CHICAGO – There was opportunity aplenty for director Kristina Schramm to miss this mark and leave theatergoers with acidic resentment. Tasked with the tall order of bringing to life Ray Bradbury’s classic anthology “The Martian Chronicles,” though, she wasn’t bested by the oddity of the undertaking.
Instead, the cast and crew of this Chicago production inventively transformed the Lincoln Square Theatre – set squarely within a North Side church – into Mars where Martians roamed with normalcy.
Instead of E.T. descending upon Earth, though, earthlings in this twist of storytelling pervade the aboriginal Martians in their native land for exploration, dreams of dollar signs and even succulent hot dogs.
Bradbury was used to reversing the traditional pendulum of the written wor
'For the tents were lemon like the sun, brass like wheat fields a few weeks ago. Flags and banners bright as blue-birds snapped above lion-colored canvas. From booths painted cotton-candy colors, fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed."It's just a plain old carnival," said Will."Like heck," said Jim. "We weren't blind last night. Come on!"'This book (my copy published by Avon Fiction, ISBN: 978-0-380-72940-1) is, quite simply, one of the most perfect books I have ever read. I had preconceptions about Bradbury's work, I thought that he wrote rather dry science fiction, based purely on the title of The Martian Chronicles. I was wrong.This book gripped me so that it hurt to put it down, but it was b
“451 grade este temperatura la care hartia din care sunt facute cartile ia foc si se mistuie” asa incepe. Destul de ciudat sa ma cucereasca o carte inca din motto. Romanul este o distopie. Principala tema o reprezinta distrugerea trecutului in vederea dominarii prezentului si viitorului.
Montag este un [...]
My apologies for not posting in quite a while. Recently I have finished reading what I think to be one of the twentieth century's most important books, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury does an excellent job of depicting what happens to a society when knowledge is suppressed, books censored, and libraries no longer exist.Quick review of the plot:The book is set at some point in the future. Guy Montag is a fireman who burns books and begins to wonder what is in the books he is burning. Thus begins his downfall. The story unfolds with Mr. Montag's meeting with Clarrisse who begins to open a world for Mr. Montag he never knew possible.Analysis:At the end of the book Bradbury quite elequently gives a dialogue on the main points in his work and why he wrote the book in the manner that he wrote it. Let's talk literary theories for just a moment. Bradbury most definately comes from a New Criticism perspective, the idea that it is what is in the text that counts. He states, a
From this week's LA Weekly News, "Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted":Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day’s L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.
Guy Montag is a fireman; not a fireman that extinguishes fires, but one that ignites them. He lives in a time (somewhere in the future) when having books is illegal. When the people who own them are found out, the fire brigade is being called to burn down the house together with the books. Guy is happy with his job until on one call a woman refuses to leave her books and burns together with them. On that occasion Guy grabs a book with him; there must be something in books if people don’t want to leave them even when that means their death. From that moment on his entire life turns upside down and he has to make some difficult choices and decisions.
This is one of those books that you can’t put down the moment you pick it up for the first time. It is also a book that leaves a mark. Even when you finished the book the story stays in your system. You just have to think about it. It’s the kind of book Guy Montag definitely had to burn. It is a compelling story with a
Ray Bradbury - El árbol de las brujas, primer capÃtulo Era un pueblo pequeño junto a un rÃo pequeño y un lago pequeño en un rincón septentrional de un estado del Medio Oeste. No habÃa alrededor tanta espesura como para que no se viera el pueblo. Pero por otro lado tampoco habÃa tanto pueblo como para que no se viera y sintiera y palpara y oliera la espesura. El pueblo estaba lleno de árboles. Y pasto seco y flores muertas ahora que habÃa llegado el otoño. Y muchas cercas para caminar por encima y aceras para patinar y una cañada donde echarse a rodar y llamar a gritos a los del otro lado. Y el pueblo estaba lleno de... Chicos. Y era la tarde de la Noche de las Brujas. Y todas las casas cerradas contra un viento frÃo. Y el pueblo lleno de frÃos rayos de sol. Pero de pronto el dÃa se fue. De abajo de todos los árboles salió la noche y tendió las alas. Detrás de las puertas de todas las casas hubo un correteo de patitas ratoniles, gritos ahogados parpadeo
