Princess

A good day is when Luc wakes up and wants to be a tractor for Halloween. Or a helicopter. Or Hercules. Or anything other than a princess, bounding door-to-door in tiara and tulle. A few weeks ago, the 4-year-old boy's desire to trick-or-treat as a princess sparked a dilemma for his two moms, Anna and Louisa Villeneuve: Which do you honor and protect, your child's independent spirit or tender feelings? "My first reaction was 'He wants to be a princess? We're there!' " said mama Anna.

Anika Noni Rose won a Tony for her stage work in "Caroline, or Change," got great notices on HBO's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" and was a big-screen hit in "Dreamgirls." But playing opposite an animated amphibian? This classically trained actress can do anything. "It was pretty amazing," said Rose of her royal role voicing Tiana in Disney's "The Princess and the Frog," in limited release this week. "When you're doing animation, you have to really access your inner 3-year-old.

Maria Paz Bagration is not your average princess. For a start, she does not want to be queen. In fact, she is quite happy to continue working as a dentist in downtown Madrid. She has no pretensions to the throne of Georgia, which would rightfully belong to her or one of her family if the former Soviet republic decides it wants its monarchy back.

Two new movies got off to so-so starts this weekend, but the studios behind them hope they're both set up to prosper over the holidays. "The Princess and the Frog," Walt Disney Studios' first hand-drawn animated film in six years, debuted to a studio-estimated $25 million in nationwide release. Warner Bros.' apartheid drama "Invictus," directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, opened to $9.1 million. Both were on the low end of expectations and considered relatively soft starts given their budgets.

In reference to the article " 'Little Princess' Has Lackluster Return" (Calendar, Aug. 10), I would like to correct both a quote and an overall impression attributed to me. First of all, I never said that the original advertising of "A Little Princess" was "atrocious"; I said that the original poster of "A Little Princess" was "atrocious." There is a big difference. Both Alfonso Cuaron, the director, and I not only agreed with, but also enthusiastically endorsed, all of the Warner Bros.

Lisa Perlman, I love you. Barbara Brooker, I love you, too, for dreaming up this funny-sad, crazy-wise saga of Lisa's mid-life crisis called "So Long, Princess." Lisa, our unlikely heroine, is a klutzy 43-year-old ex-Jewish princess, who lives in San Francisco and spends most of her waking hours giving painful birth to her first novel in a darkened room while Mozart floods her Walkman earphones, blotting out a world cluttered with demanding relatives and disappointing relationships.

"The Party" David McPhail This book is about a boy, his toy animals and his dad. The boy is planning a party with his toys, but his dad falls asleep. The boy decides to party anyway. So he and his toy animals jump on the sleeping dad. They tickle him. They take him to the kitchen on a toy elephant and feed him sandwiches. They take him back upstairs. It is not easy. I like this book because it is funny and has great pictures. Reviewed by Natalie, 7 Welby Way Magnet West Hills "Fairy Realm #6: The Unicorn" Emily Rodda Both worlds, the Fairy Realm and the Human, are in danger.

Despite the often imperfect ways in which filmmakers stumble around and struggle with the racial divide between blacks and whites, I look at this December, and the decade that got us here, and find myself encouraged. Four of the most talked about films now are "Precious," "Invictus," "The Blind Side" and "The Princess and the Frog." As different as night and day, yet each has race and the inherently sticky issues that come with it running through them. That they are all in theaters now, in the one month when studios fight bitterly for space to put their best films forward, is Hollywood's version of a Christmas miracle.