Watched: Stardust
Observations:
- Oh lord. So many things to say about this one. How about we start here:
- The thing that stuck out to me the most in this film was how, rather than cast the other two witches with older women, they instead cast the plump but vivacious Joanna Scanlan (better known for The Thick of It and Sarah Alexander (which, um. Wow. Okay.. It makes me wonder if it was done for coherency’s sake with Michelle Pfeiffer, who ages backwards and forwards constantly, or if there are deleted scenes.
- Okay, but beyond that: the cast for this is fantastic. Aside from being a who’s who of British TV and film over the last decade or so (highlights: Julian Rhind-Tutt as one of the ghosts, Dexter Fletcher as the first mate above Captain Shakespeare’s ship, Mark Williams as a goat in human form), there are names in here that are huge, either historically or since the film’s release. Claire Danes’s British accent is flawless (Pfeiffer’s, not so much), Henry Cavill is virtually unrecognisable in his pre-Superman form, and David Kelly is massively underrated as the guard of the wall (he also, unrelatedly, saves Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from being downright awful).
- Also: Robert De Niro in a dress. Sorry, that’s a spoiler, I know. But still: Robert De Niro in a dress. I loved his character, and I absolutely did not expect to. In fact, his whole arc was fucking fantastic.
- The film still suffers from the same issues as the novel - it wraps up a little too tidily and quickly - and one of my favourite characters is absent (the small hairy man in the woods). But at the same time, it manages to do some visual things that are wonderful. The part where Septimus’s corpse is reanimated is horrific on paper, but is played brilliantly to comic effect here. And I’m glad they mostly excised the unicorn’s corpse. That would have been jarring.
- Overall, this was lovely. Just adorable. I needed something like this.
