Publicising Brontë Country

Keighley News informs of a new marketing plan for promoting Brontë Country:

A meeting of the Brontë Country Partnership (BCP) agreed to finance the project with its estimated budget from now until April 2009 - a total of £7,200.
The group had agreed it should be targeting older people, women and families.
But acting chairman John Swinburn warned that the organisation's limited budget meant it would be hard to mount three separate campaigns for each of these target markets.
Pam Howorth, chairman of the Haworth Traders Association, pointed out family groups were the most likely to enjoy what Brontë Country had to offer.
She said families mostly included women and elderly people anyway, so it made sense to focus on them in particular.
She said it was important to counter negative media portrayals of Keighley and the poor publicity generated by people's cars being clamped in Haworth's Changegate car park.
She added that contrary to previous arguments the region did not have a diverse range of shops, Haworth's stores should meet the needs of a wide variety of visitors.
However, she said she was disappointed that local people did not always appreciate that these shops were suitable for them, as well as for tourists.
Keighley town councillor Graham Mitchell warned the partnership should be aware of the competition posed by Hebden Bridge.
He said that town also possessed a very eclectic range of shops, all of which were easily accessible as they were not on a steep hill.
The partnership agreed to spend about £1,500 to produce another 20-30,000 cross marketing leaflets.
The leaflets feature artists' impressions of Brontë Country attractions superimposed on a graphic map, designed to direct tourists from one location to another.
BCP secretary Paul Holroyd said the original print run of 10,000 leaflets had proved popular - with 8,000 of these documents distributed to group members and local tourist information centres.
Mr Swinburn said the additional leaflets would be distributed further afield, to draw in tourists who live outside Brontë Country. (Miran Rahman)

Backstage publishes an article about the possible nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Awards (which will be announced next December 20):

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a TV Movie or Miniseries
Since HBO has imported many English films and miniseries this year, look for a British invasion with Samantha Morton of Longford and Janet McTeer and Penelope Wilton of Five Days as definite contenders. There's also Ruth Wilson of Masterpiece Theatre's Jane Eyre. Two American actors in British productions — Bryce Dallas Howard in HBO's As You Like It and Sharon Gless in BBC Films' The State Within — are dark-horse possibilities. (David Sheward)

Several newspapers cover the recent death of Ralph Rader, theorist on novels:

He then explored the concept of an "autobiographical core" in fiction, using seminal works from the 18th to the 20th centuries as examples. One example was "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens, who wrote in the novel about the injustices of child labor out of his own experience as a boy working in a factory.Dr. Rader found similar biographical strands in novels by Charlotte Bronte, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and others. (Mary Rourke)

FunKy StaR StuDio posts this new cover of a Jane Eyre illustrated by Dona Dunea. As our Romanian is not very good, we don't actually understand if this is really a newly published edition, a project or just... a cover.

There are three reviews of three Brontë novels on the blogosphere today. F1Crazy reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Book Reviews writes about Jane Eyre and Arash Tony of San Diego has posted a one-of-a-kind review of Wuthering Heights.

Finally an alert for next Sunday (Dec. 9). The Detroit-based radio station WRCJ will be broadcasting the following.

Film Classics
Sunday, December 9 from 6 p.m. - 7 p.m., join your host Jack Goggin as he features,“Jane Eyre .” Music from three different movies based on Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece: the 1944 version (starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles) scored by Bernard Herrmann, the 1970 made-for-television adaptation (starring Susannah York and George C. Scott) with music by John Williams, and Franco Zefferelli’s film of 1996, which starred Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt, and was scored by Claudio Capponi and Alessio Vlad.

Really worth tuning to. If you're not in Detroit you can listen to it online as well.

Categories: Alert, Audio-Radio, Haworth, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights