I personally loved the movie. I watch it a couple times a year. There are others on this site who were disappointed with the film. I thought they did a good job capturing the spirit that Bradbury put into the characters and story.

I thought the F451 film was okay, but I'm not a huge fan of it. I long for a really good remake -- I see it as being in the style of "Minority Report". But it would also need some very quiet scenes: dialogues with Clarisse, the book people, times when he's reflecting on books or relationships, etc.

Unfortunately, an artist's current work IS judged in relation to his prior work. If Bradbury had released Let's All Kill Constance under a pseudonym, I doubt the book would have gotten much notice. (As would any great writer's later, lesser work.)

If a writer/director has created less than stellar work in the past, I think it's fair to judge his current work in relation to that work. (Oh, my, here's a refreshing change. This piece is far better than his past work. Or vice versa.) I think that once an artist is established, none of his work stands alone.

(But it's also good to heed the warning that accompanies a mutual fund prospectus: past performance is no guarantee of future returns.)

Pete

quote:

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Originally posted by Yestermorrow:
Yeah, mine was pretty good, too. Needed a little salt though.

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On SWTWC, I really did like the movie, but film and the novel are two different media with different strengths and weaknesses, so they will be different. It is one of my favorite books, also, and I felt the movie did a very good job capturing the spirit of the novel.

Many times which one we like best (movie or book) depends on which one we experienced first. Sometimes it just depends on what we like about a book or movie. Typically, if there is a great book that a movie is based on, the movie doesn't match up to the book. A book leaves much more open to our imagination than a movie does. In a movie, sound and visuals are defined for us; in the book, those are totally left up to our imagination. Because of that, I believe we can make a novel more a part of us -- we invest who we are and what we are, into the book in a way we simply cannot do in a film.

For me, the movie SWTWC was a very, very good visualization of the book. It captured the spirit of the book, it captured the relationship between Jim and Will, it captured the relationship between Will and his dad, and, of course, I liked the depiction of Mr. Dark in the book and movie.

That IS the key, isn't it? It is very easy to tell which movies were screenwritten by random hired guns when compared with someone who actually cares about the original work.

[This message has been edited by Richard (edited 03-09-2004).]

While the arguments are different, I also see SWTWC as a color film. I always see Autumn in color. I might be able to see "The Pedestrian" in B&W, but I see most of Bradbury's work as being done in color.

Here's my original entry:

I guess I'm odd-man-out on this one. I definitely see Martian Chronicles as a color movie. There are just too many references to the red planet for me to see it as a B&W film. I thought B&W was great in "Raging Bull" and "Schindler's List," but I see Martian Chronicles as a color film.

Interestingly, Bradbury, in the conversation between Spender and the Captain on why Spender was willing to kill humans to preserve the Martian's Taoist/Buddhist/AmerIndian sense of balance in religion uses the idea of color to show how the Martians were able to live successfully in a way Americans/Earthlings could not. They managed to combine science and religion into a kind of whole, rather than seeing them as two separate things definitionally antagonistic to each other:

". . . at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It's all simply a matter of degree. An earth man thinks, 'In that picture, color does not exist, really. A scientist can prove that color is only the way the cells are placed in a certain material to reflect light. Therefore, color is not really an actual part of things I happen to see.' A Martian, far cleverer, would say, 'This is a fine picture. It came from the hand and the mind of a man inspired. It's idea and its color are from life. This thing is a good.'"

This passage doesn't "prove" the movie should be in color, but I have always seen the book in color when I read it, and when I envisage a movie of it, it is a color film.

It's kind of like the Paul Simon song, "Kodachrome," where he sees one world in B&W and the other in color. The color, Kodachrome, is what gives life richness in that song. He doesn't want the Kodachrome taken away.

Also, Bradbury uses color as sometimes an only descriptor of an object in this book. The bullets are silver. In the opening passage from "The Green Morning" he uses color to describe the entirety of the setting.

I may be alone on this, but I definitely see The Martian Chronicles as a movie that needs to be in color.

But my delight in the book made me a harsh critic of the movie--when I saw it in high school I had only read SWTWC two Halloweens in a row.

