STARDUST (2007, Blu-ray released September 7, 2010 – MSRP $29.99)
I’ve been waiting three years to see Stardust. After missing my chance to catch it in the theatre, I held out for an eventual release of the film on Blu-ray – a release I was beginning to feel might never come to pass. After all this time, years spent avoiding the film on DVD, HD-DVD and cable, I’ve finally been able to see Stardust on Blu-ray. And let me tell you, it was worth the wait!
Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass) has crafted in Stardust a nearly perfect fairy tale film. I sat through the two-hour runtime beaming, a smile on my face from beginning to end. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be this wonderful! Vaughn, the director, co-writer and man chiefly responsible for bringing the film to the big-screen, did not bestow an easy task upon himself, when he agreed to adapt Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess‘ illustrated novel to film. As is par for the course in Gaiman’s imaginative work, there are a myriad of scenes and characters in the original story that would inevitably prove far too complex, outlandish or expensive to film. And with a structure crafted to take advantage of prose, Vaughn had to almost re-imagine the film from the ground up to make it work on celluloid. These are generally not the hallmarks of a well devised production.
But for all the challenges of moving this tale of the world of fairy from the page to the screen, Stardust doesn’t seem to have suffered in the slightest. It’s a time-honoured tale of a boy on a quest to win the hand of the girl he loves, and in doing so, unwittingly undertaking the journey that will lead him to become a man. Sounds kind of pedestrian on the surface – like a run-of-the-mill fairy tale, or hero’s quest. But what makes this story and this film truly special is the combination of Gaiman’s unique voice – the way he’s able to take a familiar mythical pattern or archetype and breathe new, fresh life into them – with Vaughn’s elastic filmmaking style – a style that allows brilliant comic actors like Ricky Gervais, Rupert Everett and Robert DeNiro (no seriously, he’s hilarious in this!) to improvise and have fun onscreen. Along with wonderful performances from Michelle Pfeiffer as a nasty old witch, Peter O’Toole (!!!) as the dying King, the ever-lovely Claire Danes as a fallen star and Charlie Cox as the hero-to-be, Tristan Thorn, Stardust is a tour-de-force of incredible talent and fantastic, whimsical storytelling of a sort that modern Hollywood offers up far too rarely.
Stardust arrives on Blu-ray sporting a pleasant, filmic high-def image that’s not likely to blow you away. There are moments where the picture becomes a tad soft or too noisy for my liking, but overall there’s enough detail and colour fidelity to please. Blacks are solid, film grain is present and there doesn’t appear to be any overall defects in the print. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless audio track is less than impressive out of the gate but roars to life as the film kicks into high gear! The music is well represented (though, sadly, I didn’t care for the compositions themselves – the low-point of the film for this reviewer) and sound effects are lively and accurate through all channels. Without having having seen or heard previous incarnations of the film on home video, I think I can safely say that the Blu-ray edition of Stardust presents a vast improvement over its previously available HD-DVD counterpart, which sported a mere Dolby Digital 5.1 lossy audio track.
The Stardust Blu-ray is also a worthy upgrade for the inclusion of additional special features! Along with the deleted scenes, bloopers and trailer present on the HD-DVD, you’ll get a pleasant, informative but slightly slow-ish commentary from Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman and a collection of amazing featurettes that, together add up to one nearly-one-hour-long documentary on the film. My big gripe about the package is that these little slices of documentary are clearly chapters of a whole (there are credits that roll at the end of the last sequence which confirm as much) but the menu fails to provide a “Play All” option! It’s not the end of the world but it is aggravating to me, as I would prefer to sit back and watch the whole piece from beginning to end without having to ride the remote.
[...] Read my full review here: Stardust Blu-ray Disc Review [...]