"She says nothing at all..."
"...but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes..."
So apparently there is a movie of Stardust out. By all accounts, it's quite good, a Princess Bride for a new generation people are calling it. I haven't seen it, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around a film version of Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' Stardust, which, in my mind, will always be a book.
And not just any book, but an oversized, dog-eared paperback given to me by dear friend, back in the day when books and songs still took my breath away and the long lonely hours of the night were spent pondering the worlds they wove.
I probably won't go see the movie in the theatre, as things are a bit tight right now and I don't really know when I'll be seeing any movies in the theatre again. And besides, since I moved to Seattle, I don't really have anyone close who would wait excitedly for weeks to go see a fantasy movie in the theatre with me. Don't get me wrong, I have wonderful friends, and they are certainly geeks, but the type of geeks who wave DSes instead of lighters at Jonathan Coultron concerts and who have more computers running at any given time than we have rooms in our house. Not the kind of friends who would, say, spend a Friday night pretending to be a vampire or reading books about absurd things like superheros or fairies. My Seattle beloveds are more prone to geekeries that challenge the imagination of the logical and scientific mind rather than the wild and poetic heart. They wouldn't have anything bad to say about Stardust, but I doubt that either of them would "get it" either, just like I really don't see the need to jump out of bed early like a kid on Christmas morning when a patch for my favorite version of Linux comes out.
But seriously, I had to dig out my old copy of Stardust to reread tonight, and it brought back so much. The dusty smell of my parent's old house. Reading by flashlight in the dark, with my ear pressed to my old tape player, listening to the heavy metal ballads of my teen years. And still, even after all the years, even when I'm an old bat and jaded by the world and my hormones have settled down considerably - the last sentence with Yvaine standing on the highest tower of Stormhold makes me cry.
It feels strange, and lonely, to think that although so much else in my life has changed since that time, and yet, this hasn't. The stories that were important to me a decade ago or two decades ago still mean as much to me now, and knowing that there are other people out there who feel the same way is...well, it's beyond description...
More than once I've run into someone in a bookstore pouring over a copy of some book or comic that we both loved, and struck up a conversation that turned into tears and hugging and babbling over how amazing it was to find someone else who loved ___loved___this story because it had burrowed into their heart and taken root and they grew up with it. One of those times, the book in question was Stardust. It was that kind of dark-minded fairy tale.
So it's a little weird to think that half of America is going to go watch this thing and think of it as a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes and somewhosit.
I hope it's at least as good as the Princess Bride.
And with that I say, if you are born to see strange sights, things impossible to see, than go and catch a falling star, and failing that, go and pick up A Romance Within The Realms of Faerie, or Stardust, and read the book, and watch the movie that plays out in your head, and tell me how that one is, and all the strange wonders that befell thee reading it, and failing that, go outside sometime, and like Yvaine, watch "the slow dance of the infinite stars".
So apparently there is a movie of Stardust out. By all accounts, it's quite good, a Princess Bride for a new generation people are calling it. I haven't seen it, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around a film version of Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' Stardust, which, in my mind, will always be a book.
And not just any book, but an oversized, dog-eared paperback given to me by dear friend, back in the day when books and songs still took my breath away and the long lonely hours of the night were spent pondering the worlds they wove.
I probably won't go see the movie in the theatre, as things are a bit tight right now and I don't really know when I'll be seeing any movies in the theatre again. And besides, since I moved to Seattle, I don't really have anyone close who would wait excitedly for weeks to go see a fantasy movie in the theatre with me. Don't get me wrong, I have wonderful friends, and they are certainly geeks, but the type of geeks who wave DSes instead of lighters at Jonathan Coultron concerts and who have more computers running at any given time than we have rooms in our house. Not the kind of friends who would, say, spend a Friday night pretending to be a vampire or reading books about absurd things like superheros or fairies. My Seattle beloveds are more prone to geekeries that challenge the imagination of the logical and scientific mind rather than the wild and poetic heart. They wouldn't have anything bad to say about Stardust, but I doubt that either of them would "get it" either, just like I really don't see the need to jump out of bed early like a kid on Christmas morning when a patch for my favorite version of Linux comes out.
But seriously, I had to dig out my old copy of Stardust to reread tonight, and it brought back so much. The dusty smell of my parent's old house. Reading by flashlight in the dark, with my ear pressed to my old tape player, listening to the heavy metal ballads of my teen years. And still, even after all the years, even when I'm an old bat and jaded by the world and my hormones have settled down considerably - the last sentence with Yvaine standing on the highest tower of Stormhold makes me cry.
It feels strange, and lonely, to think that although so much else in my life has changed since that time, and yet, this hasn't. The stories that were important to me a decade ago or two decades ago still mean as much to me now, and knowing that there are other people out there who feel the same way is...well, it's beyond description...
More than once I've run into someone in a bookstore pouring over a copy of some book or comic that we both loved, and struck up a conversation that turned into tears and hugging and babbling over how amazing it was to find someone else who loved ___loved___this story because it had burrowed into their heart and taken root and they grew up with it. One of those times, the book in question was Stardust. It was that kind of dark-minded fairy tale.
So it's a little weird to think that half of America is going to go watch this thing and think of it as a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes and somewhosit.
I hope it's at least as good as the Princess Bride.
And with that I say, if you are born to see strange sights, things impossible to see, than go and catch a falling star, and failing that, go and pick up A Romance Within The Realms of Faerie, or Stardust, and read the book, and watch the movie that plays out in your head, and tell me how that one is, and all the strange wonders that befell thee reading it, and failing that, go outside sometime, and like Yvaine, watch "the slow dance of the infinite stars".