. Fortunately, Malaya remembered that she could just use her 128meg keychain file storage device, and while it took 7 or 8 switches of me loading it full, unplugging it, handing it over, she plugging it in and offloading all the songs, we got the job done, and she copied everything onto the Ipod and organized it by Malaya's lists and Flux's lists, and it's working fine. I'm not a huge fan of the Ipod circular wheel control thingie, but it's definitely easy to learn and it works pretty well. It doesn't seem very convenient if you're trying to change something without looking at it, say while you're driving or surreptitiously reaching into your backpack during study hall, but for people who don't touch type, I'm sure it's fine.

Those discoveries came later during the weekend. At the time, we found our new toy shiny and gorgeous, and took it with us back to the movie theater where Malaya molested it while we sat and waited for Sin City to start. My somewhat disappointed review is below, but I just wanted to comment briefly on some of the trailers. There weren't any shocking new ones, and I wish they'd shown the awesome War of the Worlds trailer. Of the ones they did show, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer is clever and the explosions at the end are genuinely awesome. I don't recall much of anything blowing up in the book, other than the earth right at the start of course, but the billowing flames look awesome on the big screen. And I must admit that the Star Wars 3 trailer was very pretty on the big screen too. I still have no expectation that the movie will be any good, despite the fact that it appears to be almost non-stop super-action, but it'll certainly be pretty, and if they're too busy fighting to deliver any more of that legendarily-bad "your skin is soft" Lucas-penned dialogue, that's definitely a big plus. It won't be a good film, not with Lucas unwilling to let a real director helm it, but it can't be worse than Episode 1 and 2. Can it?

After Sin City, we did some browsing through the area stores there in very expensive downtown Walnut Creek, and even made our way to Nordstrom. I've been in them before, back in San Diego, but I never really noticed how upscale they were before. Perhaps the one here, in this rather rich and mostly white area had even higher prices than usual, but all of the tags I looked at were laugh out loud expensive. I only glanced at a few things, but the sight of khaki cargo pants for $88 and plain t-shirts with some unknown logo for $39 were enough to keep me walking. I consider $20 a fair price for cargo pants at TJ Maxx or Ross, and I buy colorful t-shirts without annoying brand names on them for 5/$20 from Foot Locker or Burlington Coat Factory.

The question silly priced stores always generate in me is one I've gone through on the blog any number of times in the past. Would I pay those prices if I could afford to? I guess so, just for the convenience of being sure they'd have my size in the style and color I wanted, and I'd shop at an upscale store for dress clothing or suits or the like, but still... $88 for cargo pants? $40 for a t-shirt? No matter how rich I one day hope to be, I hope I'll never be so out of touch with financial reality that I blithely pay $128 for pants and a t-shirt when I could easily get comparable items for $25 at a discount store.

True, the regular people store wouldn't have a guy tinkling away on a grand piano beside the escalators, like Nordstrom's did, but then again, department store shopping is enough of an ordeal without suffering through Send in the Clowns for the 30 seconds it's audible while I'm riding up to the third floor, my squirming hand clamped firmly in Malaya's "I'm here to look for some goddamned pengu shoes, damnit." hand.

She didn't get any, since they didn't have any in the shade of green she's looking for, and since they were $70. Ironically, the shoes at Nordstrom's were the only type of clothing that wasn't outrageously overpriced. Nikes and such were $60, $80, $100, etc there, and that's about what they cost in sporting goods stores. It's funny; all the clothing in Nordstrom's (or Macy's, which we sometimes enter at the mall) is 3x or 4x the price I'd expect it to be at a discount store, and it's 2x as expensive as the overpriced stuff at The Gap or other like stores... all but the shoes.

Of course I'm comparing name brand shoes from mid-range stores like Foot Locker to name brand shoes at up market department stores. Shoes at discount clothing stores are far cheaper, but you're unlikely to find the same brands or styles. And brand and style matters and is noticeable with shoes, since good ones look different and fit better and feel better on your feet. The same can not be said for t-shirts and cargo pants and jeans, all of which look and feel just the same, while varying hugely in price. Well, they're the same except for the tag, but since no sensible person over the age of 13 cares about that, we shan't mention it.

On the way out we passed the piano guy again, and at that point Malaya and I simultaneously made the inevitable, "You know he's thinking, 'I studied at Julliard... and here I am, serenading waddling mall shoppers!'" joke. Send in the clowns indeed.

By the way, of course there was a bony, ugly, designer-jeans wearing teenaged girl carrying a rat dog under one arm and talking on a cell phone with the other; a trendy rhinestone purse over her shoulder. I'm not even sure she was an actual shopper; she might just be someone Nordstrom's hired to walk around and lend the appropriate Paris Hilton type vibe to their store, so that the women there know they need to walk out with at least $500 in purchases just to keep up appearances.

To the news.

¤ I despise pennies and would be overjoyed if they were phased out of the US monetary system. Stop making new ones, never give old ones out in change and melt them all down into playground equipment. (Even though playground equipment these days is made entirely from plastic.) Items could still cost any amount of money, you'd just round up or down to the nearest $.05 at the cash register, and no more would those annoying copper disks clog up coin trays and cash registers.  I can't be bothered to hunt any articles on the subject, but I've read ones in the past in which economists say the US would save millions of dollars a year (hundreds of millions of pennies!) by removing pennies from circulation.

