Kate was seen taking daughter Mia Honey for a bike ride along the Hudson River Parkway in New York City yesterday, April 11:
GALLERY LINKS:
• Candids: Riding a bike with Mia – April 11, 2011
2011 Apr 12
Candids: Kate takes Mia on a bike ride in NYC
Last night, the five-part mini series, Mildred Pierce came to quite a disastrous end. In parts four and five, nine years have passed and Mildred Pierce (Kate Winslet) continues to break her back for her ungrateful daughter, Veda Pierce (Evan Rachel Wood) even after a heated argument leads to Mildred kicking Veda out of the house. As fulfilling as it was to watch Veda being thrown out after ripping her mother to shreds yet again, that satisfaction only lasted for a moment. Mildred’s constant need to keep her adult daughter happy consumes her life until it can’t anymore.
With all of the cooking showcased in parts one through three, the early years resembled visuals similar to Julie & Julia. Though parts four and five focused more on the dramatic elements that viewers were anticipating from the very beginning. It was so odd and in a way unsettling to watch Kate Winslet in a role that pushes her to be so inferior. For a woman managing her own restaurant and bakery, Mildred sure lacks leadership strengths with her own flesh and blood.“What are you insinuating, that my daughter is a snake?”
“It’s much worse.”As for Evan Rachel Wood, there were glimpses in past roles that she has played of a selfish little girl. Wood was able to let it all out as Veda, the lying, stealing, and manipulative young woman with nothing going for outside of her opera career. Wood was much more dramatic than some viewers may have anticipated, but it definitely works for this character. As the man whom Mildred ran into said, Veda is a wonderful singer but not a wonderful girl. Wood plays the part perfectly. Clearly, Veda is not just an ungrateful daughter but the world’s most awful human being. Her inability to be a good person proves to be the cause for her inability to be a success outside of her singing career. By the way, if you want to hear Evan Rachel Wood singing some more, pick up the Across The Universe soundtrack. Also, 1940s wardrobe definitely agrees with Wood.
Continue reading “Mildred Pierce” miniseries review: Parts Four & Five
Waves crash on the beach as jaunty music plays. Mildred (Kate Winslet) is opening another restaurant — in Laguna Beach. It’ll be her third, after Glendale and Beverly Hills. She’s doing so well Wally (James LeGros) tells her she’ll have to incorporate.
In two parts four and five, Mildred’s daughter Veda is played by Evan Rachel Wood, bearing the same deliberately awful faux elite accent as her predecessor — it’s in the book that way, a put-on accent that’s gratingly false. Her piano teacher dies, and she gets an audition with a fancy Italian conductor, who thinks little of her playing. Again with the weeping.
This time, though, she has a candid tantrum, screaming at her mother about how she hasn’t got any talent, she’s no good, she’s nothing more than a Glendale wunderkind. Mildred’s efforts at reassurance — awkward, faithful, hopeful — only make Veda angrier. There is a clash of world views: Mildred believes that hard work and perseverance will be rewarded; Veda believes in breeding, in native gifts, and is convinced she has neither.
Over and over, we see Mildred refracted through glass, split in two by a beveled edge, behind a reflection in a car window. Earlier it seemed like a metaphor for being trapped; could it also imply a fragility in her situation — is she living in a glass house?
Let’s take a moment to admire the fine vintage dress Kate Winslet wears in part four, white with red details (above). Vintage or vintage replica, it’s pretty terrific. I hope they let her keep it. Better yet: I hope they packed it up and are sending it to me. I’ll take it.
Continue reading “Mildred Pierce” recap, Parts 4 & 5: The mess of Mildred, Monty and Veda
2011 Apr 11
Download “Mildred Pierce” Parts 4 and 5
Good morning, my lovelies!
Here are the links for downloading the last two parts of Mildred Pierce:
Enjoy and don’t forget to share your thoughts in this post’s comments about the whole series! ;)
Sony Pictures Classics have acquired the North American distribution rights to Carnage, formally known as God of Carnage.
Directed by Roman Polanski (The Ghost), Carnage stars Jodie Foster (Panic Room), John C. Reilly (Cyrus), Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road) and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds).
Based on Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning play, Carnage tells the story of two sets of parents who decide to have a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a schoolyard brawl.
Carnage will be released later this year.
Source: Hey U Guys.co.uk
Just because Evan Rachel Wood goes full frontal in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, don’t start expecting to see some hot raunchy sex scenes to go along with it.
Why not?! Was showing off her naughty bits her limit?
Not exactly…
The entire series is seen through the eyes of Mildred, played by Kate Winslet, you see. So any of the assumed sexual relations between’s Wood’s character (Mildred’s opera singer daughter Veda) and her mom’s lover, Monty (played by Guy Pearce), have been left to our imaginations. Yes, Mildred’s lover has an affair with her own daughter.
“All you see is what she sees,” Mildred director Todd Haynes recently told me from New York City (The final two installments of the miniseries debut on Sunday). “So we don’t have access to those private sides of Veda and Monty.” Though we do see Winslet and Pearce going at it. “Mildred’s sexual life with Monty is startingly frank, complex and modern for what we think sexual lives for women might have been like during those years,” Haynes said.
Not that the full-frontal scene in which Veda walks across a room butt naked in front of her mother after being caught with Monty in bed together isn’t stirring enough. “I think it’s the most violent thing that occurs between Mildred and her daughter,” Haynes said.
This Depression-era story isn’t supposed to be filled with rainbows and unicorns. In one scene, Veda cuts Mildred down with a verbal assault that seethes with pure evil. “Evan takes it to the heights that it has to go to, which are unredeemable,” Haynes said. He added, “We’ve all been there. We’ve all just had to, like, spit it back out in our parents’ faces. When you doubt yourself, that’s the first person you go to loathe.”
Source: E! Online
2011 Apr 08
Video: Inside “Mildred Pierce” Part 3
Here’s the HBO video with an interview with Mildred Pierce writer/director Todd Haynes talking about the miniseries’ Part 3:
