It has been a bit on the slower the side the past week or so, but there have still been some great comments from our always excellent readers. A smattering of them are below. Note that the first two are simply selections (the actual comments are quite long) and worth reading in their entirety.

Interesting, wide-ranging discussion, but it’s cheapened severely by your subsequent proclamation that SIN CITY is “the best noir ever made.”

That’s just silly. It’s not even that great a film, never mind a great film noir. And I’m not even convinced it’s actually noir. Mostly it’s a bunch of expensive, visually stunning trickery using a series of noir (or noirish) tropes and peep show shots aimed at horny adolescents — an emotionally and narratively shallow exercise at best, lacking the dark existential angst that lies at the heart of all the best noir films.

Kevin Burton Smith on Rain, Guns & Cigarettes – Noir’s Past and Present

“Sin City.” My word, what an experience that was. To actually see the pages of a comic filmed for the first time was a real kick. Is it noir? Sure. Is it great noir? Mebbeso. Was it at the time the best film adaptation of a literary work ever filmed? Absolutely and it still is to this day. I am going to state my reasons but first want to point out that Marv is a buddy of mine and I cry every time I watch or read the ending to his story. Marv is the, without a doubt, the greatest anti-hero ever conceived. His demise is both a relief and a heartbreak that brings a tear to the eye while the mind says “I’ll sleep better at night from now on.”

“Sin City” is the perfect film adaptation of Fran Miller’s graphic novel. Here are the two best reasons why:

1. Every single word that Miller wrote is the script.
2. The film contains every single panel that Miller drew.

Maurice on Rain, Guns & Cigarettes – Noir’s Past and Present

Speed Racer was a cartoon I loved as a child. I wanted to be Speed, own the Mach 5, and race against Racer X. I had elaborate fantasies of Hot Wheels that could fly, emit whirring saw blades, or pogo out of harms’ way. I finally got to see the cartoon again sometime in my 20’s when it resurfaced on MTV and I was sorta shocked by how surreal and abstract it all was. I didn’t enjoy the cartoon much as an adult and the Speed Racer trailer really turned me off, so I skipped the theatrical release.

Fast forward to the DVD/Blu-ray release and I was kicking myself all weekend for not seeing this on a big screen when I had a chance. Wow, fun times. A good solid two hours of deja vu and childhood nostalgia ensued, something you captured quite accurately in your review (even though you had no nostalgia for the cartoon to pine for).

Joel on Speed Racer

Nice review, Phillip. I think your observation about the slightly staged quality to the film’s sharpest emotional moments is a fair one. I liked the film immensely, but this element also bothered me a little. I knew the film was a documentary when I bought my ticket, but sometimes I felt as though I was watching naturalistic fiction. Were all the conversations featuring “Cindy’s” family truly captured in the spontaneous moment, or were they performed? It’s an insightful, moving film, but at the same time I couldn’t shake the sensation of tidy theater for the viewer’s benefit that suffuses some scenes.

Andrew Wyatt on Up the Yangtze