“Stardust” (2020) Podcast Movie Review

By Daniel Barnes on February 22, 2022

Stardust (2020) – Dare Daniel Podcast Episode 106

“Ground control to major bomb.”

Awards grubbers Daniel Barnes and Corky McDonnell pause their bathroom hallucinations long enough to review Johnny Flynn as a brooding and henpecked David Bowie in Stardust. The film claims to be “(mostly) fiction,” but it’s really (mostly) bullshit, the rock-and-roll biopic as indie therapy movie. Loaded with glum flashbacks and facile psychoanalysis, Stardust tells the story of an interesting man in the least interesting manner imaginable.

Elsewhere, Daniel and Corky discuss film school toolkits, mime interviews and Ziggy Stardust mood boards.

STARDUST (2020) FACTS AND FIGURES

This week’s craft beer: Great Notion Brewing’s Juice Jr. IPA (6% ABV)

U.S. theatrical release: Nov. 25, 2020

Domestic box office: $62,251

Critics scores: 20 on Rotten Tomatoes; 35 on Metacritic

This week’s darer: David Paul

David Paul’s dare: “The wigs, guys, the wigs. The utter abuse of costuming art in general. Anytime they show the Spiders from Mars playing music, casting a middle-aged troll to play peak 1971 sex god Marc Bolan, how much the movie HATES Angie, how utterly without charm or charisma the actor playing Bowie is. Maybe there was a good movie there along the way, but the finished product is rough stuff. I can only assume once they realized they could only afford trolls to play sex gods they just gave up on the lot of it.”

IMDB synopsis: “Stardust will chronicle the young David Bowie’s first visit to the US in 1971 – a trip that inspired the invention of his iconic alter ego Ziggy Stardust.”

This week’s referenced movies: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; Stardust (2007); A Star Is Born; Daughters of the Dust; Lust in the Dust; Dune; Stardust Memories; Emma. (2020); Warcraft; Fateful Findings; Velvet Goldmine; Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; Walk the Line; 2001: A Space Odyssey; The Corsican Brothers; The Identical; Almost Famous; Green Book; Midnight Run; Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird; Hope and Crosby movies; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Leaving Las Vegas; Poltergeist; Shocker; Videodrome; The Incredible Mr. Limpet; The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; Labyrinth; The Silence of the Lambs; Amadeus; Bohemian Rhapsody