Cana Alberona Reviews

Now let’s move to the world of ‘Fairy Tail’ anime series. Here we have one of the sexiest mage, Cana Alberona. She is a curvy woman with a nice rack upstairs. She has rounded, curvy and firm hips. Her hair reaches up to the mid-portion of her back. She mostly wears revealing outfits which nicely shows-off her assets. Cana is an S-class mage and is known to frequently drink but never get drunk. She is a skilled mage and often uses kinky moves in her battle.

Other than this version, the only other version I have seen of the beautiful book is the 1949 version with June Allyson, Margaret O'Brien and Mary Astor. While that version was very good, I think I marginally prefer this version. It is a little too slow at the beginning, but other than that I had no problems with this version of Little Women.

The film looks wonderful, the scenery is lush, the costumes are lovingly rendered and the cinematography is fabulous. Plus I loved The Laurence mansion here, so imposing yet beautiful. The music score is a real jewel, really poignant and soothing, and the screenplay is honest, funny and touching. In terms of adapting, the film does a very good job, all the crucial elements of the beautiful story are there and have the same effect here than they do in the book. The 1949 film may be a little more nostalgic and perhaps more cosy too, but this version is truer to the book.

The direction is adroit as well, and I loved the acting. Christian Bale is dashing and handsome as Laurie, and Trini Alvarado is a beautiful Meg. Claire Danes is a touching and compassionate Beth, while Kirsten Dunst is great as young Amy, likewise with Samantha Mathis as her older self. Mary Wickes in one of her last roles before she died, was suitably fussy and formidable as Aunty March, and John Neville gave a very good performance as Mr Laurence. Two performances in particular stood out though. One was Winona Ryder, who is a revelation as Jo, she is tomboyish yet ambitious, headstrong and well-meaning and I felt Ryder was better than Allyson at showing these traits to Jo's character. The other is Susan Sarandon, whose Marmee is less sincere yet more maternal. I also felt Gabriel Byrne was an improvement as Mr Bhaer- Rossano Brazzi was charming yet too Italian for my tastes. Byrne was an initially curious casting choice but he does very well.

Overall, I loved this adaptation, and as a film it is pretty much stunning. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Confession: I have never read Little Women. Despite this, the story is one that is so familiar and become such a collected part of the fabric of Americana that I know the story’s general beats, character types, and basic plot. After all, there’s been three major film adaptations, several done on television, and it made a memorable appearance as a topic of discussion in an episode of Friends.

 

I generally like the warmth, love, and proto-feminist aura that the story provides. Here’s a safe haven for young girls where their intellectual curiosity is not only accounted for but strongly encourage. One where girls band together to make it through life’s various difficulties and grow into the best versions of themselves. Its enduring popularity makes perfect sense to me.

 

So, here’s 1994’s beloved adaptation with a stellar cast, more emphasis placed on the feminist undertones, and a general vibe of self-esteem, love, support, and nurturing. The warmth found in this movie is intoxicating. It’s a vision of American possibility and hopeful optimism that I want to believe in. It’s also just one hell of a movie.

 

Walking into this one would expect a soft-edged children’s film made from Louisa May Alcott’s indelible novel of the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Director Gillian Armstrong is instead more preoccupied with crafting the story in as natural a manner as possible. She succeeds from the first frame to the last. When we first visit the March family, huddled together around a modest Christmas Eve celebration during the Civil War, they feel like a real familial unit complete with sibling’s alternating between squabbling and supporting each other and a matron trying to keep it all afloat.

 

There’s a pleasing, nurturing vibe to this home, and that nostalgic aura projects throughout the rest of the film. Armstrong has managed to make a well-known, well-worn story feel vibrantly alive first through setting an appropriate tone for the material, then by assembling a strong group of actresses for the various parts. It starts with Susan Sarandon as Marmee, who strikes that delicate balance between authority figure and nurturer. It extends to relatively few male figures that appear throughout, such as Christian Bale and Eric Stoltz as the neighbor boy and his tutor, and Gabriel Bryne as a German professor.  

 

Yet the real success of the film is on the ensemble of actresses in the parts of the sisters. Kirsten Dunst gives another preternaturally strong and lived-in performance as the young Amy, while Samantha Mathis’ older Amy feels like the logical outgrowth of Dunst’s, Claire Danes plays the doomed Beth with underlining serenity that makes her exit from the narrative all the tougher to watch. While Trini Alvarado’s Meg is a glimpse of a young actress giving the type of performance that should’ve led to bigger, better roles. It somehow didn’t, but Alvarado’s work matches that of Winona Ryder’s Jo, and that’s no small feat.

 

Ryder did several more corset/costume dramas during her 90s heyday than you probably remember, and her Jo is one of the strongest performances from that string of films. She’s headstrong, passionate, and smart. She wants to be more than whatever preconceived notions of femininity the era offers her, and she’s forcible enough to walk that path happily. After the more duplicitous and unnervingly still work in The Age of Innocence, Ryder went for the complete opposite here in a dynamic display of her range. She deserved that Best Actress nomination.

 

If only Little Women hadn’t forced her into a “happy ending” that feels like a concession to social mores of the time. Jo’s engagement to the German professor feels like an after-thought, as I’m sure it probably does in the book, when it’s clear that she would’ve been perfectly happy to go about her life single, childless, and writing up a storm. At least Ryder and Byrne make several small moments leading up the climatic ending feel like a connection of the mind and hearts, as if their relationship will be built upon something more than station, social maneuvering, or finances.

 

It’s this home stretch of Little Women that gets a bit wonky as Armstrong’s firm grip on the material slackens ever so slightly in spots. It’s easier to manage four girls when they’re all under one roof, but exponentially harder once they start marrying and moving off into their new lives. Still, Armstrong’s film remains remarkably solid, engaging, and hypnotically innocent until the very end. If nothing else, it also gave a generation of girls these words from Marmee: “Time erodes all such beauty, but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind.” That’s enough to give this version of Little Women high marks.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a very nice cast, I still wanted to check it out. Basically, t is an adaptation of a very famous book which had been adapted so many times, I even used to watch a Japanese cartoon based on this book when I was a kid in the 90’s. For all the live action versions, this is the most recent one and, like I said before, the main attraction was the cast (Winona Ryder, Gabriel Byrne, Samantha Mathis, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, Christian Bale, Eric Stoltz, Susan Sarandon). And indeed, they all delivered some solid performances and the directing by Gillian Armstrong was also pretty decent but I seriously had a hard time to care about the whole thing. The great Roger Ebert was more enthusiast than me and was apparently slowly won by this adaptation but, in my case, I admired the work and skills involved in this production but it wasn’t a drama which really managed to impress me. You could say that it was a major chick flick and that’s why I didn’t like it much and, even though it might be possible, in my opinion, the story was rather too shallow and over sentimental. To conclude, even though I didn’t really like it, it remains a solid drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.