By the Power of Hyperbole!

It's April first, the day I typically associate with making outrageously horrible pranks that make people feel really bad. For example, on April 1, 1995, I told all my friends that the cyst in my left arm wasn't benign after all, and I needed to go through another round of surgery, and possibly chemotherapy. I got beaten like a redheaded stepchild when I did the "APRIL FOOL'S!" reveal that afternoon. Today, though, I have no joke to tell. Instead, I'd like to take a minute to talk about Sin City, which opens today.

I'm really excited about the opening of Sin City. I'm nearly as excited as I was for Hellboy last year - and those people who saw it with me last year will know i was unnaturally excited. I was checking out reviews of the movie at Metacritic, and it got an average ranking of 74, which they describe as "generally favourable". I usually just read the first few reviews of any movie, trying to figure out the most favourable reviews, but this time I scrolled to the bottom and checked out the worst one, from William Arnold at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Here's what Bill has to say about it:

Sitting through the thing, watching scene after scene in which I was being asked to be entertained by the spectacle of helpless people being tortured, I kept thinking of those clean-cut young American guards at Abu Ghraib. That is exactly the mentality Rodriguez is celebrating here. "Sin City" is their movie.

I'm stunned. I mean, I can understand people not liking the movie, but I can't begin to fathom the mindset it takes to make that comparison. I mean, I'm all for hyperbole, but there's a line between 'literary device' and 'insensitive overexaggeration'. I think.