Perhaps this was already mentioned, but it appears "The Halloween Tree" will be the next Ray Bradbury work to get a big-screen adaption, the first since the remake of Fahrenheit 451 a couple years back for the "little" screen.
I've never been thrilled with many of the adaption attempts of Bradbury's works, but that could just be me. He is an artist with words that evoke images, thoughts and emotions, which can be very difficult to translate to the screen, a very different medium. If I had to pick one, I'd go with "Something Wicked This Way Comes" from the early 80s, IIRC. The sinister elements were delivered powerfully by Jonathan Pryce playing the evil and diabolical magician. I believe Ray said it might have been the most satisfying adaption of his works.
Ray and films just popped into my mind when in another post I referenced "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms," a movie adapted from his story "The Foghorn." It was a decent adaption too.
MikeD, my personal favorite of all of the screen adaptations of Ray Bradbury's work remains the big screen version of FAHRENHEIT 451, directed by Francois Truffaut and starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie. While not perfect (it omitted the mechanical hound, for example), it stuck reasonably close to Ray's novel and was extremely well made. The ending scene in the snowfall, with the Book People reciting their various other book "selves", was absolutely wonderful. And Bernard Herrmann's haunting score was one of his finest.
Speaking of FAHRENHEIT 451, the link below will take you to an excellent interview with Ray Bradbury about the novel, interspersed with some clips from the Truffaut film. Since Ray mentions he had been with his agent Don Congdon for the same 53 years he had been married, that comment would place the date of the interview as the year 2000.
Richard, thanks for the link. I'll give it a listen/view this evening as I definitely haven't seen it yet. One of my favorite works by Ray. I mentioned Fahrenheit 451 above as the most recent film adaption. I didn't enjoy that remake; the original was better. Too bad. The material is incredibly relevant today. There are days when I feel like we're living parts of 'Fahrenheit 451', 'Animal Farm', and most certainly '1984'.
I did check it out. Thanks for forwarding. Some interesting material and perspective. BTW For whatever reason, the link you provided took me to a generic YouTube page, so I did a search and came up with the one below. Seems to fit, including the mention of his agent. Providing in case any others here are searching for it.
...and when I clicked on your link this time, it did work! I wonder if it's because I initially copied it? Either way, both links work. Ray would probably says it's our fault for depending too much on technology. :-)
Since this thread included a link above to an interview with Ray Bradbury about the Truffaut film version of FAHRENHEIT 451, I thought it would be an appropriate place to post the link below. It takes you to an article by Martin Scorsese (my favorite living director) about the films of Francois Truffaut. It also includes a brief mention of the influence of Truffaut's film of FAHRENHEIT 451 on Scorsese's own work:
