OVIE MAGIC has gone through several incarnations over the years and every time we are utterly impressed. We ask ourselves how they did it and wonder if it can ever be out done, and, of course, something always comes out to one up the last guy and Sin City is no exception as Robert Rodriguez had a vision and has brought it to the big screen.

Frank Miller's "Sin City" graphic novels were not created for feature film adaptation, but Rodriguez took that on as a challenge and while it took a bit of persuasion he was able to convince Miller it was the right thing to do.

Rodriguez tells us, "I was a fan of [Sin City] in particular and I thought it was a great idea to make it into a film and it took me years to figure out. I've been buying it since '92 and I've always wanted to do a film noir and I never put two-and-two together that this should be the thing and so a couple years ago, after the Spy Kids movies and learning so much about lighting and technology I realized I could make this movie now. The time was right to make it and look like the book and the more I looked at the book I realized it didn't need adapting, it's visual storytelling worked so well on the page that I felt it should work the exact same way on the screen."

Miller's primary concern was in the translation, just how would his iconic characters be portrayed on the big screen, would they carry the same weight? Rodriguez assured Miller he was committed to the comics and Miller took to this idea. "So I said let's not change anything, let's not even develop it let's just start shooting right out of the books," Rodriguez said, "Frank was like, 'What? What planet is this?' He was so thrilled when we started working, he saw how the translation was working and I think it is the same visual storytelling mediums and that is what makes the movie so unique; it doesn't feel like a movie and I didn't want to make a movie out of 'Sin City,' I wanted to make movies into the comic, not someone take it and turn it into a regular movie, it just wouldn't have been right."

So how do you turn a black and white graphic novel into a feature film? That's easy... isn't it?

Last year's release of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was touted as the first film shot entirely against green screen, but Rodriguez is quick to correct this misnomer.

"[Sky Captain and Sin City] were kind of both (made) at the same time. I'd just done a bunch of movies on green screen; I'd done the Spy Kids movies that even the props weren't there, because it was all assimilated from the game. Even though they said that (Sky Captain) was the first movie done on green screen, I actually already had been doing that. But when I did Sin City, I hadn't seen any materials on Sky Captain; I didn't really know they were doing a green screen movie with HD. I had already been doing that for a while. I shot the test and I went and showed Frank the material and, it's very different because we were shooting on green screen to, not just to save money, which is kind of why they were doing that, but it was really the only way we could capture these images and get that black and white style; because if you shot it in a real environment, all these things just go grey, because they're all midtones. We have to isolate the actors from the background in order to create that very stark black and white; to create a black and white that you've never seen before, because if you watch a black and white movie, it's really grey and white, because of all the midtones. And we had to get rid of all of those, the way Frank did with pen and ink. So, I realized 'This is going to be a total exercise in things I've been doing.' That's why I felt comfortable doing it, because I'd already done all that stuff as a photographer, as an effects supervisor, coming up with these ideas."

When working on green screen it can't be easy on the actors however, with nothing there to act against, no backgrounds, no extras... nothing.

Benicio del Toro tells us he certainly had his early reservations, "For me, it was intimidating when you walk in and everything was green and it looked like puke. But then after that it was like, it reminded me of theater, I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend; one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by. So it reminded me a little bit of that and that made it fun, going back to basics in some ways for me."

Mouse over to see the green screen transition.

Jessica Alba plays the sexy barroom stripper Nancy Callahan and amidst the rope twirling and chaps found Rodriguez's directing her catalyst, "I'm not very experienced in theater except for my only training I had was with David Mamet's theater company, the Atlantic Theater Company, and that's all I did was go on these little stages and imagine things, but they were in small rooms so the difference is you still have to shout and project your voice and everything was a little bigger and with Robert it is very specific and he fine tunes your performance, so it's kind of a marriage of film and theater."

Then came a different look at the idea, Rosario Dawson tells us, "A lot of people are using all this technology and HD stuff in order to create really cool special effects and stuff like that, and they are using it because they don't understand film, they don't understand story and they use it as a crutch rather than as a tool, and this is one where he really just blew me away, it is amazing." Hmmmmm... wondering who she was taking cuts at with that?

Speaking of actors how about this cast? Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Benicio del Toro, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy, Michael Clarke Duncan, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Josh Hartnett, Jaime King, Michael Madsen and Devon Aoki all make up a stellar cast and Robert even talked a bit about who he originally had in mind, but he reminds us, "You never look back once you cast the person you end up with because they just become that character and then you can never imagine your first ideas for the casting, for whatever reason they end up not doing the movie."

That said Rodriguez did have his eye on a favorite of mine for the part of Frankie Boy, "Originally I had thought of Johnny Depp because I thought he could do the part that Benicio played and he was really into it, but there was a movie he was doing in Europe which just kept getting pushed and pushed and it wasn't that critical, it wasn't one of the bigger roles and it wasn't being shot for a while so I had time to find somebody and if he couldn't do it that was fine.

"Then I saw Benicio at the Academy Awards with his long Wolfman hair and he was wearing his tuxedo and I went, 'Oh my God, that is Jackie Boy right there.' So if Johnny couldn't do it I told Benicio, 'Hey Johnny might not be able to do it because of the schedule, would you be interested in doing it?' Now you look back and he was the right person, and things like that just happen."