I didn't like the spiders being substituted for the Montgolfier or how Charles Halloway's job had to be upgraded from janitor to librarian. I didn't like how Miss Foley's wish was modified (younger but blind)--better to have given her EXACTLY what she desired to illustrate the true horror of a wish come true!!

And I REALLY didn't like how Mr. Dark had a long-standing personal grudge against the Halloway clan. It seemed to detract from the message you have to beware the dark (yet impersonal) temptations in this world.

[In horror fiction a general threat can be more frightening than a personal threat for you know not what dark shape the horror may take, the sly shadow it can cast. . .]

But that said I do enjoy the echo of October in just about every frame and how coldly evil Mr. Dark could be, his voice rarely about an icy timbre.

For me SWTWC is a novel of a slow evil that creeps into town and gradually takes root, its intracies only being vaguely glimpsed by Will and Jim over the span of a week until at last Mr. Halloway knits the fibers together to realize the dark web which engulfs them.

Too long for just a movie. Better a 4-6 hour miniseries to allow the chapters to play themselves out.

And at least retore the rooftop battle with the Dust Witch!

Doctor's prescription: Watch it if you've never read the book and then read the book for a deeper appreciation.

For good Bradbury viewing, watch or rent the animated version of THE HALLOWEEN TREE. Leonard Nimoy is brilliant as Mister Moundshroud (and would make a great Mr. Dark in my opinion, too).

I do like the film very much, despite a few shortcomings, and watch it every autumn right around Halloween, if not on the actual holiday itself. The opening of the film, with the images of autumn on-screen and the haunting and melancholy musical score and narration, is just about perfect, and sums up the feeling of the season for me.

Don't know how many of you were aware of this, but the film was extensively altered after its initial previews--some of the material was scrapped entirely, and many other scenes re-shot. The spiders didn't appear in the original version at all--but the balloon may have. If you look at the scene where one of the boys runs over the porch roof to the other's window, you can see a shadow blotting out the moonlight that looks very much like the shape of a hot-air balloon.

I was wondering, how many of you have seen this film with the commentary track? (I'm not sure if it appears on the current DVD--it is included on my old laserdisc "special edition.") The discussion is provided by a couple of the people who worked on the film, as well as Mr Bradbury himself. I would say that probably 75 percent of the conversation involves the artistic and technical details of the film-making process (which I find fascinating, myself), and the rest is Ray. He does talk about how the film you are watching is different than the one that was originally shot, and why the changes were made.

Disney are supposedly issuing a new DVD of the movie in August. I hope they give us more extras. If they do, they are guaranteed at least one sale.

Oh, another sequence that was deleted was the initial setting up of the carnival. Originally the film was going to depict the carnival as an organic force that "grew" from nature. The boys were to follow the train, and from their hiding place they would see the ferris wheel form from a circular spider web, etc... But this sequence was never completed, it never got past some animated tests. Computer graphics were not advanced enough at that time to allow the whole sequence to work properly...

"I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right away -- 'by the pricking of my thumbs,' " said Anne, as they went up the slope. "It's a nice story-bookish feeling."

The other substantial difference is the end-credits sequence, which shows (one by one) each of the previously entrapped Green Town residents (the teacher, the barber, the druggist) happily restored to their former selves the following morning. That optimistic montage closes with a rather grim final shot, showing a newly posted flyer announcing that Mr. Dark's carnival will soon return ... In other words, stay on your toes, Green Town! Hopefully this footage (as well as other cut scenes, including a shot seen in the trailer) will make its way onto a future DVD.

Also, I assume you saw the film with the original musical score? If you remember a thing about it, what did you think? As I've so often said, I think that Horner's main theme (in the opening scenes, which I guess didn't even appear in the cut you mentioned), is simply perfect. But still, after hearing some of the Delerue music, I would have to say that his music for the "dancing girls" scene worked better than Horner's. So mysterious and beautiful....

I don't think the studio was involved in this cut at all. Ray had this version of the film put together exclusively for him by his filmmaker friend, Paul Clemens. I've mentioned to him before that he should talk to Disney about including that footage on the DVD, but now that Roy Disney is out of the company, I don't know how much input he would have -- or if he would even be asked.