“Mirror Mirror.”
Those three films collected the big cinematic prizes at the annual awards that the Costume Designers Guild hands out for the best in costuming on the big screen and small.
“Downton Abbey”? Naturally. “Anna Karenina”? Yeah, nobody saw that coming. “Mirror Mirror” beat bigger hits in its category.
And “Skyfall” won the best contemporary film prize. Nice.
A little Danish, a little Italian, a little Pierce Brosnan dealing with nicer people than him — including a cute cancer survivor mother of the bride — at his son’s wedding in Italy. Doesn’t sound like a Susanne Bier (“Ina Better World,” “Things We Lost in the Fire,” “After the Wedding”). But it is.
It takes forever to get going, and lollygags along even after that.
As a businessman scrambling to find a way to get his son’s Federal prison sentence cut, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has to play fear, tough love, pity and panic – and he’s a bit in over his head.
But that’s the point of “Snitch,” a straight-no chaser thriller “inspired by a true story.” The pacing is off, too many scenes lack dramatic punch and play like filler. But Johnson is pretty good at being a guy in over his head, sharing scenes with flinty pros like Susan Sarandon, Benjamin Bratt and Barry Pepper.
MIAMI – Miriam Colon has one of those faces you know, even if you’ve never caught her name in the credits. She’s been in films and on TV since the mid-50s – from “Have Gun – Will Travel” to “Law & Order,” “Scarface” to “Lone Star.”
Now, at 76, native of Ponce, Puerto Rico, has the highest profile role of her life. She has the title role in “Bless Me, Ultima,” the aunt, mentor and curandera (healer/medicine woman) to a small Mexican American boy growing up in the New Mexico of the 1940s.
“She is a Latina of great spiritual and moral authority,” Colon says of the character. “She has this great endurance, the capacity to survive life’s tests. To find such a woman is a nice surprise, after all my years in movies. You don’t see these traits emphasized in most characters you’re offered. A role like this is a treasure.”
“Ultima,” based on the controversial Chicano novel by Rudolfo Anaya, is a woman who comes to live with her extended family in a farm village that has sent many of its sons to fight in World War II.
Her mystical ways are tolerated by the elders, but she has a magical influence on young Antonio (Luke Ganalon), as his adult self remembers and narrates in the film. The powers that be fear her.
“She is a threat because she is strong, unafraid, and does not compromise her beliefs. Ignorance is her real enemy. And fear. What they don’t understand frightens people.”
Colon sees that as the most controversial element of Anaya’s 1972 novel, praised as a book “with warmth and feeling” (Library Journal), but which is often challenged in school curricula and libraries because of its adult content and language. Colon has played her share of aunts and grandmothers in the movies and on TV. She’s even played a curandera before (in 2007’s “The Cry”). She dug into her own past to figure out how to play a no-nonsense woman who seems to have magic at her disposal, when the chips are down.
“The more I looked into her, the more I saw of my mother – may she rest in peace. Like Ultima, she was one of those courageous women who didn’t make speeches, a survivor, a woman of the Earth, a worker. She, like Ultima, was a simple woman with high hopes and high standards for her children.”
Colon hopes there are yet a few more roles with as much to offer as Ultima in her future.
“The two women I have played in my life who have given me a special thrill was the mother in ‘Scarface’ – THERE was a warrior – and Ultima. We need more examples of characters like Ultima, women of strength and empathy. A character like her shows the greatness and the potential of people, the strength of women standing up for themselves. It is a scandal that there aren’t more of them.”
It has looked as though things were over for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson several times over the years. He’d have a run as action hero, string together some flops, seem on the way to Van Damme Land. You start to see a big stack of fresh WWE credits on his resume when that happens. Then bam, “The Game Plan” comes along, or a supporting part in “Fast/Furious -XXII” and he’s back as a leading man. For a bit. “Snitch” has him playing a rough-trade dad who resolves to do undercover informant work to lessen his drug-connected son’s sentence from the Feds. He’s got Susan Sarandon, Benjamin Bratt and Barry Pepper in supporting roles, but a stunt-man turned director with middling credits. And it’s a February movie — low expectations. But there’s always hope when The Rock is in the house. Someday, he’ll score another film as amusing, two-fisted and fun as “The Rundown.”
Toss another 513 screens into the control of Regal Cinemas. One of the movie exhibition biz’s Big Two (the other is the Chinese owned AMC Cinemas), Regal bought out Hollywood, which runs theaters all over the country, a few in Florida (Port Orange, Jacksonville, Estero).
Regal paid $191 million for the heavily-indebted Hollywood Theaters, according to Deadline.com
Here’s the red band trailer to “Trance,” with James McAvcoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel.
A painting theft goes wrong. Betrayals, torture, threats and hynotism play into the plot.
A little disturbing? I’d say so.
It goes into limited release April 5.
“Bless Me, Ultima,” the film based on Rudolfo Anaya’s landmark Chicano novel, is a meticulously observed time capsule, a vivid recreation of a self-contained world of Mexican-Americans in 1944 New Mexico.
It’s a coming of age picture with a touch of magical realism, about a boy whose family witch comes to stay with them. It’s an engaging yarn, set in a place, a time and among a people rarely represented on the big screen. But “Ultima” is a poetic novel that becomes prosaic on the screen.
Last night’s Writer’s Guild Awards smelled like Oscar predictions, as “Argo” took another pre-Oscar honor, and “Zero Dark Thirty” earned the one honor it’s got a shot at winning Oscar night.
“Searching for Sugar Man” collected the best written documentary prize.
“Breaking Bad, “Hatfields & McCoys” “Mad Men,” and “Girls” took TV honors.
So at 7 tonight, at the Wayne Densch Performing Arts Center in Sanford, the finalists, the best of the best short films at the Love Your Shorts Film Festival, will be screened for festival goers AND a panel of judges. I’ll be there. Tivo your Amazing Race/Downton Abbey and come see some great short films.
