ENTERTAINTMENT

Violent and Sexy 'Sin City' aims to kill
Jason Kimbro | Staff Reporter

Do you like to see random people get gunned down? How about Catholic cardinals who like to take part in occasional cannibalism with hobbits? Or maybe jaundiced, male genitalia being ripped from a child molester?
If these sound like the type of things you look for in a feel-good movie, then I would suggest taking a chance on the new action flick based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, “Sin City.”
Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller himself, and Quentin Tarantino, “Sin City” takes you into a dark world of violent noir and intensity that has rarely been seen before. 
Not since the horror of “Goodfellas” or even the raunchy flare of “Robocop” has a movie provided extreme glorification of violence with such a positive nuance.
Black and white tinges and all, here’s the gist:
Basin City is full of corruption – so full that the city limit signs have all had the “Ba’s” marked out to show the true name of the town, Sin City. Most of the city’s evil comes from a family known as the Roarkes. 
One brother is a prominent cardinal (Rutger Hauer); another brother is a corrupt senator (Powers Boothe), whose son is a sick predator who uses his own bodyguards to help him seek out his next preteen victim.
On the other side of this tale are the heroes, a set of loners who are willing to do anything to protect what means the most to them.
First, surrounding the stories of this film is the tale of veteran cop John Hartigan. He is floating around 60 years of age and has recently been diagnosed with angina.  He saves a young girl, Nancy, from the sadistic and murderous hands of Rourke Jr. (Nick Stahl).
Next, we have Marv (Mickey Rourke), a deformed ex-con who is seeking revenge for the murder of Goldie (Jamie King), a prostitute with a heart of gold who happened to give the distorted beast of a man a night of sexual glory. The trail leads him to a brutal cannibal (Elijah Wood) who happens to reside at the Rourke family farm, just outside of town.
With the help of his parole officer, and with the police after him, Marv must avenge Goldie’s death and sort out the dark dealings of Cardinal Rourke.
Next, we have the workings of a section of Sin City called Old Town. Here, the prostitutes run the streets. They have made a deal with the police to run their part of the city however they want, as long as they don’t kill any of the brothers in blue.
By accident, however, a prominent policeman is killed, and the girls of Old Town, led by Gail (Rosario Dawson), must dispose of the body, weed out a mole that is working with the Irish mob and save Old Town from a street war, all with the help of Gail’s ex-boyfriend, Dwight (Clive Owen).
This brings us to the final part of the film, the second part to Hartigan’s tale. Hartigan was placed in prison thanks to his corrupt partner (Michael Madsen). Nancy was able to get away and hide from the Rourke’s. She is now a sexy, grown up Nancy (Jessica Alba), and a mysterious, yellow foe is out to get her. Hartigan is out of prison and he must get Rourke Jr. and figure out who this yellow foe is.
And there you have it.
This is an action-packed extravaganza of violence and dismay, bringing its viewers to the brink of taste and intensity, pushing them over the edge and into the world that is the darkest depths of noir cinema. In other words, this movie is highly entertaining and it kicks a whole new level of butt.
The stories are all pretty decent. The writing of this film is true, classic Frank Miller at his best, not only disturbing us with its content, but also making us laugh with its own reactions to such content. Some could say this writing is best left for the comic book shelves instead of the silver screen.
Performances were wonderful, as well. Mickey Rourke is definitely on his way back to the top and Bruce Willis has never been better. Del Toro does a great job, as always, and Clive Owen is leaving his mark well here in the USA.
The atmospherics are beyond amazing. The sense that you are watching a graphic novel come to life is outstanding, from the black and white with specific colors to the extensive soliloquy and expressions of thought, we are indeed engulfed by this wonder of a film.
The movie is very graphic at the very least. Lots of blood is to be seen, though most of it is bright white, and there are quite a few naked women running around, but if you can get past your own moral inhibitions and you feel like taking on a great film with imagination and hard-core heart in the darkest form of the word.
Makes me want to sit back with a nice cup of warm milk, snuggle with a teddy bear, and dream about snowflakes and gumdrops. Then go out on an indiscriminate killing spree of revenge for those who laughed at my love for snowflakes and gumdrops.

Report Card
Entertainment Value:    A
Story/Plot:                     B
Artistic Crap:                A
Performances:               A
Overall GPA:               3.75


The Five Coolest Things to do in Wichita Falls
Richard Carter | Dance Critic

 If you were lucky enough to live in New York City, you had about 1.6 million fun things to do last weekend. Even in Dallas, there were about 2,500 decent things to do, give or take a fun run and an all-you-can-drink swinger-a-thon in Lewisville.
 In Wichita Falls, there were exactly five cool things to do. Here they are, in no particular order.

1) Hazy Shade at Magic Rock. This area five-piece rock band plays ‘70s and ‘80s tunes to make you laugh, sing along and dance, dance, dance. There are obviously more cool things to do than dancing, but these guys do it with so much verve you’d be hard pressed to say: “No thank you; we’re too moral, and we don’t dance or sing to have fun. Those things would lead to drinking, and that would be wrong. Please hand me my hymnal and turn to hymn 236…all together now…”

2) “Closer” DVD. Last year’s rather disturbing movie about modern love never made it here, which was really rather disturbing. Now, it’s on DVD and we get to appreciate beautiful people like Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen acting really, really badly. How badly do they act? Well Law’s schmuck character leaves Portman’s hot character for Roberts’ much less attractive character. That’s awful! And yet, it’s poetic in a sort of tragic messed up kind of modern romance way.

3) The Kills “No Wow” CD. Two years ago, The Kills, an Anglo/American duo released their first album. It was pretty f’ing good. Somewhere between Yeah Yeah Yeahs and White Stripes, it portended the next Velvet Underground with more attractive people and a bit more grime. While the new album is clearly worth checking out, with cool lyrics, some nice guitar strums and the occasional harmony vocal, the f’ing drum machine really must go. Aacckk! This is 2004 or 2005 already, and drum machines are so 1994.

4) NCAA basketball. The best (and really only serious must-watch) TV day of the year is Final Four Saturday, which features the two semifinal games of the vaunted field of 67 best college basketball squads. If you don’t have March madness, you need to get sick with it, pronto. Oh, and no, you homers, MSU didn’t make the cut. Anywho, Illinois and North Carolina lowered the boom on poor Louisville and Michigan State, respectively. The games were pretty close, until10 minutes were left in the second quarter and the ceiling caved in.

5) Amelie Nothomb novel “The Book of Proper Names.” Is it cheating to put a novel on a things-to-do list? Maybe, but Nothomb’s novels are so brilliant and short (about 125 pages) that not reading them is literary idiocy. Don’t ask your lit profs; they’re probably stuck in, or perhaps on, the canon. Nothomb’s new book spins a tale about a tragically (and humorously) orphaned ballet dancer who survives the hell of her foster family and elite dance school. Scathingly smart and humorous, the Belgian novelist’s seventh book suggests that domestic writers need far less MFA writing programs and much more conceptual grit.

  The “Closer” DVD and The Kills’ “No Wow” CD were loaned for review purposes by Hastings Entertainment on Southwest Parkway and Kemp. Call 696-8029.