Stardust Watch

"...the witch-queen reined in her goat-drawn chariot and stopped and sniffed the chilly air.

The Myriad stars hung cold in the sky above her.

Her red, red lips curved up into a smile of such beauty, such brilliance, such pure and perfect happiness that it would have frozen your blood in your veins to have seen it. "There," she said. "She is coming to me."

And the wind of the mountain pass howled about her triumphantly, as if in answer."

That passage is from about the halfway point of Neil Gaiman's excellent fantasy novel Stardust currently being filmed in Iceland and London. The witch queen is to be played by Michelle Pfeiffer and as with pre-adaptation readings of White Oleander the mind boggles imagining the excellent performance La Pfeiffer will undoubtedly deliver. This witch queen is a very very dark character. Lots of violence inside of her.

In the only paparazzi shots we've seen so far Pfeiffer seems to be clad in a green dress with her usual blond hair. The witch queen of the novel has black hair and wears a lot of scarlet. As Glenn vividly reminded us in his blog-a-thon post, red is definitely her color. If her hair is indeed blond for the entire film, I hope they at least clothe her in the scarlet attire described in the book. If not, I'll have to have words with this woman.

I can't wait to see this as a movie. If, like most big budget productions they're using a 'template' I'm just praying that it's Lord of the Rings rather than Narnia as a template because this is most certainly not appropriate for all ages. It's very much an old school fairy tale: i.e. grim, lots of dark humor, death, blood, and sex.

For trivia buffs: Pfeiffer is not known for working with any actors or directors repeatedly. Stardust reunites her with not just one but two previous co-stars. So it's no longer just Jack Nicholson, Jeff Goldblum, and Al Pacino who've done double duty.

Who are the two actors joining this very exclusive club?

tags: Michelle Pfeiffer, Neil Gaiman, movies, fantasy, Stardust