Manchester University Press - The three amigos

This is the first academic book dedicated to the filmmaking of the three best known Mexican born directors, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón.

Deborah Shaw examines the career trajectories of the directors and presents a detailed analysis of their most significant films with a focus on both the texts and the production contexts in which they were made. These include studies on del Toro's Cronos/ Chronos, El laberinto del fauno/Pan's Labyrinth, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army; Iñárritu's Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel; and Cuarón's Sólo con tu pareja/ Love in the Time of Hysteria, Y tu mamá también, and Children of Men.

The Three Amigos will be of interest to all those who study Hispanic and Spanish Cinema in particular, and World and contemporary cinema in general.

Reviews

Shaw concisely and efficiently utilizes a number of theoretical fields in her discussion, including careful scrutiny of the marketing, profits and the attendant creative freedoms and constraints these suppose, in addition to carrying out close textual analysis of key stylistic and technical characteristics of the films. This is an important book that convincingly argues that these three amigos, who are the most successful filmmakers of Mexican origin in financial and international terms, are exemplars of transnational filmmaking and demonstrates the multiple ways in which their 'films have caused critics to rethink classificatory borders' (225).

Introduction
Guillermo del Toro: the Alchemist
1. Cronos: Introducing Guillermo del Toro
2. Generating an Authorial Presence with Hellboy II: The Golden Army
3. El Laberinto del Fauno: Breaking Through the Barriers of Filmmaking

Alejandro González Iñárritu: Independent Filmmaker
4. Change to Crashing into the International Film Market with Amores Perros
5. 21 Grams: An American Independent Film made by Mexicans
6. Babel and the Global Hollywood Gaze

Alfonso Cuarón: A Study of Auteurism in Flux
7.1 Sólo Con tu Pareja: Bringing the Middle Classes Back to Mexican Cinemas
7.2 Less than Great Expectations: Working within the Hollywood System
8. Cuarón Finds his Own Path: Y Tu Mamá También
9. Children of Men: the Limits of Radicalism

Conclusion
Appendix: Discussion thread on comicbookresources.com about del Toro and Mignola and the Hellboy films.
Bibliography
Filmography