the dead - The Screengrab

LazyVision: Week Ending Feb. 14th

We know that fans of the Screengrab want the dish on what's happening now in Hollywood (hence the Weekend Box Office Report) and what's yet to come (hence the Morning Deal Report). We know you want to be aware of what's coming to home video, hence DVD Digest. And we know that sometimes, you just want to park yourselves in front of the tube to catch a good flick, hence Set Your DVRs!.

We also know that some of you are deeply, deeply lazy individuals. And, beyond that, you're cheap, and you can't figure out anything more technologically complicated than a light switch. (We say this in the most loving way possible, for we count ourselves in your number.) You want to be able to turn on the TV -- not the computer -- and watch a good movie, anytime you want, without having to program anything -- for free. After all, wasn't that the promise of the new modern era? Wasn't that the allure of the digital age -- any movie you want, any time you want, no waiting, no fees?

Set Your DVR!: February 6 - 8, 2009

The Dead, playing on the Sundance Channel on Saturday, February 7 at 9 PM central/10 PM eastern, with a repeat at 2 AM central/3 AM eastern. This was the last movie directed by John Huston--a Christmas story, it was released in December of 1987, less than two months after his death--and he went out in glory. It represented a stretch for Huston, reaching confidently into areas that he'd never explored in his previous films, and it's also different from other movies based on the works of James Joyce, which tend to moisten and fall apart from the directors' accumulated flop sweat as they realize they have no idea how to get the material to play. Huston gave the story a deceptively simple staging, assembling a fine cast of actors--Donal McCann as the hero Gabriel, Donal Donnelly, Dan O'Herlihy, Marie Kean, Cathleen Delany, Helena Carroll, and Anjelica Huston as Gabriel's wife--and using them to demonstrate what the right voices can do for Joyce's dialogue. (The members of this ensemble are uncanny at acting as if they'd been getting together for these ritual holiday dinners for so many years that they all know each other's weak spots and points of pride.) Then, at the very end, after Anjelica Huston's big monologue, he just steps back and closes on Donal McCann reciting the closing passages of the story, as if he were handing it back to its creator. Inexplicably, this movie is not currently available on DVD, so its reappearance on Sundance after a prolonged drop off the cable radar screen counts as a rare and wondrous thing.

Incidentally, Sundance's weekend schedule also includes multiple showings of Jeff Nichols's white trash tragedy Shotgun Stories, starting on Sunday, February 8 at 5:15 AM central/6:15 AM eastern and with a couple of repeats throughout the day.

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: "The Dead"

Okay, that's enough of the goofball so-bad-it's-good stuff. We all enjoyed taking a gander at bizarre foreign intrusions, both Mexican and Wookie, into the Christmas traditions in the form of Santa Claus and The Star Wars Holiday Special, but by the time I was done with those two, I needed a nice healthy dose of holiday melancholy to remind me that the festival season can be one of ineffable sadness as well as inexpressable joy. And nobody does ineffable sadness and inexpressable joy like the Irish, so I decided to get things back on the straight and narrow with John Huston's final film as a director, The Dead. Though it's not often thought of as a traditional holiday film, its action takes place on Epiphany, which in the Catholic calendar is the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas. And, considering how important the role of epiphany was in his writing, it's no surprise that this is based on a short story (from Dubliners) by the mighty James Joyce, who, like Huston, was an Irishman through and through despite his sometimes standoffish relationship with his homeland and its culture.

The Feast of Epiphany, like Christmas, is a time for family gatherings, for coming together and for realizing how important your friends and relations are in your life. Joyce needed little reminding of the subject; he lived most of his life in the long shadow of his family, for good and for ill. Likewise, John Huston -- literally deathly ill when he made The Dead, the third movie of his highly improbable but hugely successful late-stage comeback -- knew how important family was in his life. His own career as a successful actor and director had been predicted and preplanned by his father, Walter, and The Dead featured a fantastic screenplay by his own son Tony and a tremendous performance in the lead role by his daughter-in-law Anjelica. Like the characters in the story, Huston was surrounding himself, likely for the last time, with the people who loved him, and in the shadow of the people who made him, for one last realization, one last epiphany. The result is one of the smallest and quietest, but also one of the greatest, films of his career.