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deathpixieSo, before the day of blah, I had intended to post about Stardust. Now the blah is gone, I'm going to still talk about the movie, since it makes me happy to think of it. :)
I'd been wanting to see this since I heard it was being made. Not because I'm such a huge fan of the book - it's one of Neil Gaiman's weaker works, imo, although still a lovely read. Perhaps a little too sweet in places? - but because it sounded like such a fun movie to watch. Especially with Neil working on the adaptation himself. And normally, when you hype such a thing up to yourself, you're inevitably disappointed, because the reality seldom lives up to the ideal.
This time, however, I was most pleasantly surprised.
Stardust is a delight. It's been described as the new Princess Bride, and people are absolutely correct. It's got the simple themes of love and adventure and fantasy, the quippy dialogue, the cameos that make you sit there going "who is that?!", swashbuckling, romance, magic and humour. The main difference being, of course, that it's now 2007, not the 1980s, and special effects have come a huge way since then.
The other difference is that the performances are definitely superior. Robert de Niro nearly steals the show with Captain Shakespeare, the lightning-harvesting, cross-dressing pirate. Michelle Pfieffer was brilliant as the evil witch, and it was amusing to see Hollywood's obsession with youth and beauty played out a la Gaiman by one of the still truly beautiful older women of movies. And the two leads, both of whom are relatively unknown, were wonderfully suited, sparking off each other and making you honestly believe in the love story.
Purists of the book will be disappointed. There's a lot of changes, many of which were done it seems to make the story more cinematic. But the spirit of the book is there, much as the spirit of Lord of the Rings was preserved even with the necessary edits in order to make Tolkien filmable. And that's more than enough for me. Enough, in fact, that I'll probably go see it again, and get the DVD when it comes out.
I have a new Girly Comfort Movie. :) Five SQUEES out of five.
I'd been wanting to see this since I heard it was being made. Not because I'm such a huge fan of the book - it's one of Neil Gaiman's weaker works, imo, although still a lovely read. Perhaps a little too sweet in places? - but because it sounded like such a fun movie to watch. Especially with Neil working on the adaptation himself. And normally, when you hype such a thing up to yourself, you're inevitably disappointed, because the reality seldom lives up to the ideal.
This time, however, I was most pleasantly surprised.
Stardust is a delight. It's been described as the new Princess Bride, and people are absolutely correct. It's got the simple themes of love and adventure and fantasy, the quippy dialogue, the cameos that make you sit there going "who is that?!", swashbuckling, romance, magic and humour. The main difference being, of course, that it's now 2007, not the 1980s, and special effects have come a huge way since then.
The other difference is that the performances are definitely superior. Robert de Niro nearly steals the show with Captain Shakespeare, the lightning-harvesting, cross-dressing pirate. Michelle Pfieffer was brilliant as the evil witch, and it was amusing to see Hollywood's obsession with youth and beauty played out a la Gaiman by one of the still truly beautiful older women of movies. And the two leads, both of whom are relatively unknown, were wonderfully suited, sparking off each other and making you honestly believe in the love story.
Purists of the book will be disappointed. There's a lot of changes, many of which were done it seems to make the story more cinematic. But the spirit of the book is there, much as the spirit of Lord of the Rings was preserved even with the necessary edits in order to make Tolkien filmable. And that's more than enough for me. Enough, in fact, that I'll probably go see it again, and get the DVD when it comes out.
I have a new Girly Comfort Movie. :) Five SQUEES out of five.
