Stardust

And now for a totally nerdy interruption to our usual morals-related material.

I am a HUGE Neil Gaiman fan. I was interested in his work ever since I heard about Sandman. However, I didn't really become a true fanboy until I started reading his fiction. Amazon recommended me to "American Gods" and I saw "Anansi Boys" there too, and I ordered them with "The Gunslinger" by Stephen King and some book on journaling. I read American Gods, and totally fell in love with his storytelling. His mix of the real with the fantastic is top-notch.

Stardust was a good book. I should know, because I read it this morning. In my eight hour projectionist shift, I managed to read all of Stardust. Now, it is shorter than his other novels, and is in fact considered a novella, but it was still a good read. Definitely big on romance too.

I knew Stardust would have to be changed for when it went onto the big screen. I wanted to read the book first so I could see it how it was originally meant to be (although I didn't see any pictures, the original Stardust was almost part comic book). I knew some aspects of Stardust would never work for the big screen. I knew Robert De Niro's character would play a much greater role in the movie than in the book (he's only there for about 12 pages, out of 287).

Happily enough, they managed to keep much more of the original story than I expected. Sure, some details were changed, and for the most part, these managed to be minor and didn't change the major plot, for time and stories are like rubber bands, you can stretch them and change them, but they'll still keep their original shape. This was still a love story, and there was still awesome fantasy moments, some taken practically perfectly from the book.

All in all, this movie was good. Some parts never got explained, like the Babylon candles, but like the manager sitting next to me said "well, we could figure out what it was doing." Robert De Niro's character, which appeared in a much more important role, was absolutely amazing. The movie might have been worth it just to see the things he did.

I highly recommend this movie.