Four-Faced Heights

Variety features The Four-Faced Liar, a new film presented at the SlamDance Film Festival with several Wuthering Heights references:

Like many other pics about twentysomethings in New York, "Four-Faced Liar" offers characters who somehow manage to maneuver through life and love without any visible means of support. In this case, the leads are (or at least appear to be) graduate students, providing ample excuse for Molly and Bridget to carefully study and endlessly discuss "Wuthering Heights." Molly sees herself as a lot like Catherine, torn between her desires for a comfortably reliable Edgar and an excitingly sexy Heathcliff. Unfortunately for Greg, he's simply not the Heathcliff type. (Joe Leydon)

Not surprisingly Joyce Carol Oates chooses Charlotte Brontë as her perfect dinner partner in the Financial Times:

Who would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?
Charlotte Brontë. Or – though she wouldn’t speak to me – Emily Dickinson. (Anna Metcalfe)

The Guardian talks about the upcoming Burns Supper Night and compares Robert Burns's cult following with some others:

As an after-death cult, Burns's was almost instant, and like all successful cults it had objects and places that followers could visit and feel attached to. Apart from the cottage itself, a marvel of humility, there was the River Doon of Ye Banks and Braes and the Brig o' Doon and the kirkyard where Tam o' Shanter had come unstuck. Long before Shakespeare's birthplace was saved for the nation in 1847, after the showman PT Barnum had announced his intention to ship it to America, Burns worshippers had a geographical focus. Wordsworth readers had to wait 50 years after the writer's death until Dove Cottage was open to the public; Keats had been dead a century before his house in Hampstead became a museum; the last Brontë sister died in 1855, but only in 1928 did the Haworth parsonage fall into the hands of the Brontë Society. (Ian Jack)

Entertainment Weekly Shelf Life tells another story of people meeting Wuthering Heights through Twilight:

Because Meyer loves Wuthering Heights, she made it Bella’s favorite book. My daughter, Llama, tried reading Emily Brontë’s novel when she was 13 or so, but couldn’t get into it. (Judging from Charlotte Brontë’s preface to her sister’s novel, Charlotte Brontë couldn’t even get into it.) For Christmas, I bought Llama one of the cool new editions of Wuthering Heights specifically marketed to the Twilight generation. I went for the cool, sort of Edward Gorey-ish cover, not the one with just the hokey red rose. Long story sped up: She loves it and has already decoded all Stephenie Meyer’s allusions and literary debts to Bronte. Wuthering Heights, in all its weird, gothic glory, has always been my favorite of the “great books,” and seeing Llama insist on carrying a copy around is something I can’t thank Meyer enough for. In reading, as in addiction, there are gateway drugs, and Meyer’s Edward Cullen has introduced my daughter to Heathcliffe (sic). (Jeff Giles)

This review of Emma (2009) happens to mention Jane Eyre:

Like so many of the series inspired by the manic content providers of the 19th century (Dickens, George Eliot, the Brontes), they are both examples of the triumph of craft over vision. As history and as literature, they get as much wrong as they get right (and far worse things than daffodils out of season or Milton mangling). But they work because they're an increasingly rare thing on broadcast TV: well-acted dramas. (Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post)

And the Cleveland Plain Dealer talks about previous Emmas:

"Emma," 1996 This TV version was ill-served by being broadcast in the same year that the Miramax movie was released. Had the producers let a bit of time go by, viewers might have had higher appreciation for this darker, funnier and more modern-feeling version. Kate Beckinsale makes a fine, sharp Emma, and Mark Strong [Knightley] channels Mr. Rochester from "Jane Eyre" in his brooding, almost angry performance. (Joanna Connors)

3:AM Magazine interviews author Sophie Parkin:

3:AM: Love is such a complex integral part of life, as your book shows, shouldn’t it be on the National school curriculum? If so what would the exam be like?
AG: In a way, it is already. They make you read Charlotte Brontë and Shakespeare. The problem is that then they mostly test you by asking you stupid questions about the use of metaphor or rhyme schemes. They should ask why Hamlet’s such a bastard to Ophelia or why Jane Eyre gets off on the guy’s chilliness. Or maybe school’s changed and they do ask you that now. (Anouchka Grose)

El Espectador (Colombia) talks about Judith Thurman:

Pero después de despachar los aciertos de color de la Casa Blanca o lograr entender lo que de Valentino se queda en su amado rojo, Judith Thurman puede hablar con la misma propiedad de grandes escritores: Gustave Flaubert, André Malraux, las hermanas Brönte (sic) o Collette. Su pluma es también la encargada de la exigente sección literaria de The New Yorker. (Angélica Gallón Salazar) (Google translation).

The reference comes from the Spanish translation of Judith Thurman's Cleopatra's Nose.

A mention to the Brontës' pen names can be found in 20 Minutos (Spain):

Las hermanas Brontë: Charlotte, Anne y Emily y Brontë, nacidas a principios del siglo XIX en Gran Bretaña, escondieron su identidad bajo los seudónimos masculinos de Currer, Ellis y Acton Bell. Dejaron novelas tan populares como Agnes Grey o Cumbres borrascosas. (C.H.) (Google translation)

Onirik posts a bad review of Christine Paris Bruyère's Edward F. Rochester.

On se raccroche à l’espoir de lire un récit de l’esprit tourmenté de l’homme durant la période où Jane réside chez les Rivers avec en point d’orgue les évènements tragiques qui se passent à Thornfield. Malheureusement, ce passage est expédié en quelques pages qui nous révèlent encore à quel point l’homme est malheureux sans la femme qu’il aime. (GaëlleB)

déWeekkrant talks about the Muziektheater-totaal's performances of Jane Eyr. The Musical (next February 5-7). More information on previous posts. Dutch readers are reminded that Brontës.nl is giving away two tickets for the February 5 performance. Another Dutch Brontë-related play going on is the Theater Artemis/Antigone production of Wuthering Heights. Toneel.blog reviews it:

Door de eenvoud, het meeslepende spel en het ruwe decor is Woeste Hoogten een juweeltje en erg mooi om naar te kijken en te luisteren. Een aanrader! (Karianne Henkel) (Google translation)

The Sri Lanka Guardian tours Northern England, including Yorkshire. Wuthering Heights is discussed in The Lesser of Two Equals. A book which is being read by a young Brazilian reader as published in A Notícia. Terra Noticias (Spain) reviews 44 escritores de la literatura universal. Finally a TV programme from the Ukranian TV channel ATB-Odessa (in Russian) devoted to Charlotte Brontë: О странностях любви (20 min approx) presented by Елена Каракина. It can be watched here.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Sequels, Theatre, Wuthering Heights