All That Glitters

Sometimes you just want to escape. Leave that dull, dreary world behind and cross the proverbial wall into the great unknown.

Die-hard fans would call it overhyped commercial fluff, perhaps even brand it as cheap glitter and I'd certainly be the first to agree that it's far from the lyrical fantasy built up in Neil Gaiman's fertile mind. However if I wanted painful reality, I'd just have to march back to work but sometimes we all need that little touch of magic, that little hint of Stardust.

Read the acclaimed graphic novel years back - a Chrismas gift for my ISO as it turned out - and enjoyed the whimsical illustrations of Charles Vess. Barely out of secondary school, still wet behind the ears, a little like the main protagonist - hero as it may be - the charmingly bashful Tristran Thorn. Our lovelorn boy finds himself given the unenviable task of bringing back a fallen star to win the hand of his fair heartless maiden - only to find that the star itself is another maiden fair beyond compare.


Oh godfather, what can I do for you now?
And in the process of searching for stars, Charlie Cox playing the hero turns from a stuttering Edwardian shopboy who stumbles on his feet into a heroic swashbuckler I wouldn't mind sharing a lip-lock with - a dramatic makeover seen only onscreen. All thanks to a mincing fairy godfather named Shakespeare.

Couldn't sleep after yesterday's on-call so I made my way alone to the cinema - much to Jaunty Jared's astonishment. Seriously, I do watch movies alone. Quite often in fact.

Who knew that I'd watch the novel made into film as a man ( painful but true, perhaps I need to swallow the heart of a star ). Still quite undecided whether I actually preferred it as a book! Generally turning prose into film has never fared well, many cunning little details that make up the richer tapestry is lost in that interpretation and Stardust falters a little in that aspect. Doesn't mean it's not wonderfully cinematic of course but in catering to a wider general audience, it loses much of the darker, more melancholic undertones that Gaiman is famous for.

Still, it has a wicked witch, a handsome shopboy / prince and a damsel in distress. Even a cute single father. Not to mention a tragic Greek chorus of murdered princes who all died of fratricide ( you gotta watch it to understand ). How could it possibly fail? :) We all love our fairy tales after all.

One thing I found interesting was the outcry over the mincing foppish portrayal of Captain Shakespeare. For me, I found the overly done extremely campy can-can sequence painful to watch - but doesn't anyone else find it wonderful that the swishy captain actually breaks the mould of the crusty macho pirate and actually captains a pirate ship successfully? And even shaking and shimmying in a laced corset, he still manages to catch the eye of Humpy Humphrey the Village Hottie, stiffly played by Henry Cavill.

And he did get Charlie Cox down to his underwear :)


Humpy Humphrey Unbuttoned
Makes you wanna reach for that feather boa, doesn't it?

Calls for a sequel, I say. Stardust II : Shakespeare Humps the Hottie Humphrey. Imagine what a makeover could do for Hubba-Hubba Humphrey.