Article: Stardust

A romantic fairy tale for adults

Robert De Niro starres theadaptation of a graffic novel that successed in the 90s

It looks like the passion to adapt graffic novels in movies doesn't finish: Ghost World, Sin City, A History of Violence or V for Vendetta and now Stardust too, a superproduction based on the relate homonym by English writter Neil Gaiman and the Northamerican drawer Charles Vess plublished in 1997 and which was a spectacular successful editorial. The responsible to transfer the fantastic and epic universe of the book to the big screen has been the Califonian director Matthew Vaugh, a young veteran, he's 35, who worked as producer in movie-videoclips of Guy Richie (Lock & Stock and Snatch) and in 2004 filmed his first movie, the interesting thriller Layer Cake, starred by Daniel Craig. To get a good result with this mission, Vaugh has had a budget of 70 million of Dollars and a group of actors A, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett and Sienna Miller, who wrap up to the main couple made by Charlie Cox ad Claire Danes. As Gaiman as Vess have taken the film as something very personal: "There are two ways to face an adaptation -says Gaiman- getting the money and run or imply on it. And we have taken the second option". "It is evident -adds Vess- the look is very different to the novel, but the most important is the spirit, it has been maintained intact". Such is the explanation of both who have been present in almost all the filming set since it started in April 2004, in the abrupted cost of Island untill the London Pinewood Studies, passing for the impresionant sceneries of Walles and Scotland. Besides Gaiman appears as producer with the director and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who defines Stardust as "a film in the line of Harry Potter or The Lord Of The Rings, but more for adults and more sense of humour".

Stardust tells the story of Tristran (Cox), a shy boy lostly in love of the most beautiful girl in his village (Miller), who refuses him everytime. Because his persistence she insure him that only he will deserve her love if he can get a fallen star and without thinking enough, Tristran enters into a magic land looking for it. There he will have to fight with evil witches (Pfeiffer) and people so peculiar as Captain Shakespeare (De Niro). When finally he gets to find the fallen star, into the sweet face of Claire Danes, Tristran will must questionate his own feelings. Danes shows loved for taking part in the film because "it has let to see come true the dream I had when I was six: meeting to the Unicorn. Really it is a project that I love because I think it can like as children as adults". And what does a cult actress of idependent movies into a production like this? "It's all the same to me working in commercial or independent movies, I'm just bother that it is good ones". By his part, Vaugh tells us how has been to have under his order to two classics of Hollywood as Pfeiffer and De Niro: "If you call to something like if he was a leyend, you are doing a bad work. So I've called them exactly as the rest of the cast".

ALBERTO LUCHINI