Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 83

COURIER-POST, Sunday, May 30, 1999 3D ENTERTAINMENT. f' -tot' MolA face from the '30s doing movies from the '90s Lorna Luft in a moving tribute to mom Judy Miramax movie Rounders but assumed that the mogul decided to go with his first choice, Neve Campbell. "I thought I wasn't going to play the part," says Mol, who approached Weinstein at the party just to say there were no hard feelings. "I wasn't salty about it I didn't walk up to him with the intention of, 'I'll get this part "I just felt the need to discuss the subject. I assumed because this audition was a big part of my life, it was also a big part of his." Weinstein was so impressed by Mol's moxie that two days later he offered her the Rounders role.

She hasn't stopped working since. "The hype has a small portion to do with the dream," she muses about the swirl of publicity that has surrounded her success story. "It really is about getting roles and having the roles get better." Her mission in Hollywood is "to make the most of the opportunities I receive and to keep my eye on the ball. It's all about getting in the door. From there, you still have to prove it." wouldn't even recognize me.

It's because I don't look (glamorous) when I'm in the supermarket. My hair is never that perfect." It was Mol's beauty as well as her sense of mystery that captivated the Thirteenth Floor filmmakers. "We saw many great actresses," says producer Ute Emmerich, whose brother Roland (Independence Day) co-produced the movie. "But Gretch-en brought something special to the part. She has this old-fashioned, almost 1930s-style face.

We always looked for a classic Hitchcockian woman, and she has that quality." In the movie, Mol is a mysterious femme fatale in both present-day and 1930s Los Angeles who plays mind games with our cyber-space-travel-ing hero (Craig Bierko), a computer genius who is being framed for the murder of his partner (Armin Muell-er-Stahl). Before fuming began, Mol rented a stack of Hitchcock movies in hopes of learning how to be a cool blond from Eva Marie Saint, Kim Novak and Grace Kelly. I watched North by Northwest, Vertigo and To Catch a Thief, it dawned on me that these women don't come on as the caregivers. They just let the action unravel on them," Mol says. "They're stoic.

They had grace. The presence, confidence and strength they exude is breathtaking. There's a lot of hipness going on in those old movies." Mol has mixed feelings when she hears herself compared to the screen queens of yore. "I've been told I remind people of Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe," she says. "It's funny to me, because those two women are completely different.

It's flattering, but ultimately you are who you are." So who exactly is Gretchen Mol? She's a girl from Deep River, who grew up wanting nothing more than to be an actress. The child of a broken home, she was "always interested in performing and dancing and singing." After high school, Mol moved to New York, where she worked as an usher at the hip Angelica Film Center and as a coat-check girl at a restaurant called Michael's, which turned out to be a favorite watering hole of theatrical agents. One day, Mol took a sabbatical from her job and one of the high-powered agents missed her. "I took time off to do summer theater," she recalls. "And the day I got back, an agent said, 'Give me your picture and your In no time, Mol was cast as Girl 12 in Spike Lee's phone-sex comedy Girl 6.

She got a mere 13 seconds of screen time, but she netted somewhat meatier roles in her next half-dozen movies, including The Funeral, Donnie Brasco, The Last Time I Committed Suicide, Music from Another Room and the unreleased Welcome to Graceland. But Mol might have been just another pretty face if she hadn't spotted Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein at a Jackie Brown premiere. She'd already auditioned for a role in the BROADWAY 589-46 1 6 THEATRE PITMAN Opi7HrV SAX. PRINCE OF EGYPT (PG SHE'S ALL THAT (PG13) THIN RED LINE (R) 9PM SUN. PRINCE OF EGYPT (PG) 2PM SHE'S ALL THAT (PG13) 4PM THIN RED LINE 6PM HON.

PRINCE OF EGYPT (PG) SHE'S ALL THAT (PG 13) THIN RED LINE (R 9PM TUES thru SHE'S ALL THAT ((PG-13) 7PM THITRS. THIN RED LINE R) 9PM Premier Artists Using films and videos, Lorna Luft sings duets with her famous mother, Judy Garland, during her show. Review ever, is not included because Luft feels she could never do it justice. While Luft whose musical director-pianist Colin Freeman is also her husband is a top-notch vocalist, she, too, often sticks to a basic format that has her beginning a song with a smooth purr and closing it out in a take-no-prisoners belt. Friday, this formula worked on individual numbers, but overall, its use slightly diminished the show's effect.

Still, there was plenty to admire, from the mid-set show-stopper "Smi-lin' Through," which, thanks to the marvels of digital video technology, was done as a duet with Garland, to the tribute to Garland's three dear friends, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis which included a sizzling version of Davis' personal arrangement of "Birth Of the Blues." Also enjoyable were the anecdotes Luft sprinkled throughout the program. "Songs My Mother Taught Me" concluded with an extended musical biography of Garland, framed as a story being told by Luft to her two children. It utilized clever original lyrics and plenty of familiar songs, and perfectly capped an impressive, educational and heartfelt 90 means 'Ricky' rules star Garth Brooks. The No. 13 first-week seller since SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.

