For those looking for the "extended/special edition" of Sin City -- here are details straight from the horse's mouth (taken from an IGN interview):
IGN: Has DVD become a director's new best friend?
Rodriguez: Yeah. I mean, I think it's just the way you can perceive how entertainment is viewed, not just for DVDs but future HD DVDs and all of the extra things you can put on them. When I was doing Sin City, you're just very aware that, okay, there's the theatrical release, which is pretty much a one-shot; people go and see it at the theaters for a couple of weeks and then they forget about that, and then whatever comes out later is a more definitive version.
I told Frank [Miller], let's do three stories. I know it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but we'll cram three stories together. We'll shoot the full books, but in editing I'll just figure out what stuff we need to cut to make it flow as a feature for the theatrical release so people can sit there and in under two hours see sort of a resemblance what the movie is. But when it goes to DVD, we can do a special edition where the second disc can have the stories separated out in the full cuts so that you can see it the way you would read the books. You just watch "The Yellow Bastard," the full cut, or see "The Big Fat Kill," and that's the way you're supposed to read the books.
You're not supposed to read three really quick, so that's going to be cool. So we shot the full books and all of the voiceover knowing that we could put it together as single episodes, and that eventually if we did part two and part three we'd end up having the discs that had all of the stories separated, and you could put them in any order you want.
IGN: Knowing that there will eventually be multiple versions of a film released on DVD, how do you make sure that your audience is satisfied with each of those iterations?
Rodriguez: Well, usually I just put out one. With this one, they are already putting out one that comes out [August 16] that is just bare bones. I had not put anything extra on that, because I didn't have time to finish my DVD extras. They will put that out four months later because of piracy and stuff like that, and they actually don't put anything on there so that they know, 'well, this isn't the real DVD.'
The real DVD should come out fairly quick, [and] it's the one that will be obviously the double-disc set with all of the goodies on it. I mean, it has all kinds of stuff on there - I have a 20-minute Film School, a new Cooking School, Sin City Breakfast Tacos, and my favorite feature: when people watch DVDs, they complain 'oh, the only thing about home entertainment is you miss that audience experience.' Well, the best audience is in Austin, especially for a movie that was made there. We showed the premiere with the actors there in a 1500-seat theater, and they would go crazy and Sin City got a big reaction. I recorded the audience in 5.1 so if you're watching the DVD and you want to see it with an Austin audience on premiere night, you just click a button and they're all there going 'aaaah!' so it's really cool.
Quentin, when he was directing his sequence, he just let the tape roll when we were shooting, and the sequence taped for an hour, so there are some 20-minute uninterrupted takes. You see him wander in front of the camera and talk to the actors, and [he's] directing and you hear the whole sound of the set. It's like you're sitting right there on the set seeing the movie being shot from the point of view of the camera that's shooting the movie, uninterrupted, and it's really cool. You feel like you're right there, and you get to see what it's like to work with Quentin and the actors and how the movie actually gets made. [And] he will do a commentary on his section.
