Sergei Bondarchuk directed an 8‑hour movie adaptation of Conflict and Peace (1966–67), which finished up winning an Oscar for Finest Foreign Picture. When he was in Los Angeles as a visitor of honor at a party, Hollywooden royalty like John Wayne, John Ford, and Billy Wilder lined as much as meet the Russian moviemaker. However the one person that Bondarchuk was truly excited to satisfy was Ray Bradbury. Bondarchuk introduced the writer to the group of bemused A‑listers as “your niceest genius, your niceest author!”
Ray Bradbury spent a lifetime crafting stories about robots, Martians, house travel and nuclear doom and, within the course of, turned the formerly disreputable style of Sci-Fi/Fantasy into somefactor respectable. He influenced legions of writers and moviemakers on each side of the Atlantic from Stephen King to Neil Gaiman to Francois Truffaut, who adapted his most well-known novel, Fahrenheit 451, right into a film.
That movie wasn’t the one adaptation of Bradbury’s work, after all. His writings have been changed into feature movies, TV films, radio reveals and even a online game for the Commodore 64. During the waning days of the Chilly Conflict, a handful of Soviet animators demonstrated their esteem for the writer by adapting his brief stories.
Vladimir Samsonov directed Bradbury’s Right here There Be Tygers, which you’ll see above. An areaship lands on an Eden-like planet. The people inside are on a mission to extract all of the natural assets possible from the planet, however they fastly actualize that this isn’t your ordinary rock. “This planet is alive,” declares one of many characters. Certainly, not solely is it alive but it surely additionally has the ability to grant wantes. Need to fly? High quality. Need to make streams movement with wine? Positive. Need to summon a nubile maiden from the earth? No problem. Eachone appears enchanted by the planet besides one dark-hearted jerk who appears hell-bent on completing the mission.
Samsonov’s film is stylized, spooky and slightly beautiful – a bit like as if Andrei Tarkovsky had directed Avatar.
Another considered one of Bradbury’s shorts, There Will Come Gentle Rain, has been adapted by Uzbek director Nazim Tyuhladziev (additionally spelled Nozim To’laho’jayev). The story is about an automated home that continues to prepare dinner and clear for a family of 4 unaware that all of them perished in a nuclear explosion. Whereas Bradbury’s version works as a comment on each American consumerism and general Chilly Conflict dread, Tyuhladziev’s version goes for a extra religious tact. The robotic that runs the home appears like a mechanical snake (Garden of Eden, anyone?). The robotic and the home grow to be undone by an errant white dove. The animation won’t have the polish of a Disney film, however it’s surprisingly creepy and poignant.
Observe: An earlier version of this put up appeared on our web site in 2014.
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Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based author and moviemaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywooden Reporter, and other publications. You may follow him at @jonccrow.
