Patricia Rozema

Aspiring reporter Kit Kittredge can't resist bringing home strays, whether it's Grace, an abandoned basset hound, or Will and Countee, a pair of young hobos willing to trade work for meals. Bright, inquisitive and generous, Kit is a natural born leader. But her happy childhood is abruptly interrupted when her father loses his car dealership and must leave Cincinnati to look for work. Kit and her mother Margaret are left to manage on their own, growing vegetables, selling eggs and even taking in an assortment of boarders including an itinerant magician, a vivacious dance instructor on the prowl for a husband and a zany mobile librarian. When a crime spree sweeps Cincinnati, all signs point to the local 'hobo jungle, ' where Will and Countee live with a group of their impoverished companions. Kit, who always has her antennae out for a good news story, convinces her new friends to take her to see the hobo camp for herself and writes an article that creates a sympathetic portrait of the camp's residents. But when Kit's mother and their boarders become the latest victims in a string of robberies, Kit's loyalties are tested. Will is accused of the crimes and, with all of their savings gone, the Kittredges face losing their house to foreclosure. Determined to recover the stolen money and believing Will is innocent, Kit recruits her friends Ruthie and Stirling to help her track down the real culprit. Together they uncover a plot that goes far beyond Cincinnati!… (altro)

Felicity An American Girl Adventure - In Colonial America, shortly before the American Revolution, a young girl tries to rescue a horse from an abusive owner.
Samantha An American Girl Holiday - Set in 1904, "American Girls" revolves around Samantha as she moves in with her grandmother and learns how to become a proper Victorian young lady.
Kit Kittredge An American Girl - Set in Cincinnati at the height of the Great Depression, Kit Kittredge, a resourceful young girl, helps her mother run a boardinghouse after her father loses his job.
Molly - Molly is a girl living in the year 1943 and WWII has brought many changes to Molly's life. An English girl comes to live with Molly's family to escape the bombings. They slowly become good friends.… (altro)

Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors and I love many of the adaptations: I adore the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility, the Gweneth Paltrow Emma and the 2007 Northanger Abbey with Geraldine James and Michael Judd in lead roles. This adaptation? Not so much.

Admittedly Mansfield Park is my least favorite of Austen's novels--I'm not alone in that--it's atypical in several ways. Ironically though, I found I couldn't forgive this because it was so unfaithful to the original. Maybe I would have liked it more had I never read the book? But the film tries to fix the rather meek and prim Fanny Price by injecting a lot of the young Jane Austen in her--making her have ambitions to write and giving her lines from letters and juvenalia. I just couldn't reconcile this witty and spirited version of Fanny with the original. And strangely, that rather reduced the point and courage of her sticking to her principles. (And the film takes another liberty in that regard that made me squirm.)… (altro)