Steve Canyon: The Gift

The United States military is not just a fighting force. They also often serve as an army of relief workers. Eastern Europe (and considerable stretches of Western Europe too) were in need of relief, during the immediate aftermath of WWII. Col. Steve Canyon has volunteered for a mission of mercy, but like any military operation, it will be imperiled by circumstances beyond his control in “The Gift,” the Christmas episode of Steve Canyon, co-written by Ray Bradbury (adapting his own short story), which airs next Saturday morning on Decades.

Bradbury’s original story does not feature Milton Caniff’s beloved hero or even the USAF, but if you read it, you can probably start visualizing how he and series story editor Sidney Carroll re-purposed it for the Canyonverse. As the episode opens, Canyon is flying to a displaced persons camp, to shuttle refugee children from Iron Curtain countries to West Germany, where families in the Allied Sectors have volunteered to host them for the holidays.

Initially, journalist Bert Quillan is flabbergasted by the operation. Indeed, “The Gift” nicely contrasts the cynicism of the press with the idealism of dedicated service personnel like Canyon. However, Quillan starts to melt when Canyon strong-arms him into playing Santa Claus. Much to their concern, little traumatized Lisa Serenko is not interested in any of the presents under the tree at the base. To make matters worse, her host family is delayed by a traffic accident, but Canyon is determined to save Christmas for her somehow.

“The Gift” is a simple story, but it is refreshingly heartfelt. It gave Dean Fredericks an opportunity to show his Steve Canyon could be sensitive and understated as well as tall and commanding. This is some of his best work in the series, especially opposite the jaded Quillan, nicely played by Sean McClory.

Ray Bradbury Theater: Usher II

How much time do we have left to read Edgar Allan Poe before the Cancel Culture comes to censor him? Don’t think it couldn’t happen, because they’ve already declared H.P. Lovecraft off-limits. As a dissolute self-styled Southern gentleman, who lived and died in Maryland before the Civil War, it is only a matter of time before they target Poe too. Can you imagine how impoverished American literature would be without Poe? William Stendahl doesn’t need to. The futuristic reader of supernatural literature lived to see Poe forbidden by law, in Ray Bradbury’s classic short story, but he intends to give the censors a taste of Poe’s medicine in “Usher II,” a macabrely heart-warming episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater, which airs on Comet TV this Sunday.

Twenty years ago, Stendahl watched helplessly as agents of the Department of Moral Climates burned his beloved library, very much in the style of Fahrenheit 451. Since then, the wealthy bookworm contented himself with a crazy boondoggle: rebuilding the spooky old House of Usher. Of course, Investigators of Moral Climates do not take kindly to eccentricity, so as soon as he has taken possession, Mr. Garrett comes calling, with the intention of declaring Usher II morally unacceptable.

However, this time Stendahl is ready for him. He and his loyal assistant, Pikes, a former Lon Chaney-like actor, murder Garrett and replace him with an android. The phony book-burner subsequently reports to his Moral Climates associates, Stendahl has finally seen the error of his ways and invites the committee to a party to mark the end of Usher II. Of course, the festivities are inspired by the great Poe stories that none of the censors will be familiar with.

While Bradbury’s story was technically set on Mars (and included in the Martian Chronicles), the RB Theater version, directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors & The Devil’s Double) and adapted by the man himself, seems to imply an earthly setting. In all other respects, it is quite faithful to the story.

Fahrenheit 451 (2018)

If for no other reason, HBO’s remake of Fahrenheit 451 stakes a claim on history, because it gives Keir Dullea bragging rights as perhaps the only actor to appear in films based on the work of both Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. Unfortunately, this adaptation is far too concerned with being “timely” and “relevant,” thereby limiting its long-term significance. Bradbury’s anti-censorship message is perhaps more needed now than in 1953 when he wrote his classic novel, but it doesn’t come through in an urgent, principled way in Ramin Bahrani’s Fahrenheit 451 (trailer here), co-adapted with the great expat Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi, which premieres this Saturday on HBO.

