Skye plays a young girl who is kidnapped and used as leverage to force her father to comply with the kidnapper's peculiar requests. Skye is more of a peripheral character, but she's very sweet and likeable, and is admirably fearless in the face of her kidnappers.

Georgia Lass (Ellen Muth, seen younger in Dolores Claiborne), an 18-year-old, intelligent but moody slacker, is vaporized by a toilet seat hurtling to Earth from the Mir space station. Her after-death experience is not quite what she expected, however, after she finds herself working as a grim reaper, a job not so different from any other. While this TV series (which tragically ended after only two seasons) is foremostly a comedy, it has a fairly solemn style. Ellen is the central character, and in our opinion just splendid, although out of scope for this site due to her age. An example of her frequent wry and witty narration can be heart in the sample video clip.

Talia, also in the clip, plays younger Georgia. Most episodes have various flashbacks of her life (the one before her death), showing either her young self, or her little sister Reggie (Britt). Talia is quite the adorable little girl, yet already showing the uppity and pouty attitude so prominent in the adult Georgia.

Reggie has become obsessed with the death of her big sister and shows it in various eccentric ways, such as collecting toilet seats and hanging them on tree branches. Particularly notable is her goth period, seen in the screenshots from season 2 episode 11.

Deadwood defines a western-like genre of its own. Events take place in the West of the usual time frame, but the degree of realism and authenticity, and the lack of political correctness set the show into a completely different category.

The promise of gold in South Dakota of 1876 has brought settlers into the area officially belonging to the Sioux, and resulted in formation of the small settlement of Deadwood, a town with no laws, but plenty of whiskey, guns and whores.

Bree has a small, yet permanent role as Sofia, a Norwegian girl whose family has been slaughtered. Some of the more moral inhabitants of Deadwood take her under their wing, initially in part to protect her from those who might want to harm her in order to protect her from revealing the identity of the murderers of her family.

Sofia appears in every episode of the show, but she has almost no lines, remaining merely the child to be taken care of. Even then she's remarkably endearing, especially in the first season (from which the screenshots are). This could be in part because of the extreme contrast between her vulnerable sweetness and the harsh brutality of everything surrounding her. She is one more little reason to see this outstanding show.

This movie a lot in common with Jena's perhaps best one (Bastard out of Carolina). In both movies, Jena plays the daughter of a family with a violent father, and performs well. However while above the ordinary, Ellen Foster falls short of the excellence of the other movie. There are no major flaws, but I, at least, had the "I've seen all this before" sense throughout the movie.

A suspense/thriller with a few merits, but not considerably better than mediocre, which is unfortunate given such an excellent cast. Dakota delivers a solid performance nevertheless, and presents a unique look for her role as Emily Callaway.

Anna plays young Jane Eyre in the first 25 minutes of this classic of gothic romance. If you don't know Anna yet, there may not be that much to see here; go see The Piano first and return then. Now that you know how wonderful Anna is, you'll be delighted to hear she's very much herself in Jane Eyre. There is the uniquely birdish, loose way she moves her head, even shades of the uppity attitude she had in The Piano. That's plenty for the money for me. Don't expect wonders on the acting front however. And avoid the PAL version of the DVD, its picture quality is substandard.

With that out of the way, a few words about the actual movie. Jane is an orphan, raised by her unloving aunt. The movie starts from cold and harsh Mr. Brocklehurst from Lowood's charity school arriving to take Jane with him to the school, where Jane is to live for several years. When 18, she moves to Thornfield Manor to work as a governess, a teacher for a young girl Adele.

What follows is so well characterised by Roger Ebert: "The covers give the game away: In the foreground, a wide-eyed heroine, hair flying, bodice torn, flees from a forbidding Gothic manor. In the manor, a light shines in one window, high in a tower. In the background, a dark, sinister man glowers enigmatically." I started watching the movie purely because of Anna, but was pleasantly surprised, and watched all of it with fair interest. That doesn't happen often.

I'm giving a fairly high actress score of 3.7. Much of that is simply due to Anna being herself.

My dominant memory of this movie is that the main character, nine-year old Anna is a very angry girl. She has a reason to be: it's early 70's in Paris, and her parents have been become left-wing activists. No more catechism classes or baths before dinner, living room full of strange bearded men all the time. And above all the things grownups are saying about group solidarity, distributing wealth equitably and who to blame on everything are very confusing. It's not that Anna is angry all the time, she in fact has a good variety of feelings, but the angry look suits her like nobody else I've seen.

Anna, acted very well by Nina, is the star of the movie from any point of view. Headstrong and opinionated, she's also only nine and acts her age, creating a very believable and interesting character against which the political issues of the movie are reflected.

The DVD has about 20 minutes of extras that feature Nina heavily, and arguably she's even better in the extras than in the movie, so make sure to check them.

This second part of the Harry Potter movie series is much the same as the first one, a fine though not outstanding action adventure. Emma was perhaps just a little bit better in the first movie. Bonnie has subtle, strange charm as Ginny Weasley.

One of the better family movies, mainly thanks to Julia whose fresh Norwegian presence delightfully violates the strange but clear "family movies have bad acting" rule. Kim (Julia), an independent girl just entering puberty, befriends a wolf family during her mountain climbing trip. When she finds out some hunters are trying to shoot the wolf, she sets on a mission to take the wolves across border, and a small scale adventure ensues.

Dakota's character, Ray, is a wonderfully bossy, precocious rich kid. Ray is an amusing diversion from Dakota's previous characters. In fact, Dakota seems so comfortable playing a bossy and stubborn character, one wonders how much of it is acting! (Kidding! Dakota is a sweetheart.) Brittany Murphy, who plays the nanny, is far more immature than her ward, but I also find her adorable.