Tag: Ray Bradbury

It was 100 years ago last month that author Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced the character of John Carter — an ornery Confederate soldier, mysteriously transported to Mars, who tangles with green men, and then red ones, from an ancient civilization. Over that century, Mars has been rivaled only by our moon when it comes to off-planet fantasies, and it’s maintained a mystique with no heavenly rivals. On the page and on the screen, our cosmic neighbor has been spun every way imaginable: “The Martian Chronicles,” “My Favorite Martian” and “Total Recall.” The list is growing in another direction as video games such as Red Faction and Doom draw audiences into the Red Planet’s gravitational pull. Disney’s just-released “John Carter” film, a tale of epic fantasy directed by Andrew Stanton at considerable expense, comes after centuries of Martian fascination. “Mars has ...

Rainn Wilson stars in the  most dangerous masked-man movie of the year, “Super,” which hits DVD on Aug. 9, but the actor is no newcomer to the fanboy universe. In this guest essay, the famous face from ”The Office” turns back the pages on his love of sci-fi and fantasy novels. Click through the photo gallery above to see some of his beloved bookshelf artifacts (make sure the “Captions On” option has been selected). When I was growing up in the ’70s in suburban Seattle, I had a secret obsession. I was a science fiction and fantasy nerd. This was waaaay before it was ever halfway cool to be one. This was before “Star Wars,” mind you. Before Comic-Con and “The Dark Knight” and the “Lord of the Rings” movies. These were the dark days of “Logan’s Run” and “Zardoz” and “Silent Running.” My dad was an ...

On Tuesday (Aug. 24) I’ll be interviewing Ray Bradbury and Hugh Hefner on stage at the WGA Theater (135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills) right before a screening of François Truffaut’s “Fahrenheit 451.“  The two icons have a strong mutual admiration society and Bradbury recently told Elizabeth Kivowitz Boatright-Simon of UCLA about the role of Playboy in the classic novel’s arrival in the public consciousness. Bradbury’s 90th birthday is Monday and there’s a wide range of events in Los Angeles to mark the milestone. UCLA has set up a wonderful online tribute to the famed author with more videos like the one above, writings by Bradbury, a “Fahrenheit” time line and trivia too. There’s even a spot where you can leave a birthday greeting for Bradbury. I hope to chat with some Hero Complex readers at the Aug. 24 event, be sure ...

Susan King writes about classic Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times (and now for Hero Complex) and has interviewed many of the giants of cinema and pop culture over the decades. She says one of the more memorable encounters was a visit to the wonderfully cluttered desk of Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury has the most amazing dreams. “I write screenplays,” he says with a wink, “in the middle of the night.” When he wakes in the morning, he calls his daughter in Arizona and dictates his dispatch from the Land of Nod, the latest story in a life of imagination, Bradbury turns 90 on Aug. 22, but though many people seem to lose their sense of wonder through the years, his is there waiting for him every morning, just like a cup of coffee. “Ideas just show up,” he says, “just like that. ...

Ray Bradbury is mad at President Obama, but it’s not about the economy, the war or the plan to a construct a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City. “He should be announcing that we should go back to the moon,” says the iconic author, whose 90th birthday on Aug. 22 will be marked in Los Angeles with more than week’s worth of Bradbury film and TV screenings, tributes and other events.  “We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever.” The man who wrote “Fahrenheit 451,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “The Martian Chronicles,“ “Dandelion Wine“and “The Illustrated Man” has been called one of America’s great dreamers, but his imagination ...

Ray Bradbury, a true lion of literature and an icon of the national bookshelf, is turning 90, and the milestone is being marked in Los Angeles with an impressive array of events. You can find a list below. I’m enthused to be part of the programming — I’ll be interviewing Bradbury and Hugh Hefner together on stage on Aug. 24; I hope to see a lot of Hero Complex readers there, and please do say hello if you get a chance. All the events below are free and open to the public. For more information go to the Ray Bradbury Week Facebook page where you can RSVP for each event, which is a must. — Geoff Boucher SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2 P.M. A birthday party for Bradbury at Mystery & Imagination Bookshop at 238 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. There will be an open microphone for ...

“Something Wicked This Way Comes” (8 p.m. Aug. 2, ArcLight Hollywood) Something special this way comes — and it begins Monday at the ArcLight Hollywood. Fourteen films spanning five decades of Disney will be screened this month at three theaters in the Los Angeles area, and the first one up is “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” the 1983 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s tale of dark bargains, secret wishes and a sinister salesman. The film’s cast includes Jason Robards, Diane Ladd and Pam Grier, and it marked the film debut of Jonathan Pryce, who portrayed Mr. Dark, the leader of a touring carnival and a man who lived up to his name. The film series — which also includes ”20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1954), “Cinderella” (1950), “Mary Poppins” (1964), “Pete’s Dragon” (1977),  “The Jungle Book” (1967) and “The Rocketeer” (1991) — ...

Meet Ray Bradbury, the illustrating man. The 89-year-old dreamer is renowned as a lion of literature, of course, but it’s his longtime pursuit of the visual arts that will bring him to the Santa Monica gallery called Every Picture Tells a Story on Oct. 24. Bradbury will be there to unveil a new giclee print of an evocative oil painting that he completed back in 1948 and has come to refer to as “Dark Carnival.” “Painting has been part of my life since I was a child,” Bradbury told me Thursday when we spoke by phone. “My Aunt Neva went to the Art Institute of Chicago and she took courses there and she took me to see the paintings. I began to paint in the 1930s and 1940s and I did a lot of amateur work over the years. I visited art galleries everywhere I went in the world.” It was restless imagination that put the brush ...

I’m looking forward to seeing Ray Bradbury on Oct. 24 at Every Picture Tells a Story, the delightful visual-arts shop in Santa Monica (1311-C Montana Ave., 310-451-2700), where the literary lion will be signing his books and a new print he is introducing. Bradbury turned 89 last month and remains a vital force in the written word of America and, as Mary MacVean reports in today’s Los Angeles Times, a vocal presence in the civic life of Los Angeles. [Updated 5:14 p.m., Sept. 21: An earlier version of this post misspelled Mary MacVean's last name.] There’s an excerpt from her story below, which is an upbeat piece — so I’m sure Bradbury won’t take umbrage with her casual description of him as a science fiction writer. That’s a term he has met with an eye-roll or a shrug in the past. “I’ve only ...

You would have thought the struggle for legitimacy was long over, but the graphic novel is still jeered by many. That’s what Julia Keller, the very fine cultural critic of the Chicago Tribune, learned when when she wrote a column headlined Confessions of a Comics Fan: My Secret Shame. Here’s a bit: The reader was outraged. The thrust of her question: How dare you? Her contempt arose in response to a column I wrote praising certain graphic novels. And she was not alone in her seething censure. I heard from several other readers as well, wondering why I had allowed myself to be seduced by the easy enchantments of comic books. Frankly, they expected better of me — given my doctoral degree in English literature and my well-known and oft-alluded-to affinity for dense, difficult, high-minded novels by the likes of Virginia Woolf and ...