So I just watched Stardust for the absolute heck of it, because I was bored, and that's what came to mind after poking around a few Doctor Who episodes. I love fantasy, in case you didn't know already, and since most fantasy movies have been plagued with being downright terrible, I've come to give my favorite genre a little bit of leeway. (But hey! At least the market is there now... It was pretty non-existent before Lord of the Rings blew through and made people go "wow, fantasy can work!")
But yeah... Woah. I wasn't expecting much, and maybe that's what made it so awesome, but... It was great! Definitely a movie I'm going to snag on DVD. It was funky at times, a little dark at other times, but it always had a bit of lightness to it. (If you can make light of "funky" and "dark"?) I was on the edge of my seat for the last half hour of the thing, if that means anything to you. I mean... It does to me. I don't know if I knew what to expect or not, but it sure was intense for a bit.
Man... Now I'm on a fantasy high and I need something else to watch! As I told Phox, IMDB's keyword search is about as useful as a bucket of sand in the desert... I try to search for tags of "fantasy" and I get things ranging from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (yeah, I mean, what the heck... video games on the International MOVIE Database?!) to some random Japanese movie from the 60. Then I search under the fantasy genre and get things like Star Wars, It's a Wonderful Life, and random Spanish films. Lord of the Rings, of course, but I've already memorized that thing... Star Wars is not fantasy! It's science fiction! There is a complete and total difference between the two. Fantasy doesn't have spacecraft! I suppose it's fantasy in the sense of it being fantastic and other-worldly, but then if we're blurring the lines that much, everything that's fiction is going to be fantasy! No, "Fantasy" is Narnia and Middle-Earth and such. Not Indiana Jones and The Incredibles. Ugh!
So I look under the adventure genre, since Stardust is listed under that, too? I get the same movies as I get listed under Fantasy... Lord of the Rings, the same random Spanish films, Indiana Jones, and oh, we have a little switch up in the number 8 slot! It's North by Northwest. Definitely a good movie, and it definite is adventure, but that's not at all the type of movie I want to watch... FANTASY, dang it!
GIVE ME FANTASY!