Stardust – Blu-ray Disc Review

September 3, 2010 – 6:40 am - Posted by: Justin Sluss

Tags: Ben Barnes, Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Henry Cavill, Ian McKellen, Jason Flemyng, Kate Magowan, Mark Strong, Matthew Vaughn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Neil Gaiman, Paramount, Peter O'Toole, Ricky Gervais, Robert De Niro, Rupert Everett, Sienna Miller, Struan Rodger

has an average rating of 7.9 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
includes HD-DVD ports & exclusives
–
– 2007
– 127 minutes
– Paramount
–
This uses 35.8GB for the movie out of 45.9GB total.
Street Date: September 7th, 2010

Overall Verdict – Recommended

Buy it for $20.99 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Justin Sluss —

Trailer:

The Movie Itself was Directed by Matthew Vaughn who previously Directed the British modern cult-classic “Layer Cake“. The film isn’t your average comedy, fantasy or romance but it can be classified in those genres. The story to the film follows “Tristan” (played by Charlie Cox) a young boy trying to win the heart of “Victoria” the village beauty (played by Sienna Miller).

In his quest he sets out on a journey that turns into an adventure as he tries to recover a “Fallen Star” in hopes of winning the heart of Victoria who’s promised if he does she’ll marry him. It’s much to Tristan‘s dismay to discover his true origin, his mother and what lies over “the wall” that covers the border to his town. Next thing he knows he’s flying face first into to what appears to be a girl. This girl is actually the “fallen star” and her name is “Yvaine” (played by Claire Danes). It’s now our leading man’s task to protect his “fallen star” and return it to win the hand of his precious Victoria who could honestly care less for him.

Little does Tristan know it but he’s in a land over “the wall” where the king “Lord Stormhold” (played by Peter O’Toole) is on his death bed. Lord Stormhold passes away but before doing so takes off this necklace from around his neck and tells the sons that whoever can possess the necklace will be his successor to the throne. The necklace then (while floating in thin air) flies off into the dark night sky into the stars. It soon shoots back to earth. This is how our leading man’s new-found friend Yvaine (a.k.a. the fallen star) came into the situation. When she fell to earth she came with the necklace.

So now what remains of the kings sons are questing to find that necklace which our friend Tristan just so happens to have with him and doesn’t even know it. There are other reasons people are after him but not for the necklace, instead for the fallen star herself. Along the way they encounter a rogue pirate by the name of “Captain Shakespeare” (played by Robert De Niro) who takes them first into custody but then soon befriends them. As all of this is going on we have the evil witch “Lamia” (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) who needs the fallen star to make her and her sisters young again. With so much going on in the process our main character Tristan must decide the true meaning of love and what he wants for himself.

“Stardust” is a truly imaginative fantasy story that is sure to appeal to the family audiences that frequent the “Pirates” & “Potter” franchise films. I was really surprised by this film. Honestly going into reviewing it 3 years ago (on HD-DVD), I hadn’t seen the trailer I wasn’t sure what to expect but I ended up really liking the film. The sense of humor is downright hilarious and I got a kick out of it. I’d definitely recommend “Stardust” to just about everyone.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. According to IMDb‘s technical specifications for the aspect ratio, this was shot using Panavision cameras on 35mm film. This makes a nice tranisition from 35mm film to Hi-Def; as with a whimsical tale such as this you get some really compelling fantasy visuals and such. The black level is pretty solid for the most part. There’s very little film grain or noise present, but enough to remind you it’s from 35mm film source, especially in the darker scenes with less lighting. The flesh tones are dead on and speaking of which, Claire Danes looks absolutely gorgeous here as well as even Michelle Pfieffer (aside from the scenes with the makeup and visual effects to make her look old). The color palette is a tad bit subdued and it’s not the most vibrant for the first 20 minutes or so, but then when it brightens up a bit the detail stands out a bit more. For instance, every strand of the blonde long hair that Claire Daines‘ character has stands out perfectly when we’re first introduced to her character (around 25 minutes in or so). All and all this presentation still holds up really rather well (3 years or so after its debut on HD-DVD) now on Blu-ray Disc in its debut to that format. This earns an impressive “4.5 Star Rating” for overall video quality. It’s not got a whole lot of “pop” per se but it does have its moments and helps do this fantasy-type tale justice visually.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. This is a really nice improvement for those of you who owned this previously on the HD-DVD format as it only featured Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus, a not as lossless codec as this (DTS-HD MA). First off I’ll start off by saying that the Score to this film is delivered beautifully in the lossless 5.1 mix. The dialogue which happens to be very important to this film is delivered somewhat perfectly and will not require much (if even any) volume adjustment at all, I can assure you. In fact, this time around (unlike on the HD-DVD mix) are both dialogue and narration are delivered “spot on” through primarily the front center channel speaker with perfect clarity. There’s a really good amount of LFE, rear channel presence and the mix boasts somewhat impressive dynamic range — mostly from the film’s Score and sound effects. It only takes about 18 minutes or so into the film for you to get a good example of some of what this mix has to offer with the shooting star as it flies over; where the LFE isn’t quite peaking but it is rockin’ and the rear channels are getting some action. This easily earns itself an impressive “4.5 Star Rating” for overall audio quality. It does a good job (especially later in the film) of doing this fantasy world justice, just as I mentioned about the video quality above.

Bonus materials are presented in both High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD) video quality with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound — unless otherwise noted below.

• Audio Commentary by Writer and Director Matthew Vaughn and Writer Jane Goodman
• “Crossing the Wall: The Making of Stardust” features Dolby Digital 5.1 @448kbps sound and is split up into the following chapters:
“The Quest for the Stone…” (5:25 – HD)
“A Portal to Another World…” (9:02 – HD)
“What Do Stars Do?” (15:34 – HD)
“A Quest of Enormous Importance…” (9:20 – HD)
“Have You Seen a Fallen Star?” (16:17 – HD)
• “Nothing is True…” (10:14 – SD) is a behind-the-scenes look at the film with writer/producer Neil Gaiman & illustrator (of the original novel) Charles Vess.
• Deleted Scenes (5:32 – SD) FIVE in total are presented. These are pretty funny, entertaining and totally worth watching.
• “Blooper Reel” (5:25 – SD) is pretty much your average roll of outtakes except this one is actually hilarious. This is an absolute treat and they even end things by showings us they somehow managed to destroy a camera by crashing into a tree. CLASSIC!
• Theatrical Trailer (2:29 – HD) is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 @640kbps sound.

Overall, the bonus materials are essentially the HD-DVD ports with the addition of some new Blu-ray exclusive features like the audio commentary and new featurette (“Nothing is True…”) as well as not just a renaming of the “making of” featurette but also an addition of material to it (as it ran only 30 minutes previously and now totals in at almost an hour).

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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