http://www.badmouth.net Look, Ma! No pants! Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:04:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.badmouth.net/stardust-2007/ http://www.badmouth.net/stardust-2007/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:36:07 +0000 Brian McDonough http://www.badmouth.net/stardust-2007/ [rating:4.5] Director: Matthew Vaughn Starring: Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Claire Danes Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of Stardust, the ten-year-old fairy tale written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Charles Vess, takes the best of that magical adventure and shakes it up a little for movie audiences. It's a remarkable and rare adaptation in which the essential story is preserved, and the deviations are an improvement for the cinematic presentation. It's also a film that strikes a perfect tone between the ponderous, serious, interminable Lord of Rings films and the breeziness of The Princess Bride, which both celebrated fantasy stories while being awkwardly self-conscious about how dorky such stories are. Stardust neither takes three hours to make you really, really believe in dwarves and well-mapped dream continents, nor does it apologize, scuffing its toe in the dirt, for being an adventure and romance. It's the late 1800s, and a village in the English countryside sits beside an unassuming entrance to Faerie, which has magic and a more medieval cast. A foolish boy trying to woo a girl (who sees him only as a foolish boy) promises to bring her a falling star they spot plummeting down to the east—across the wall that keeps separate this world and that. That the star turns out to be personified as an understandably grumpy (but, appropriately, radiant) Claire Danes, and that there is an evil witch and murderous princes vying for a throne also after the celestial prize, provide all the complications and misadventures you could want. Related posts:

1. White Oleander
2. Time knows you’re not cool
3. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

]]> http://www.badmouth.net/stardust-2007/feed/ 30 http://www.badmouth.net/princess-mononoke-1997/ http://www.badmouth.net/princess-mononoke-1997/#comments Sun, 09 Feb 2003 21:38:40 +0000 Brian McDonough http://www.badmouth.net/wordpress/princess-mononoke-1997/

Buy it at Amazon

This is a work of epic myth unlike any other. Hayao Miyazaki is the recognized god of anime, and here he takes his imagination on a full romp that touches on familiar themes - loving nature, the heroic quest - in unfamiliar ways. The story is unpredictable, the characters are well-rounded, and there are no bad guys - everyone has their motivations and nobility, with no pat answers. Related posts:

1. Ponyo
2. The Princess & The Frog
3. Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D

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