Stardust [Blu-Ray]

It is hard to work out exactly what went wrong with Stardust. Based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, it's a wonderful film with a great cast that just didn't find an audience when it appeared in movie theatres back in 2007. Since then, its status has been slowly building, thanks to word-of-mouth, and it doesn't hurt that director Matthew Vaughn has since done Kick-Ass, so people want to check out his earlier work. Hopefully its release on Blu-Ray will be yet another chance for re-evaluation. Stardust is a very likeable film that stands up to repeat viewings, thanks to its sense of humour. It's a modern fairy tale in the vein of The Princess Bride, telling the story of Tristan (Charlie Cox), who is smitten with Victoria (Sienna Miller). He tries to win her heart just prior to her engagement by promising to give her a falling star they see one night. It turns out that said star has fallen into the magical world that lies right beside their village, and when Tristan ventures into that land, he's thrust into a race to locate the star (which has taken on the form of a beautiful woman named Yvaine, played by Claire Danes) involving evil witches and a pair of princes trying to become the rightful heir to the kingdom. Naturally, everything intertwines and resolves in a satisfying way due to the masterful storytelling of the source material. The cast is uniformly brilliant, especially Cox and Danes, who make for a convincing couple, but there are also strong performances from Michelle Pfeiffer (as head witch Lamia) and Robert De Niro (in one of his more restrained comic turns) as Captain Shakespeare, a kind-hearted pirate. It's a movie that definitely deserves another chance. The Blu-Ray version looks and sounds great, coming with a decent collection of extras. The most substantial one is "Crossing the Wall: the Making of Stardust," which is a fairly typical behind-the-scenes featurette covering the entire filmmaking process, from the original novel to the final product. But it still has more info than the director's commentary. Even better is "Nothing Is True...," where Gaiman and the novel's illustrator (Charles Vess) tour the set, plus some deleted scenes that could have easily have stayed in the movie and the usual blooper reel.