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It won’t be easy. Despite Earl’s good-natured appeals (along with an occasional spectacular display of God’s awesome powers), Grace is nigh on incorrigible. And while each episode features a crime of some sort, ranging from murder and child abduction to the theft of a million-dollar statue of a steer, creator-writer Nancy Miller (who was an executive producer for The Closer, ! another TNT series with a strong female lead) focuses much mor! e on Gra ce’s ongoing struggle to accept Earl’s presence ("Why me?" she asks. "I don’t know," comes the reply) and do something to clean up her life. The show’s bluesy, authentic music (including Everlast’s title tune), dry sense of humor, and sexy tone (Hunter, looking very buff, is nearly nude on numerous occasions) are all positive elements; so’s the supporting cast, especially Rippy and Laura San Giacomo (as a police examiner who’s Grace’s best pal). But Saving Grace is all about Holly Hunter, and by and large that’s a very good thing. Bonus features include audio commentary by Miller and others on two episodes and several short featurettes. --Sam GrahamALWAYS - DVD MovieConsidered by many to represent a low point in Steven Spielberg's career, 1990's Always did suggest something of a temporary drift in the director's sensibility. A remake of the classic Spencer Tracy film A Guy Named Joe, Always stars Richard Dreyfuss as a! Forest Service pilot who takes great risks with his own life to douse wildfires from a plane. After promising his frightened fiancée (Holly Hunter) to keep his feet on the ground and go into teaching, Dreyfuss's character is killed during one last flight. But his spirit wanders restlessly, hopelessly attached to and possessive of Hunter, who can't see or hear him. Then the real conflict begins: a trainee pilot (Brad Johnson), a likable doofus, begins wooing a not-unappreciative Hunter--and it becomes Dreyfuss's heavenly mandate to accept, and even assist in, their budding romance. The trouble with the film is a certain airlessness, a hyper-inventiveness in every scene and sequence that screams of Spielberg's self-education in Hollywood classicism. Unlike the masters he is constantly quoting and emulating in Always, he forgets to back off and let the movie breathe on its own sometimes, which would better serve his clockwork orchestration of suspense and c! omedy elsewhere. Still, there are lovely passages in this fil! m, such as the unforgettable look on Dreyfuss's face a half-second before fate claims him. John Goodman contributes good supporting work, and Audrey Hepburn makes her final screen appearance as an angel. --Tom KeoghCarnelle isn't happy with her life, so in order to improve herself she enters a local beauty contest, trying to emulate her cousin Elain's win many years ago. Few think she can win, even her closest friends and relatives (e.g. slightly mad cousin Delmount) think she's heading for a big disappointment, but Carnelle is ever hopeful, seeing a win as a ticket to escape her small town in Mississippi.Considered by many to represent a low point in Steven Spielberg's career, 1990's Always did suggest something of a temporary drift in the director's sensibility. A remake of the classic Spencer Tracy film A Guy Named Joe, Always stars Richard Dreyfuss as a Forest Service pilot who takes great risks with his own life to douse wildfires from a plan! e. After promising his frightened fiancée (Holly Hunter) to keep his feet on the ground and go into teaching, Dreyfuss's character is killed during one last flight. But his spirit wanders restlessly, hopelessly attached to and possessive of Hunter, who can't see or hear him. Then the real conflict begins: a trainee pilot (Brad Johnson), a likable doofus, begins wooing a not-unappreciative Hunter--and it becomes Dreyfuss's heavenly mandate to accept, and even assist in, their budding romance. The trouble with the film is a certain airlessness, a hyper-inventiveness in every scene and sequence that screams of Spielberg's self-education in Hollywood classicism. Unlike the masters he is constantly quoting and emulating in Always, he forgets to back off and let the movie breathe on its own sometimes, which would better serve his clockwork orchestration of suspense and comedy elsewhere. Still, there are lovely passages in this film, such as the unforgettable lo! ok on Dreyfuss's face a half-second before fate claims him. J! ohn Good man contributes good supporting work, and Audrey Hepburn makes her