A Little Princess (1995)
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
When her father enlists to fight for the British in WWI, young Sara Crewe goes to New York to attend the same boarding school her late mother attended. She soon clashes with the severe headmistress, Miss Minchin, who attempts to stifle Sara's creativity and sense of self-worth.
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What critics compared A Little Princess to
Instead a slithering snake and portentous music (composer Patrick Doyle, "A Little Princess," working with John Williams's themes) are our entry into Harry's nightmare, which Newell breaks us out of with a bit of aural trickery right out of Hitchcock's "39 Steps."
Directors like John Boorman, who made the exuberant, superbly mystical “Excalibur,” or Alfonso Cuarón, whose “A Little Princess” is one of the greatest adaptations of a children’s book ever made, have already proven it.
Yet it's probably just as well that the third movie, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," due out in 2004, will have a new director, Alfonso Cuaron ("A Little Princess," "Y Tu Mama Tambien").
Cuarón, who directed the modern children's classic A Little Princess (1995) and the horny teen classic Y Tu MamáTambién (2001), won't start from high above the sets and find his way to the characters.
"Chamber of Secrets" seems even more an impersonal studio project than the first--a trend that perhaps Alfonso Cuaron ("A Little Princess," "Y Tu Mama Tambien"), the next installment's gifted director, can buck, if Warner Bros. lets him.
With the franchise off to such a promising start, it will be fascinating to see what happens when Alfonso Cuaron ("A Little Princess," "Y Tu Mama Tambien") takes over the directing chores for Columbus on "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," scheduled for release in 2004.
Which still leaves a lot of airspace available for when ''A Little Princess'' director Alfonso Cuarón -- a real master of jewel-like enchantment -- takes over the magic in ''Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.''
The choice of Cuarón was as inspired as it was logical in films as varied as 1995s A Little Princess (a reinvention of the classic childrens story about an orphan at a boarding school who finds solace in her imagination) and 2001s Y tu mamá también (a muy caliente road picture about two teenage boys and their romp with an older woman), his main themes have been the death of innocence and sexual awakening.
The Mexican director (whose credits range from the luminous children's film "A Little Princess" to the erotic road movie "Y Tu Mama También") is more willing than Chris Columbus , who directed the first two movies with a slavish devotion to J.K. Rowling 's text, to pare away the extraneous bits of the book -- c'mon, how many Quidditch matches do we really need?
Nearly ten years past the commanding success of Cuarón's rather drastic re-conceiving of the material, it's hard to remember how bold this was at the time: the director of a wildly well-received travelogue about sex and politics in Mexico (though it's a matter of record that the reason he got the job was his sparkling A Little Princess ) being given the keys to the biggest moneymaking machine in the world, what with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy having wrapped up the prior year, and instead of copying the model of his predecessor, pulling at damn near everything and starting from scratch with all of it.
Although the director's critically acclaimed feature A Little Princess was a box office flop for Warner Bros. in 1995, the studio was so impressed with his work it did all it could to garner audience support, including re-releasing the film.
And many more forgot that Cuaron also directed the wonderful fairy tale A Little Princess back in 1995.
Pointedly absent in his latest film, kids have played a central role in Cuarn's desultory oeuvre -- from the prepubescent expressionism of A Little Princess and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to the ardent adolescent pangs of Great Expectations and Y Tu Mam Tambin, the burgeoning consciousness of youth is his constant theme.
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Cuarón, whose interests as a filmmaker seem to know no boundaries — his previous credits include Y Tu Mamá También, the lyrical children’s picture A Little Princess and the best of the Harry Potter movies — has made that rarest of cinematic hybrids: a brilliant genre entertainment that channels the spirit of a 1960s protest picture (the influence of the British faux-documentarian Peter Watkins is keenly felt); a political thriller in which the politics are never permitted to overwhelm the narrative; and a human drama that is about nothing less than the survival of the species.
It’s directed by Alfonso Cuaron, who exhibited both his skill and his versatility with “A Little Princess” and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” as well as “Y tu mam< tambiJn.”
From 1995's A Little Princess to 2001's Y Tu Mamà También to 2004's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and now this fierce dystopian adventure, the Mexican filmmaker continues to grow creatively and expand his technical virtuosity.
Cuaron, with such widely diverse films as "A Little Princess" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien" behind him, demonstrates once again that no genre is beyond his mastery.
Lubezki’s credits include “The New World” and “Sleepy Hollow,” as well as several of Cuarón’s pictures (including the unfairly overlooked “Great Expectations” and the wondrous “A Little Princess”).
After “A Little Princess” (1995) and the best of the Hogwarts films, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004), he made “ Children of Men ” (2006), which shudders with horror at the prospect of a childless world.
Alfonso Cuarón—whose films include “Gravity,” “ Y Tu Mamá También,” “Children of Men,” “A Little Princess” and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” and who was the first Mexican to win a Best Director Oscar—does not actually appear in the sumptuous “Roma.”
The tragic existence of children caught up in the wake of decisions made by adults is apparent in both Roma and A Little Princess.
Alfonso Cuarón, whose films range from “A Little Princess” and “Y Tu Mamá También” to “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and “Gravity,” is probably the most prodigiously versatile film artist working today.
Set at the end of 1970, this is a highly aestheticized labour of love for the almost impossibly eclectic writer-director, who made the Brit-styled A Little Princess before his Spanish-language breakthrough, Y Tu Mamá También.
Considering that Cuarón has already made movies as wonderful and varied as A Little Princess, Children of Men, Gravity, and Y Tu Mamá También, that only makes Roma all the more impressive.
As examples of fantasy filmmaking, as opposed to relics of worship, the "Harry Potter" movies do not, except in snatches, have the lyrical wonderfulness and visionary power that I associate with the finest examples of childhood imaginings on film – the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki (" Spirited Away "), for example, or "The Black Stallion" or "The Red Balloon" or Alfonso Cuarón 's "A Little Princess."
Bullock's reluctant astronaut has more in common with Harry Potter — the director made Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban, the best film in that series — and little Sara Crewe, heroine of A Little Princess (1995), than it might seem on the surface.
And while Cuarón's eye may be looking for an authenticity that would make Nasa wonder how he sneaked cameras on to its satellites, his heart clearly yearns for the fantastical, wedded to the wild dreams of one who watched the moon landings on live TV as a kid and then grew up to direct the very best Harry Potter movie via the timeless enchantment of A Little Princess.
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A sexually explicit comedy may come as a shock to audiences who know Cuarón from his two American movies, "A Little Princess" and "Great Expectations."
Nothing in director Alfonso Cuarón's earlier work, including A Little Princess (1995) and Great Expectations (1998), would lead us to believe that he had such a sexy, playful, vivacious film in him.
Then he went to America and made A Little Princess , a kids' movie based on a well-liked work of children's literature.
Alfonso moved to New York and made two features for Hollywood -- A Little Princess and Great Expectations -- but continued to foster the idea of making another film in Mexico.
Y Tu Mamá También is a return to roots by the Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón, who came to America in the '90s to direct such neo-classical eye candy as A Little Princess and Great Expectations.
Just like his characters, writer-director Alfonso Cuarón -- who has played the Hollywood game in the past, helming remakes of "A Little Princess" and "Great Expectations" -- takes the road less traveled.
Richard LaGravenese, the screenplay writer of The Fisher King , A Little Princess , The Bridges of Madison County , and The Horse Whisperer , is the director of Freedom Writers.
Writer-director Richard LaGravenese boasts a rather eclectic résumé of writing credits, which include "The Fisher King" (for which he was Oscar-nominated), "The Ref," "A Little Princess," and "The Mirror Has Two Faces."