1	Music Indie rocker José González reveals his diverse influences. read more...
2	Film & TV A look at JoAnna Garcia and her new television show, plus two PBS documentaries. read more...
3	Books Great new selections to stock your shelves. read more...
4	Calendar Our monthly list of premier events throughout the U.S. read more...

Latin Forum

FILM & TV

Of Hope and Humor
At only 28, telelvision veteran JoAnna Garcia is welcomed back to the small screen.

by kiki bochi

Joanna Garcia wishes she were as cool as Hope, the character she plays on Welcome to the Captain, a new sitcom that made its debut on CBS in February.
Hope is a free-spirited aspiring acupuncturist who lives among an eclectic group of the tenants in a fabled Hollywood apartment building, El Capitan, a.k.a The Captain. She catches the fancy of a fellow tenant, a Hollywood whiz kid whose filmmaking career has hit a wall. The romance, as Garcia describes it, is “awkward,” which she says helps gives the offbeat comedy show some of its charm.
“What I like about Hope is she’s nice and optimistic, and she’s cool. She’s really, really cool,” Garcia says. “She’s got some great quirks. She’s not really great at acupuncture, but she’s a great person. She’s a really appealing character.”
Although Garcia has practically grown up in front of the camera—she began her television career on Nickelodeon’s Clarissa Explains It All and Are You Afraid of the Dark—she doesn’t see herself as cool or sophisticated. Just very fortunate.
“I never take for granted that I am lucky to be living my dream,” she says.
Garcia’s resume at age 28 is already a long one, including roles on television’s Party Of Five and Freaks and Geeks, as well as the movies American Pie 2 and Not Another Teen Movie. However, she is probably best known as Cheyenne Montgomery, the oldest teenage daughter of Reba McEntire during the six-year run of Reba on the CW network. It is a time she holds very dear.
“I was in the wonderful world of ‘Reba-land’ for so many years,” Garcia says almost wistfully. One of the things she learned there was the value of an ensemble that works well together, day in and day out. She hopes that is also in the future for Welcome to the Captain, whose cast includes Jeffrey Tambor, Raquel Welch, Fran Kranz, Al Madrigal and Valerie Azlynn. The show is scheduled to run on CBS on Mondays at 8:30 p.m.
Garcia says five episodes were taped before the writer’s strike prompted a break, during which she traveled to Calgary to film a movie that will debut during the holiday season. But she was looking forward to returning to production and resuming her role as Hope. What she likes about it, she says, is that the role does not provide the “big comedic moments.” Instead, “I have to find the comedy in the character.”
Up until now, Garcia, whose father is Cuban American and mother is Spanish American, has not been cast in roles that spotlight her Hispanic heritage. Because of her blonde looks and effervescent personality, she has a tendency to get cast in “all-American girl” roles, often as a cheerleader-type. In fact, she says, she’s rarely asked much about her background during interviews.
“For me, being Latin is so much a part of who I am,” she says. “It’s part of my family life and every holiday. Spanish is my first language.”
She says she hopes that as she achieves an even greater level of success and possibly even gets to write or direct that she’ll have a more opportunity to showcase her Latin roots.
“I think it will become a bigger and bigger part of my body of work,” she says. “It’s a huge part of what I want to create with my world.”
And she confides, while her Cuban abuela is proud of her, she’s not convinced JoAnna’s a star. “She’s still waiting for me to be on a telenovela,” Garcia jokes.
Garcia’s family—her father a gynecologist in Tampa, her mother a former school teacher and her brother in training as a hand surgeon at Loyola University—help keep her grounded, she says. And so does her extensive menagerie, which includes five horses, four dogs and two chickens. “They don’t care what I do for a living,” she says. “They just care if I feed them on time.”
Garcia’s personal goals are typical of many young women brought up in loving families: “I want to be a wife and mother more than anything in the world,” she says. Her professional goal is to keep growing.
“I love what I do and I am so proud of it,” she says. “I think that’s the only way you can be happy in this business.”

TOP 6 DVDs

March 2008

Awake
(Rated: R; Thriller)
Hayden Christensen experiences the horror of waking up during surgery, altering his and his wife’s (Jessica Alba) life.
George A. Romero’s
Land of the Dead
(Rated: NA; Horror)
Romero’s classic horror tome about Zombies hun ing the small, but still socio-economically divided human population in the near future.
Goya’s Ghosts
(Rated: R; Drama)
Spain’s great painter Goya falls into the thick of the Inquisition as his muse is accused of heresy.
Love in the Time of Cholera
(Rated: R; Romance)
Javier Bardem is Florentino, the ill-fated and very long-suffering lover in this adaptation of the beloved Gabriel García Márquez novel.
No Country for Old Men
(Rated: R; Thriller)
Javier Bardem plays quite possibly the scariest killer in film when a truck surfaces with $2 million inside, bringing with it to a world of violence.
Pinochet’s Last Stand
(Rated: NA; Drama)
This HBO Film takes a look at the 1998 arrest for crimes against humanity of the infamous Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

tune in

PBS premieres two documentaries that capture the spirits of artists fueled by passion and determination.

THE FIRST, Water Flowing Together, premiering April 8 on the PBS series Independent Lens, and takes an intimate look into the life of New York City Ballet star Jock Soto. Directed by Gwendolyn Cates, the film feels like an all-access backstage pass, and shows that once the curtain goes down on the ballet, the story continues. Cates’ documentary picks up at the end of that story, at the conclusion of a long and arduous ballet career.
Soto was one of the ballet’s most celebrated male dancers during one of its most glamorous eras, the 1970s and 1980s. At the height of his career he befriended Andy Warhol, was a regular on the city’s party scene and was even named one of People magazine’s Most Beautiful People. But his road in getting there was a rough one. The half-Native American, half-Puerto Rican dancer was raised in rural Arizona, and in his community ballet, especially men in ballet, was not necessarily valued, if even accepted. However, Soto flourished in the art and eventually was accepted into New York City Ballet’s academy and he would later become a company favorite. And in fact, he was among the last dancers selected for his post by George Balanchine.
Cates plays on the tensions in Soto’s life: between his glorious dance life and his meager beginnings, between his glamorous New York social life and his tense but growing relationship with his family, and between the ballet fantasy and the reality of a dancer’s life.

Another documentary, Compañeras, premiering April 15 also on Independent Lens, peers into the lives of young artists with similar dreams as Soto’s but perhaps with a different outcome.
Mariachi is a beloved Mexican art form embraced by both sexes, yet it has been the lot of young men to be encouraged to pursue this musicians’ path. This documentary tells the stories of a group of women who came to be known as Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles, America’s first all-female mariachi group.
As children, these women dreamed of being mariachis, however they would all find roadblocks at every point, from teachers who discouraged them to play the guitarron (a large bass that rests on the stomach) for fear it would hurt their reproductive health, to even family members who withheld support. And at times, they themselves take small tenuous steps, unsure of their goals and of their place in mariachi culture. The fact that the women persevere makes this a satisfying film and a wholly inspiring one. But the documentary is also an exploration of women breaking with convention and tradition within a culture while at the same time trying to celebrate it.