Blackjack Jane

The Telegraph & Argus talks about the current exhibition of Victor Buta at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
Picture: Victor Buta’s abstract view of the handwriting of Emily Bronte (Source)

For two unusual art exhibitions, it’s going to be worth travelling out to Haworth and Thornton over the next few weeks.
Haworth-based artist Victor Buta’s eight abstract canvases, based on the handwriting of the three Bronte sisters, are currently on show at the Parsonage Museum, until the end of March.
This Saturday, he will be taking part in a workshop for artists of all ability. There is a fee of £25 (£15 concessions). For a place, ring Jenna Holmes on (01535) 640188.
And then on March 14, handwriting expert Diane Simpson will be at the museum to analyse some of the handwriting the Brontes used for their own signatures and their literary aliases – Acton (Anne), Currer (Charlotte) and Ellis (Emily) Bell.
Victor, whose previous show in Leeds was based on the signatures of doctors and patients’ sick notes, said he thought Anne Bronte wrote her alias with less conviction than her sisters, as though unwilling to pretend.
He said: “I was looking at their writing too, in some of their small books – the imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondal. So the show ended up being about identity and how certain historical characters like Nelson had influenced them.”

The Chicago Herald-News has an article about the website Positively Good Reads:

To guide readers to stories to help lift their spirits, Marianne Goss, 60, of Chicago, a former Herald News reporter, has compiled a list of more than 100 "upbeat" novels.
Goss, a senior editor at Northwestern University, started the Web site www.positivelygoodreads.com, which lists books she's read and reviewed to help quash readers' blues. (...)
Authors on Goss' list range from classic (Dickens, Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Willa Cather, E.M. Forster) to contemporary (Michael Chabon, Barbara Kingsolver, Any Tan, John Irving, Elinor Lipman). (Denise M. Baran-Unland)

Her review of Jane Eyre can be read here.

~Spinning posts about Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Stephanie Booth has a whole set of Brontë country pictures on flickr, Only the Cinema posts an interesting review of Jacques Rivette's Hurlevent:

This film is more of a kin to Rivette's flawed Merry-Go-Round, in which the alternate realities of fantasy and dream also provide the only escape for the characters from their damaging, manipulative relationships with one another. Hurlevent strips that film down even further, replacing its freewheeling improvisation and humor with a rigid, methodical structure to which the characters are pinned. This is, despite moments of beauty and grace, one of Rivette's bleakest films, an interesting, often enthralling, but ultimately dour formalist experiment. (Ed Howard)

Beware of this and that reviews the Seattle performances of Jane Eyre. The Musical:

It was an admirable production in many ways, and definitely a fun way to spend my evening. I quite enjoyed it and I'd be interested to see how it would go with a full orchestra and more resources.

Finally, we read in the Las Vegas Review Journal a very curious Jane Eyre mention on a piece of news concerning casinos and mobs:

She was befriended by Joseph Agosto, who officially was affiliated with the Folies Bergere but unofficially ran the casino skim for the Kansas City mob. With Briggs under Agosto’s charm, her fate was sealed as millions in bad gambling markers went uncollected. The casino’s credit book was filled with more fiction than “Jane Eyre.” (John L. Smith)

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights