BrontëBlog: Jane Eyre meets Doom

The Washington Times reviews Joseph Caldwell's The Pig Did It, a book which has been featured previously on BrontëBlog. The reason? Read:

[Kitty McCloud]is a best-selling novelist who has made her fortune by writing books in which she blithely corrects what she sees as the failings of the classics and endows them with happy endings.
She tinkers with such books as Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre," in which Kitty has Mr. Rochester throwing himself from the burning house, and his mad wife surviving to become best friends with the pious heroine. (Muriel Dobbin)

The Australian Stage interviews Robert Chuter, acclaimed Australian theatre director. Another Brontëite?

In both your film and theatre work, you have a reputation for a strong, often spectacular visual style. Where did that interest come from?
The visual style is pretty instinctual. It’s just there. Sometimes it is inspired by films by Peter Greenaway, Elia Kazan, or a book by Emily Bronte, D. H. Lawrence and Jean Genet. My adaptation of his novel “La Miracle de la Rosa” caused quite a stir both at the Old Melbourne Gaol and Belvoir Street in Sydney. Some critics stated that Genet would have farted in his grave (or turn in it!) if he had of seen it! The visual style is all important. I am absolutely fanatical about costuming and my trademark is obsessive detail. Designers are terrified of me. (Simon Piening)

Another suspect of Brontëiteness (but not exactly on a positive way) is the writer Mikita Brottman, according to this interview in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Reading also skewed her world view. She imagined all men to be romantic and good, for example, if they were akin to Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights." She had no idea that in the real world, Heathcliff would be be considered cruel for his treatment of Cathy. (Geeta Sharma-Jensen)

Curious things on the blogosphere: Check this screenshot of a very implausible Jane Eyre

meets Doom game play (although the original source of the picture says Wuthering Heights). Maybe it's more promising another videogame "proposal" Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff's Revenge:

Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff’s Revenge – In this exciting retelling of the Bronte Classic, you take on the roll of a space marine recently returned home to Earth. Your parents died under mysterious circumstances and have left you, Wuthering Heights. It seems though there is more to this Yorkshire manor on the moors than meets the eyes and your young curvaceous fiancé Cathrine is kidnapped. You will have to use all your space marine training to vanquish the evil ghost of Heathcliff and the unspeakable horrors of 1847 England! (FunBoxComedy)

It's a good moment to remember that, as a matter of fact, there is a Wuthering Heights role-play game around. Check it here.

Blise posts about the Brontës in French. Charity & Chaos talks about Jane Eyre as an example of quintessential 'Englishness' (or not).

And finally, a new and unlikely(?) Heathcliff: Roy Keane (ex Manchester United football player and currently manager of the English Premier League club Sunderland) according to The Times:

Someone suggested to Keane that at this point, ugly victories would be sufficient. Though no offence was intended, Keane nevertheless found it. “I don’t think we won ugly, I think it was beautiful,” he said with the brooding intensity that would get him a stint playing Heathcliff on the West End. (David Walsh)