final screen appearance as an angel. --Tom KeoghHOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS - DVD MovieHolly Hunter plays a Chicago-based single mom who--on the day before Thanksgiving--loses her job and is informed by her daughter of the latter's intention to surrender her virginity while on a weekend-long affair. If that's not enough, Hunter's character then has to fly to Baltimore to join her fractious family for another difficult Thanksgiving. Robert Downey Jr. is terrifically charming as her prankish, gay brother, and Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning show plenty of comic resilience during the predictably interesting Thanksgiving dinner scene. The script by W.D. Richter (Brubaker) avoids the usual clichés in family dramas--the deepest, darkest secret revealed here involves the painfully sweet revelation of a 40-year-old crush. Jodie Foster, directing her second feature, focuses instead on the inevitable soften! ing of old grudges and disappointments with time. This is a wise as well as wonderfully fun movie. --Tom Keogh Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter lead an all-star cast in this critically acclaimed tale of life, love and chance. Jilted by her boyfriend, Renata (Hunter), the oldest daughter of a close-knit Italian-American family, falls in love with Sam (Dreyfuss), an abrasive and forcefully charming businessman. But neither her spirited sister (Laura San Giacomo), her down-to-earth father (Danny Aiello), or her supportive mother (Gena Rowlands) can tolerate Sam's often obnoxious intrusion into their family circle. Aggressive and overwhelmingly generous, Sam proceeds - with only the best intentions - to disrupt and nearly demolish Renata's family. Love, humor and forgiveness go once more around as the Bellas try to balance Renata's happiness with their family's survival in this funny and often touching story, directed by Lasse Hallstrom.SAVING GRACE:SEASON 3 THE FINAL S! EASO - DVD MovieNot much seems to have changed as Saving G! race begins its third and final season. Star (and executive producer) Holly Hunter's Grace Hanadarko is still the tough-talking, hard-drinking, truth-abusing, rule-defying Oklahoma City police detective we've come to know; in fact, in the very first episode, she and her boyfriend, fellow cop Ham Dewey (Kenny Johnson), are caught on film committing a drunken and very public prank. But this time there's more to it. Ever since the pilot episode, Grace has received regular if unpredictable visitations from a folksy, avuncular "last chance angel" named Earl (Leon Rippy), who has offered her a chance at redemption, telling her that "God is using you for great things." And now, at last, Grace somehow realizes that her time is coming. Not that she's exactly serene about it; on the contrary, she remains defiant and skeptical. But she also has a growing sense of the inevitable, and these 19 episodes (about half again as many as the previous seasons) gradually lead her, and us, to a resol! ution that's neither pat nor pretty.
Along the way, Grace and her colleagues, who by now have developed an appealingly casual but caring camaraderie, deal with various quotidian police matters, with stand-alone stories involving the specter of domestic terrorism (an especially touchy subject in OKC, still reeling from the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in which Grace's own sister was killed), an AA-like program for alcoholics, Hasidic Jews and kosher beef, Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality, ranchers battling over water, and so on. But it's Grace's personal journey that predominates. Over the course of the season, she tries to help a troubled young woman who also has a relationship with Earl, thinking this might be what God has in store for her; she also confronts a sinister stranger named Hut Flanders (Gordon MacDonald, Hunter's real-life boyfriend), who, like Earl, is not of this world. Of course, Grace isn't someone who channels her emotions! very positively. And by the final few episodes, she's deep in! to a dow nward spiral, self-inflicted and otherwise, that makes her earlier self look tame: she's involved in a fatal car accident; her house is burned down; she smokes crack, turns tricks, and rejects friends and loved ones alike. It's hard to believe that all this turmoil is part of "great things," but if there's one thing series creator Nancy Miller has emphasized throughout Saving Grace's run, it's that God works in mysterious ways. --Sam Graham
