Once a Brontë girl, always a Brontë girl

The Popwatch Blog from Entertainment Weekly posts a list of promising British and Irish actors/actresses. Rebecca Hall is one of them:

7. Rebecca Hall. You may remember her as: Christian Bale’s doomed wife in The Prestige. Check her out as: Charlotte Brontë’s famous madwoman in the attic in the breathtaking Jane Eyre prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea. (Aubry D'Arminio)

As a matter of fact, Rebecca Hall was/is/will be (?) attached to Charles Sturridge's film project Brontë which seems to be quite inactive at the moment. She was/is/will be (?) playing Emily Brontë.

Just a couple of Heathcliffgate mentions in the press:

More precisely, what is going on in the mind of Gordon Brown as he reads the savage personal attacks and reflects on poll ratings so low that they break records? No one knows for sure. They are not clear from Brown's public interviews, which have a habit of going in bizarre directions, with the likes of the Arctic Monkeys and Heathcliff becoming inadvertently and bizarrely part of the story. (Steve Richards in The Independent)

So, our PM's morphed from Mr Bean into Heathcliff, a soubriquet that seems ominously destined to stick. As well it might. No longer merely a bumbling blunderer, Brown's taken the unimaginably crass step of trying to cast himself as a romantic hero. The deluded imbecile actually seems to believe that his repellently curmudgeonly personality is somehow glamorous. This, surely, ought to bury him for ever. Except, as Norman Hadley has pointed out on Cif, Brown didn't really liken himself to Heathcliff at all in his New Statesman interview. On the contrary, he specifically rejected the comparison.
It wasn't Brown who raised the issue of Heathcliff, but his beguiling interviewer, Gloria de Piero. This is how she reports the exchange: "Some women say you remind them of Heathcliff, I suggest. Brown is, after all, brooding and intense. 'Absolutely correct,' he jokes. 'Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff.'"
The "he jokes" is crucial, and De Piero is to be commended for using this phrase. She could have got away with "he says". It reveals that Brown had no genuine ambition to align himself with Heathcliff. He was merely trying to laugh off politely what he took to be a light-hearted aside. Naturally, being Brown, he fumbled the job horribly, failing to spot the swing in a ball aimed unerringly at his middle stump.
Once he'd collected his wits, a terrible microsecond later, he reversed the position he'd inadvertently taken. Too late, too late, just as with the 10p tax band. His considered view, for what it's worth (nothing), turns out to be that he might resemble somebody older and wiser than Heathcliff. Such a character would have little in common with the hero of Wuthering Heights, but you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube as easily as that. (David Cox in The Guardian)

The Brontë blogosphere is full of Jane Eyre references: Evangeland posts a nice drawing inspired by Jane. Perception Without Deception has read and liked the novel. Tuesday in Silhouette posts a nice story of love for Jane Eyre.

I think I can say without hesitation that the one book that really turned me into the bibliophile I am, was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. (Read more)

More stories that transpire affection for the Brontës works. From The House of Edward:

Once a Bronte girl, always a Bronte girl (Read more)

Finally, Knitting a dissertation reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Weirdo, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights