Stardust

The Snowdrop Costs A Kiss

October 27, the eve of Adam's birthday found us partaking of a hearty Kenny Rogers meal at Marina.

Apart from "eye-brow raising" competitions, Adam and Saad kept us in stitches all throughout dinner. Adam with his renditions of his favourite movie of the year, Shoot Em Up - "And then Clive Owen shoves the carrot in the guy's mouth and it comes out on the other side and Clive Owen says - always finish your vegetables!"

Saad was his usual corny self -
Adam rubbing butter on his corn
Saad: Now you have to say something corny
Saad (again) : Ooops I beat you to it.

Saad (living life dangerously as he was having dinner with 4 lawyers) : What is the most painful kind of lawyer?
4 Lawyers: [gaze at him blankly]
Saad: A lawyer who is also a dentist!
Sunita: That sounds vaguely familiar
Saad: It is a work in progress
Adam: Needs quite a bit of work there.

Adeline and I caught up. Ms. Deputy Public Prosecutor had been too busy for me for the most part of the year.
Adeline: So what have you been up to?
Sunita tells her
Adeline : [speechless]

Then we all try to one-up ourselves by giving Adam cool gifts. But someone cheated and brought TWO gifts. It was declared a foul and we all threw in the towel. Anyways Adam bought himself the coolest gift - a computer game console shaped like a guitar or some such thing (hey I never pretended to be tech-savvy)

The fallen Star

We were soon joined by Ira, Peter and Pamela and proceeded to the highlight of the evening - Stardust!

Yup, they had finally made Neil Gaiman's Stardust into a movie! I had been waiting for months for it (it was released in the US in August) and was counting the days until November when Adam messaged - I got tickets for the preview!

It was a pretty good movie. I loved Claire Danes as the star, Yvaine and Charlie Cox was excellent as Tristran. You could literally see him grow and mature as a person from minute to minute. Robert de Niro was hilarious, but as Saad said - Michelle Pfeiffer OWNED the movie.

Even the changes they made in the story were not too bad (Robert de Niro's gay pirate was hilarious), although I could have done without the final "battle" scene.

Also, I much preferred the meeting between Yvaine and "Lamia" in the book, where "Lamia" has no heart left to cut out because Yvaine had given hers to a "boy", freely and willingly even though (as "Lamia" advises her) he is bound to "break it or waste it or lose it- they all do".

I must admit, though, that I hated the part when they "fall in love". It was sweeter and more believably played out in the book.

Both Ira and I preferrred the ending in the movie though - such suckers we are for happy endings :-p

The night ended with us happily embarassing Adam by singing Happy Birthday at the stroke of midnight. Welcome to the Over-the-Hill club Adam, all dues are to be paid to our now proper (previously honorary) president, Ashwin.

I read somewhere that Neil Gaiman had said in an interview that he wanted people to like the movie but he still kinda hoped people would prefer the book.

I just want to say to Neil - I really liked the movie but I much preferred the book :-p

One of Charles Vess' original drawings for the book