Savings would come from the millions of hours of productivity pennies now waste for cashiers, bank tellers, armored car drivers, US Mint employees, etc. Not to mention the time you'd save by never again being stuck behind some old lady with a grocery bill of $13.04 who is just sure she's got 4 pennies somewhere in her garment bag-sized purse. Hell, I'd be perfectly okay getting rid of nickels too; dimes or even quarters are small enough currency to bother with once you're over the age of 12.

The only argument I've ever seen against removing pennies, other than ones from tradition or sentimentality, is that consumers would get gouged on prices as stores increased everything a few cents. First of all, if I have to pay 2 or 3 cents more on everything I buy for the rest of my life, that's a small price for the time and annoyance saving. Secondly, it's not true. Stores would actually lower prices, since they like the psychological illusion of prices being lower than a dollar. Things would cost $.95 instead of $.99, for example, and anyway, stores could still set prices to penny values; the total would just be rounded up or down at the register. Besides, with multiple items purchased at once and sales tax on top of that, you never pay 99 cents for something that cost 99 cents anyway.

We'd just need the penny-deletion law to mandate that cash register prices had to round up or down fairly. That way we'd break even on purchases over time, with some costing you 1 or 2 cents more, and others costing 1 or 2 cents less. Bills of 98, 99, 100, 101, and 102 cents would all be an even dollar, and 7 could round up and 3 down, or vice versa, to keep it even over all. And as I said above, if every 10th thing you buy costs you an extra nickel on the rounding, who cares? I really don't see any downside to the penny deletion issue.

Check out this page for lots of pictures of things you can build with just some pennies and a steady hand. They're surprisingly-strong, as you'll see.

You could just use nickels or quarters instead, and your tower would be a great deal shinier too. Or foreign money. Use foreign money. Krones, for instance.

¤ As expected, the Pope died over the weekend.  I don't have anything to add to my comments from the last blog, so whatever. I am surprised at the hagiography-style obits that are filling the news though. Who knew a man responsible for such widely unpopular church policies was so venerated? According to the obits, the Pope, just like Ronald Reagan before him, single-handedly brought down Communism in Eastern Europe. Who knew?

I did like this bit about his last minutes, from an LA Times article:

Ah, so it is okay for the Pope to pass on without using soulless machines to try and stretch his life out a few hours or days longer. Good thing his parents didn't show up with a bunch of rich wing nut backers and argue that he wanted to keep fighting for life, or congress might have gotten involved and passed some laws to try and keep the machines turned on. After all, the Vatican isn't any further out of their jurisdiction than Florida state court was.

The movie was adapted from three of Miller's seven Sin City comic novels, and while the three stories are set in the same place at around the same time, they never quite overlap or interact, the stories do not come together at the end, and none of them are very involving, mostly since we never feel anything for any of the characters. They're fun to look at, but with no rooting interest or sense of building action I never felt involved.  I didn't check my watch during the film, largely because I don't own a watch, but I was frequently bored. If only a little bit.

To the scores.

Sin City (2005)
Script/Story: 5
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 6
Humor: 3
Horror: 6
Eye Candy: 8
Fun Factor: 3
Replayability: 5
Overall: 6

Whether or not you like this film will depend largely upon how much you love cinema. If the sheer visual spectacle and weird characters are enough for you, and you've got a strong stomach for horrendous violence, you will love this film. If you're squeamish and demand an involving plot narrative and rising action, you'll be sickened and bored. I fell in between those two extremes, though I was closer to love than hate.  I loved some of it but was bored by a lot of the rest, and as a result my review categories are all over the place.

Curious about other opinions, I checked out the critical masses. Most reviews are largely positive, and quite a few are raves, but of the ones I read, no one seemed to feel much like I did about the film. I eventually turned to Ebert's review, since he had a very similar opinion to mine about Rodriguez's last adult film, Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Ebert liked it more than I did, but he basically agreed with my opinion that it was a film of many gorgeous images and clever scenes, but that there was no narrative discipline and no cohesive story. Which is pretty much what I thought of Sin City too. Ebert thought Sin City was different, though, hence his four star rating.

To quote an excerpt.

And now Rodriguez has found narrative discipline in the last place you might expect, by choosing to follow the Miller comic books almost literally. A graphic artist has no time or room for drifting. Every frame contributes, and the story marches from page to page in vivid action snapshots. "Sin City" could easily have looked as good as it does and still been a mess, if it were not for the energy of Miller's storytelling, which is not the standard chronological account of events, but more like a tabloid murder illuminated by flashbulbs.

I agree with everything he's saying here. The film does exercise "narrative discipline," in that it doesn't jump around all over the place like Rodriguez's past films. Unfortunately it's too disciplined in the way it stays rigidly with the same story from start to finish, (with one slight exception; the opening story continues after the other two, though you think it's over when they cut away from it half an hour into the film) and includes a lot of dead time. Picturesque dead time, but no matter how pretty it is, there's only so much staring at a static image you can do in a film without growing bored.