Guy Montag is a fireman, just like mentor, Captain Beatty. As you should know, that means they set fire to banned books (pretty much all of them), rather than extinguishing accidental fires (come to think of it, wouldn’t they still need old-fashioned firemen in a dystopian world?). Montag has never really thought about the implications of his work, except maybe when a repressed incident from his childhood resurfaces in his memory. However, an encounter with Clarisse McClellan, one of Beatty’s reluctant sources, starts churning up vague doubts. Not long after, he secretly takes home a contraband book, Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. With McClellan’s help, the book spurs Montag to start thinking for himself, perhaps for the first time.

Montag is further haunted by the horrifying sight of an old fashioned “Eel,” who opts to self-immolate rather than abandon her books. In a significant departure from Bradbury (and Truffaut), she also happens to utter a word she really shouldn’t have, because it gives the Firemen a clue as to a game-changing book-preservation initiative the dissident underground has concocted. (As an aside, Montag’s media-anaesthetized wife Millie was cast, but later cut from the final film, which seems like a rather Orwellian act to make such a major character disappear without a trace.)

Without question, the greatest misstep of this Fahrenheit is the attempt to update the near dystopia with elements of internet culture and reality TV that will be familiar to contemporary viewers. However, this just distracts more than it enhances the films credibility. It’s a constant source of business undercutting the starkness of Bradbury’s original vision. Bahrani and Naderi also ash-can the background drumbeat of impending war, which explained why all these thought police regulations were implemented in the first place.

Still, the ever-reliable Michael Shannon is quite intriguing and compulsively watchable, playing the hard-nosed Beatty, who has his own secret print vices. In contrast, Michael B. Jordan is rather inert and inexpressive as Montag, the Fireman supposedly wrestling with his conscience and doubts. Nor is there much chemistry between him and Sofia Boutella’s McClellan. However, Dullea adds a note of integrity as the learned “Historian,” who is also involved in the book-preserving underground. That really was perfect casting.

Fahrenheit just doesn’t hold together as a persuasive cautionary vision, which is a shame, because we could use a good version about now. Quite problematically, it plays ideological favorites with the books we see burning. You will not find any conservative classics like Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in the Firemen’s bonfires, but it is hard to think of a book that would be less acceptable to the dystopian powers-that-be. In fact, it rather mixes the message when one of the underground “Book People” is introduced as “Chairman Mao” because she memorized the Little Red Book—yet you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in history who did more to censor and eradicate books than Mao Zedong. Sadly, the film never really drives home the point that we should apply the 1^st Amendment most to books and articles that we do not agree with, or else we risk adulterating our own constitutional protections. A major disappointment, Fahrenheit 451 premieres this Saturday (5/19), on HBO.

SIFF ’12: The Small Assassin (short)

Ray Bradbury is cool. His story of infant paranoia first hit the pulps in 1946, decades before Rosemary’s Baby and the subsequent raft of rip-offs. Though mostly likely not supernatural per se, it is definitely a tale of ominous dread, nicely captured in Chris Charles’ faithful short film adaptation of The Small Assassin (trailer here), which screens Monday as part of the 2012 Soho International Film Festival.

Alice Leiber had a rough delivery, culminating with a caesarian section. Exhausted, she is convinced her baby was deliberately trying to kill her. Dr. Jeffers warns her husband David she is still a bit overwrought, but assures him it will pass. Of course, her obsessive terror gets progressively worse instead. Yet, there are signs her fears just might be justified.

Again, it is important to emphasize Bradbury staked out this territory first. In fact, the smaller, more intimate scale of the Grand Master’s story is arguably more disconcerting than the satanic horror cranked out by Polanski imitators. Charles and cinematographer Kevin Moss give it an appropriately moody noir treatment that is rather stylish. Indeed, it is quite a handsome production, well appointed with rich post-war pre-Mad Men period detail.

While there might be more is-he-or-isn’t-he ambiguity in the original story, Charles still builds the suspense skillfully. Most importantly, he has a shrewd sense of what to show and what to leave unseen.

A festival circuit road warrior finally arriving in the City, Small Assassin is well crafted short-form dark thriller that effectively demonstrates the talents of Charles and his filmmaking collaborators, while highlighting the depth and diversity of Bradbury’s literary oeuvre. Recommended without reservation for genre audiences, Assassin screens before a feature this coming Monday (4/16) during the Soho Film Festival (at the Landmark Sunshine) and will be available to a wider national audience later this year through the Shorts International and IndieFlix distribution platforms.