Martin's appeal encompasses "ages 9 to 90, white, black, Hispanic, male, female," says Don Ienner, president of Columbia Records. Scott Levin of leading retailer Musicland concurs: "It's every ethnic background, from young people to older people. My mother bought it. She's 64 years old." Continued from Page ID The Thirteenth Floor, in which Mol plays a cyberspace femme fatale, opened Friday. And later this year, she'll be seen in Jason Alexander's film Just Looking and Paul Schrad-er's Forever Mine opposite Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love).

If that weren't enough, Mol has inspired nearly rapturous reviews from critics. One smitten reporter described her visage as "a face like a tournament rose dipped in whipped cream." Another dubbed her eyes "emerald saucers of light." Director Abel Ferrara, who cast Mol in The Funeral, once noted she was proof that "heaven exists on Earth. I saw her for the first time and was transported. A rainbow appeared in the gutter and she was at the end of it." In her suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Mol doesn't need a rainbow for backlighting. Wearing a tight black sundress and hair that falls in perfect ringlet curls, she looks like she just stepped off the pages of a magazine.

Mol, 25, insists she isn't always so luminous. "I remember when I was on the cover of Vanity Fair, I'd go to the supermarket and walk right by the magazine racks and people First-week sales sizzle By KEN BARNES Gannett News Service Ricky Martin's vida loca just got crazier. The Puerto Rican singer's first English-language album, Ricky Martin, sold 660,800 copies the first week on the market. That's enough to ensure a debut at the top of the Billboard chart and makes the album: This year's first-week sales champion by a wide margin. The first-week record holder for a Latin artist by an even wider margin.

The top first-week seller by a pop artist. All the albums that exceeded Martin's totals are by rappers, hard-rockers or country music "A beautiful film beautiful to see and to feel. What a treasure to be graced by superb CcncShalit. THLTVDAYSHOW ussolim LOEWS CHERRY HILL RITZ TWELVENJ MPG'jllHHD ID. i ROUTE 38 I 900 MDDONFIRO BfillN SO Q-r- 31 rV- -v- INSTACil-.

CfNTtA Fl TMf AKTS Auditions Summer Stage '99 The Smash Broadway Musical Guys and Dolls Thursday, June 3, 1999 Men and Women ages 14-25 6:30 pm Sing a song from the showCold readings Glen Landing Middle School 85 Little Gloucester Hd. Blackwood, NJ Call (609) 232-1012 GLOUCESTER COUNTY SUMMER DRAMA WORKSHOP AUDITIONS FOR SUMMER SEASON Sat, May 29th Ages 14-24 Call 2564)219 For Details FORTHE PLAY OF GODSPELL By CHUCK DARROW Courier-Post Staff ATLANTIC CITY Lorna Luffs world premiere of her Judy Garland tribute show, "Songs My Mother Taught Me" Friday at the Atlantic City Hilton was a first-rate affair, guaranteed to satisfy the still-rabid following of the show business icon who died at age 47 in June 1969. Luft, 47, has had a successful singing career of her own, albeit one that has been overshadowed not only by that of her mother, but by that of her half-sister, Liza Minnelli, as well. That's too bad, because as Friday's program illustrated, Luft is a more talented vocalist than "Liza with a And she is definitely closer in tone, range and approach to a song. Now that Luft has admittedly come to grips with her mother's insurmountable legacy, perhaps she'll finally rise in the show biz realm.

Certainly "Songs My Mother Taught Me," which is chock-full of classic material, is an excellent vehicle with which to make the ascent. "Songs" which wraps up its Hilton stay tonight at 7 (tickets are $25; call 340-7200 to order) and heads out on tour, opened in a genuinely moving way, with a video clip from Garland's early-'60s TV variety show that has Garland crooning a specially written song, "Lorna," to a pre-teen Luft. The non-verbal interaction between the two establishes the depth of the love between mother and daughter, and validates all that follows as something well beyond a mere cashing in on a famous name. From there, Luft performed most of Garland's signatures (either in their entirety or as part of a medley), including "When You're Smiling," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "The Man That Got Away" and "Be A Clown." "Over the Rainbow," how- i GRAND JURY PRIZE 5, AUDIENCf AWARD CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD 1VVV SUNDANCE tllM rtSIIVAl SEASONS 1 IC-13L hjim3 I Movies to taik about Dailv at 1:15. 3:55 KIT TWELVE 1 Bargain Shows Daily Before 6PM CD'Evla ADMISSION am 1 PARKING for BUYERS Sellers Fees: $25.

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