Stardust Set Report
Oh, happy day!
Author Neil Gaiman is on the set of Stardust, the all-star film adaptation of his novel and it sounds like things are going well. I am so looking forward to seeing Michelle Pfeiffer in all her glorious and sinister beauty as the all-powerful Witch Queen.
I'm about 100 pages from the end of the novel, and you'll get a full review then, but I highly recommend Gaiman's novel as a fairy tale for adults- stylistically simple, full of whimsy, quirkiness and with dashes of sex and violence. Ashley, I think you'll like Stardust especially, which deals with young Tristran's journey into the land of Faerie to find a fallen star (which takes the form of a young woman) which he has promised to his lady love.
Best of all: Stardust is not set in that tedious, pseudo-Medieval period that every inky fingered, basement-dwelling, 20 year old 'fantasy writer' opts for. Stardust largely takes place in the rural English countryside of the 1850s, the very early Victorian period that you see in novels like The Mayor of Casterbridge. And it has a healthy touches of light humour instead of being oh-so-serious.
Anyway, from Neil gaiman's blog:
I think my first response to the Stardust film half-hour reel was to breathe a sigh of relief. I hadn't realised I'd been holding my breath nervously for the last 3 months, but I think I had. I won't exhale completely until the whole thing is finished, cut together, and done, and I can see that it all works. But I think I can sleep more easily at night now.
It's not the book (it would take a 6 hour miniseries to do the book exactly), but in a lot of ways it's much more the book than I expected - watching the Limbus grass scene where the Witch (Michelle Pfeiffer, beautiful and very scary) first meets Ditchwater Sal, or Tristran promising to bring Victoria a falling star, or the unicorn rescuing Tristran from the poisoned wine in the Inn just made me blink and smile in recognition. The Robert DeNiro - Ricky Gervais scene made me laugh immoderately, as did Rupert Everett's star turn as Secundus, while Charlie Cox is amazingly Tristran and transforms from geeky shopboy to confident hero through the course of the movie. Mark Strong's evil Septimus steals scenes shamelessly.
And Claire Danes is lovely, and keeps it real. I'd received a lot of "Sienna Miller!! -- how could you let them do this??!!???!" emails, so was a bit nervous, but she's great as Victoria Forester.
It looks like all the money is up on the screen. Best of all, it felt like its own thing. I've been trying to think of what to compare it to, but it's leaving me a bit blank -- it exists half-way between The Princess Bride and Pirates of the Caribbean, and there's nothing I've seen quite like it out there in the world before.
I've asked the editor to cut a shorter version of the reel I saw to show on the Stardust panel at San Diego, so that anyone there can make up their own minds. And, I hope, exhale too.
Right. Now I'm going down to the set to watch Michelle Pfeiffer cut poor Jason Flemyng's throat with a big black obsidian-glass knife.
Author Neil Gaiman is on the set of Stardust, the all-star film adaptation of his novel and it sounds like things are going well. I am so looking forward to seeing Michelle Pfeiffer in all her glorious and sinister beauty as the all-powerful Witch Queen.
I'm about 100 pages from the end of the novel, and you'll get a full review then, but I highly recommend Gaiman's novel as a fairy tale for adults- stylistically simple, full of whimsy, quirkiness and with dashes of sex and violence. Ashley, I think you'll like Stardust especially, which deals with young Tristran's journey into the land of Faerie to find a fallen star (which takes the form of a young woman) which he has promised to his lady love.
Best of all: Stardust is not set in that tedious, pseudo-Medieval period that every inky fingered, basement-dwelling, 20 year old 'fantasy writer' opts for. Stardust largely takes place in the rural English countryside of the 1850s, the very early Victorian period that you see in novels like The Mayor of Casterbridge. And it has a healthy touches of light humour instead of being oh-so-serious.
Anyway, from Neil gaiman's blog:
I think my first response to the Stardust film half-hour reel was to breathe a sigh of relief. I hadn't realised I'd been holding my breath nervously for the last 3 months, but I think I had. I won't exhale completely until the whole thing is finished, cut together, and done, and I can see that it all works. But I think I can sleep more easily at night now.
It's not the book (it would take a 6 hour miniseries to do the book exactly), but in a lot of ways it's much more the book than I expected - watching the Limbus grass scene where the Witch (Michelle Pfeiffer, beautiful and very scary) first meets Ditchwater Sal, or Tristran promising to bring Victoria a falling star, or the unicorn rescuing Tristran from the poisoned wine in the Inn just made me blink and smile in recognition. The Robert DeNiro - Ricky Gervais scene made me laugh immoderately, as did Rupert Everett's star turn as Secundus, while Charlie Cox is amazingly Tristran and transforms from geeky shopboy to confident hero through the course of the movie. Mark Strong's evil Septimus steals scenes shamelessly.
And Claire Danes is lovely, and keeps it real. I'd received a lot of "Sienna Miller!! -- how could you let them do this??!!???!" emails, so was a bit nervous, but she's great as Victoria Forester.
It looks like all the money is up on the screen. Best of all, it felt like its own thing. I've been trying to think of what to compare it to, but it's leaving me a bit blank -- it exists half-way between The Princess Bride and Pirates of the Caribbean, and there's nothing I've seen quite like it out there in the world before.
I've asked the editor to cut a shorter version of the reel I saw to show on the Stardust panel at San Diego, so that anyone there can make up their own minds. And, I hope, exhale too.
Right. Now I'm going down to the set to watch Michelle Pfeiffer cut poor Jason Flemyng's throat with a big black obsidian-glass knife.
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