The stories are pretty trite, as well. In Sin City everyone is basically straight out of an adolescent fantasy world. All the men are dangerous lowlifes or psycho bad guys. All the male narrators are lone, brooding tough guys in a world of pain, men who are touched by one woman's kindness and then kill and crawl their way through fire to get revenge on those who would hurt her. The iconography and and imagery are powerful, but since these hero men spend most of their time alone, there's a lot of screen time given to them standing around, brooding and bleeding while they speak their thoughts courtesy of the extensive voice over narration.

Curious to compare, I looked through the sample pages of the Sin City comics on Amazon, and saw that 1) they really are virtually storyboards for the films, and 2) that 2/3 of the panels are almost entirely black ink, showing shadowy, film noir style images of the main characters and the beautiful dames they get involved with. It's all atmosphere and brooding darkness, since well... drawing things across a whole comic panel is a lot harder than drawing small things surrounded by tons of shadow. That style works (for most) in comic books since it's an accepted stylistic device, and since with a comic book the pacing is up to the reader. You can read slowly and soak up the atmosphere, or you can flip through the pages to get to the action. I tend to think comic books are way too light on plot and aren't worth the money since there are so many panels of stylistic pictures with nothing else. I'm not a big enough art fan to study how they are drawn, so I just want them to get on with the story, and when I read a graphic novel I tend to flip through it in about 5 minutes and wonder why on earth anyone would pay $27 for it.

I had somewhat the same reaction to Sin City, in that I liked the action bits, but often wanted to flip through the pages to get to more plot. There was no fast forward option in the theater though, which is why I was often bored by the pacing and style over substance. Unfortunately, it would be much the same on DVD, since it's not like there are long scenes that suck and can be skipped the way you do any scene with Bruce Willis' girlfriend in Pulp Fiction. The entire movie is just a bit bloated, with constant 5 and 10 and 15 second blocks of yawn time. Tighter editing could have cut 20 or 30 minutes off the movie and changed nothing, while making it a lot faster paced and I think I would have enjoyed it more.

Opinions on this will vary, of course, and I've seen some reviews talk about how the movie seemed incredibly fast-paced, and how 2 hours never felt more like 2 minutes, and how they wanted more and more of it.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention something about the violence, and while I didn't find it as gory or intense as lots of action movies, the events you see or hear referred to in Sin City are the most gruesome I have ever seen referenced in a mainstream film.  Evil men engage in dozens of child rapes and murders, enjoy cannibalism and mutilation, and behave sadistically towards every woman they can catch, and murder innocents with great glee. You don't see all of those things, but they are discussed very frankly or done just off-screen, and you see the aftermath, or the horror on the faces of those who suffer or witness the crimes. As punishment for their sins bad guys are squeezed to death, eviscerated, castrated, dismembered, fed to animals, beheaded, and on and on. Good guys are whipped, hung by the neck, electrocuted, shot, beaten, tortured, mangled, and much more, most of it right on camera.

These things aren't done in overly-sadistic fashion, and it's all very comic book and noir, but I don't think that Sin City is appropriate for children, or for quite a few adults, for that matter. I'd have loved it at about age 13, but I loved horror; the more gruesome the better.

I also liked that the violence was realistic, in it's pulpy, hyper-realistic way. When people get hit, or shot, or stabbed they bleed and they scream and they suffer. This might seem cruel or sadistic to some, and it is in a way, but at the same time it's realistic and sobering. When characters in movies are able to blow away dozens of bad guys who pop up like video game targets, and they go down with nary a scream or twitch or splash of blood (to preserve the PG-13 rating, most of the time), it's dehumanizing. In movies like those, there's no weight to the death, and no sense of suffering. At least in Sin City you see the pain such events bring about; it's not all cool and fun and harmless.

There's some sex too, but nothing explicit, unless you consider nudity a sin. There are several casually topless women and g-string butts on display, but it's not a big deal. I enjoyed the eye candy, while strongly approving of the realism of it. On several occasions a woman was lying naked in bed with the sheet down around her waist, and that was nice to see, just for the realism of it. It always seems so silly to me when movies or TV shows have a couple in bed with one of those L-shaped sheets; the kind that cover a woman up to her throat while leaving the man next to her naked above the waist. Most women aren't shy about their boobs being exposed when they are home alone, or with their lover, and the overt avoidance of nudity in much US entertainment always strikes me as very artificial. Especially when it's in a movie that's "R" rated already.

Sin City is completely over the top in its depictions of women, 95% of whom are imaginatively-dressed whores, but the men aren't much less ridiculous, though they are a lot more fully-clothed. If a movie had businesswomen walking around nearly naked for no particular reason, that would be dumb. In Sin City, it's how you expect the gun and sword-toting whores to dress, and it fits the mood perfectly, even though it's ridiculously objectifying. But hey, it's a comic book of a world like an adolescent's dark dream... what do you expect?

Hell, it's called Sin City... if you're looking for moral lessons, the title should tell you enough to send you elsewhere.