I didn't love the book -- although I did like it -- and I wonder if that was because I kept looking for the movie in the pages.

I think that's what happened to me, Narrator.

Please, please, somebody at least tell me Claire Danes was good.

I thought she was good. She was haughty and put-upon and eventually soft and lovely, but she's a little toned down from the character in the book, who's a little angrier and insulting.

I liked her well enough. I didn't need her efforts at a British accent, but, ok. I read somewhere that Sarah Michele Gellar was offered the role and declined because she didn't want to be away from her hubby. Well, fine, but she had a chance to be in a movie with Robert DeNiro. I'm surprised anyone would pass that up.

If the British accent was part and parcel of the role, it's no mystery to me why she'd turn it down. I still shudder whenever I hear her speak in "Halloween" .

The more I hear about the differences between the movie and book versions, the more I am convinced to not see the movie.

I agree very much with Jilli's assessment of Stardust and the part that Narrator mentions regarding the end was the part I especially had a problem with, to go from there are no real happily ever afters in the book to a very trite happily ever after ending in the moive was annoying.

I haven't yet read the book, and I expect to like it, but I liked the movie, and I admit I do like happy endings. I've had enough life-sucks endings in real life. I tend to get depressed over unhappy endings. But that's just me. And also just me, but I didn't find that a Star living and aging and bearing children and suffering and dying in a mortal life was entirely happy; she wouldn't have wanted it if she weren't with her love. What's so great about a normal human life, anyway? Love is all that makes it tolerable. (Which is why I hated City of Angels, by the way.) I hate the common fantasy trope that Living a Short Mortal Human Life and Then Dying is the Best Thing Ever. And, furthermore, because this post needs more further, when he became a Star too, the first thing I thought was, how sad, look how far apart from each other they are! They're now doomed to be near each other but never touch forever. So, happy ending, I guess, but hardly skippity-doo-dah, at least not for morbid depressive me.

The book's ending isn't unhappy. It's just not a cookie-cutter fairy tale "and they lived happily ever after."

I went into the movie expecting it to be more conventional so as to have that mass market appeal, and I found it delightful.

I don't love the book, though. I like it quite a lot, but I re-read it shortly before seeing the movie precisely because I couldn't remember much of it.

I do wish that the movie had kept the bit where Tristan unleashes Yvanne while he goes to find food, instead of tying her to a tree. It's such a lovely little character moment.

-t, I think that is the pivitol moment for Tristan in the book. I'm not sure he can really be a hero without it. Didn't someone say they wouldn't have helped him if he hadn't untied her? I can't remember who. Tristan is so trusting in the book; he would never be suspicious enough to tie her to the tree.

sj, the person who wouldn't have trusted Tristan was the tree spirit. (Tori the Tree, as I think of her, because Neil has admitted that he based that character off of Tori.)

I expected the movie to be Not The book. I just didn't expect it to be so ... mainstream Hollywood fantasy, or that so much of the charm and character development would be sacrificed on the altar of action sequences.

I don't think the ending of the book is unhappy. Wistful, yes. But unhappy, no. Remember, I'm a huge sap for happy endings. But I found the ending of the movie to be kind of trite.

Oh, and because I'm still in rantycakes mode about this, "Babylon candle" wtf? The fact that the movie didn't have the odd little peddler character who helps Tristan when he first goes beyond the Wall was a huge disappointment for me.

And I was extremely disappointed with how they dealt with the Market. I love the way the Market was presented in the book; the Charles Vess original painting for that scene is something I've coveted for years. In the movie, you barely got to see anything, and it felt like it was one of the sections the screenplay writers just didn't understand.