Alive?
I am alive. Mostly. Actually, the entire reason that I'm posting is that I'm sick, have been so for the better part of the last two days, and have simply run out of things to do other than sleeping. That said, pardon any typos which appear here. My head is a throbbing mass of pain.
I've been a bit busy, actually. Just a bit. I thought I'd have the time and inclination to blog while I was at the beach, but I found myself in a house with five dogs, two of whom were puppies, so there was always someone to take for a walk on the beach. Also I read. A ton. Everything from childrens' books (Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg with words by the ever-delightful Gail Carson Levine and illustrations from David Christiana) to gilded age history books (Devil in the White City by Erik Larson) and, of course, a few thrillers and romances thrown in. I walked into a thrift store in Kill Devil Hills and came away with three books, one a 1990s Harlequin romance I got for 25 cents. I decided while I was there that I would someday move to Manteo, NC, where I may or may not open a bookshop. This evening, I overheard my brother pitching the idea of opening a Mongolian bbq restaurant, to which my father replied that they'd stick it in Manteo, next to my bookstore and the condos my cousin designed (that last one's for real).
I finally, after months of anticipation and excitement, got to see Stardust. To my joy, I even took half of the staff at the store with me. I had refused to read any reviews other than the oblique things than Neil put on his blog, so I was surprised and delighted by the whole thing. I went back the next evening to see it a second time. It's funny though, as I have read a few reviews since seeing the film, and a few have made me wonder whether the reviewer saw the same movie I did, such as Rolling Stone's revered Peter Travers, who made a pointed comment about the princes' beards (what do you notice about this photo? Beards?).
Then, of course, there's the go-to resource for any morally-conscious moviegoer, Christiananswers.net (h/t Neil). This reviewer was another one who made me question which movie they were watching. To start with, she calls Claire Danes' Yvaine a "gentle and radiant girl." Now, the radiant part is obvious--Yvaine is a star. But gentle? While she does soften toward Tristan over the course of the movie, she first addresses him as a "magical flying moran." For his trouble, Robert DeNeiro's Captain Shakespeare was so offensive that he made the reveiwer "long for the wholesomeness of the charming Captain Davy Jones in “Pirates of the Caribbean”!" Stardust received a "Very Offensive" rating from them for the following reasons:
The best review I've read came from Stephen Bissette. While both DeNeiro and Michelle Pfeiffer were amazing, the actors that Bissette raves about aren't the big names, they're David Kelly (the old guard), Melanie Hill (Ditchwater Sal), Jake Curran (Bernard), and Dexter Fletcher (Capt. Shakespeare's first mate, who I absolutely loved). And yeah, okay, Bissette loved Pfeiffer, too. He goes on to discuss the importance of both Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' names being on the poster, which was awesome. I first read the book sans illustrations (didn't, in fact, know that there were any), but have since purchased a copy of the book with Vess' Victorian-style drawings.
In his discussion, Bissette linked to a site, nocloo.com, which has a gallery all about the Gilded Age fairy tale illustrators, such as Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen. Before returning to bed and letting my immune system do its thing, I spent about an hour just looking at the illustrations on that site. Beautiful stuff. It saddens me how separate writing and illustrating have become (outside of childrens' books) and I was truly tempted by a $500 1920s reprint edition of East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North by P.C. Asbjornsen and illustrated by Neilsen. But then again, it was 7am and I was sick and delirious.
This'll probably be the last you'll hear from me on the subject of Stardust until the DVD comes out. I mean, yeah, okay, Charlie Cox is on my desktop looking all swashbuckling and beautiful, so you'll probably get some subsequent squealage about him. But that's it. Probably.
Oy God, my head is exploding.
I've been a bit busy, actually. Just a bit. I thought I'd have the time and inclination to blog while I was at the beach, but I found myself in a house with five dogs, two of whom were puppies, so there was always someone to take for a walk on the beach. Also I read. A ton. Everything from childrens' books (Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg with words by the ever-delightful Gail Carson Levine and illustrations from David Christiana) to gilded age history books (Devil in the White City by Erik Larson) and, of course, a few thrillers and romances thrown in. I walked into a thrift store in Kill Devil Hills and came away with three books, one a 1990s Harlequin romance I got for 25 cents. I decided while I was there that I would someday move to Manteo, NC, where I may or may not open a bookshop. This evening, I overheard my brother pitching the idea of opening a Mongolian bbq restaurant, to which my father replied that they'd stick it in Manteo, next to my bookstore and the condos my cousin designed (that last one's for real).
I finally, after months of anticipation and excitement, got to see Stardust. To my joy, I even took half of the staff at the store with me. I had refused to read any reviews other than the oblique things than Neil put on his blog, so I was surprised and delighted by the whole thing. I went back the next evening to see it a second time. It's funny though, as I have read a few reviews since seeing the film, and a few have made me wonder whether the reviewer saw the same movie I did, such as Rolling Stone's revered Peter Travers, who made a pointed comment about the princes' beards (what do you notice about this photo? Beards?).
Then, of course, there's the go-to resource for any morally-conscious moviegoer, Christiananswers.net (h/t Neil). This reviewer was another one who made me question which movie they were watching. To start with, she calls Claire Danes' Yvaine a "gentle and radiant girl." Now, the radiant part is obvious--Yvaine is a star. But gentle? While she does soften toward Tristan over the course of the movie, she first addresses him as a "magical flying moran." For his trouble, Robert DeNeiro's Captain Shakespeare was so offensive that he made the reveiwer "long for the wholesomeness of the charming Captain Davy Jones in “Pirates of the Caribbean”!" Stardust received a "Very Offensive" rating from them for the following reasons:
- "heartless patricides"
- "murders"
- "forecasting the future with runes made from bone"
- "killing animals and foretelling the future with their entrails"
- "torture"
- "murder"
- "reanimation with a voodoo doll"
- "discussion of ritualistic cannibalism"
- "animals devouring living people"
The best review I've read came from Stephen Bissette. While both DeNeiro and Michelle Pfeiffer were amazing, the actors that Bissette raves about aren't the big names, they're David Kelly (the old guard), Melanie Hill (Ditchwater Sal), Jake Curran (Bernard), and Dexter Fletcher (Capt. Shakespeare's first mate, who I absolutely loved). And yeah, okay, Bissette loved Pfeiffer, too. He goes on to discuss the importance of both Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' names being on the poster, which was awesome. I first read the book sans illustrations (didn't, in fact, know that there were any), but have since purchased a copy of the book with Vess' Victorian-style drawings.
In his discussion, Bissette linked to a site, nocloo.com, which has a gallery all about the Gilded Age fairy tale illustrators, such as Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen. Before returning to bed and letting my immune system do its thing, I spent about an hour just looking at the illustrations on that site. Beautiful stuff. It saddens me how separate writing and illustrating have become (outside of childrens' books) and I was truly tempted by a $500 1920s reprint edition of East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North by P.C. Asbjornsen and illustrated by Neilsen. But then again, it was 7am and I was sick and delirious.
This'll probably be the last you'll hear from me on the subject of Stardust until the DVD comes out. I mean, yeah, okay, Charlie Cox is on my desktop looking all swashbuckling and beautiful, so you'll probably get some subsequent squealage about him. But that's it. Probably.
Oy God, my head is exploding.