Our Jane might go vampire-slaying on the screen too

Cinematical wonders whether Jane Eyre (in her Jane Slayre mash-up version) can slay Buffy, as it looks as if she might go vampire-slaying on the screen too.

You add a little zombies to the world of Pride and Prejudice and the world goes wild. These days, creepy creatures and classic figures are going hand-in-hand, thanks to the seemingly non-stop love of vamps and chills. Hell, we even have Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter coming our way. But a hunter is no slayer, and while the pun is apt, this next re-jig might get the mash-up world in a little trouble. Sherri Browning Erwin's Jane Slayre will hit shelves on April 13, and Production Weekly's Twitter feed reports that her reps are currently busy in Hollywood with a spec of her mash-up.
From Amazon: "Jane Slayre, our plucky demon-slaying heroine, a courageous orphan who spurns the detestable vampyre kin who raised her, sets out on the advice of her ghostly uncle to hone her skills as the fearless slayer she's meant to be." The book certainly plays it close to the famous slayer. While there's no long line of vamp fighters -- one girl in all the world -- she is getting taught by a ghostly uncle (aka Watcher), and does go up against more than fangs, enjoying a little slaying with the zombies and werewolves as well.
And we thought fighting in high fashion was silly. Move over prom dress -- it's corset time!
Many eyes have already started to roll over these paranormal twists, so what will it mean when Jane Eyre ... sorry, Slayre ... tries to take over Buffy's job? Joss Whedon might get busy with the Avengers soon, and even if he doesn't, I don't think there's a chance in hell that Buffy will ever hit the big screen again*, so the slayer door is wide open. However, Ms. Summers is still around, in comic adventures and slaying random Twi-hards, and I can't decide if a little literary fun will be embraced or spurned by the population of spunky modern slayer lovers.
Can Jane fill Buffy's big shoes? Is slaying the same without Giles, Willow, Xander, and the rest of the gang? Are you happy for a little Slayre, or do you just want Jane to stick to her classic adaptation? (Monika Bartyzel)

In this time of mash-ups, blogger Susan Wagner of Friday Playdate might be onto something in a strange dream she talks about in an interview on The Stir.

Do you dream? Care to share one?
I do dream! Not long ago I was simultaneously reading Neil Gaiman's Coraline and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights; I dreamt that Heathcliff and Catherine were trapped in the Other Mother's house. Scary. Seriously. That's why I'm back to reading Vogue before bed these days. (Jeanne Sager)

The National (UAE) discusses not mash-ups but spin-offs, and of course Wide Sargasso Sea is mentioned:

Novels and plays generally give the spin-off a little more kudos than TV and film. Tom Stoppard has famously turned two minor characters from Hamlet into the protagonists of his award-winning play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and Jean Rhys won acclaim for her retelling of the events of Jane Eyre from the perspective of Charlotte Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic” in Wide Sargasso Sea. (Jessica Holland)

According to the Hamilton County News, children seem to stick to the original novel, at least for the moment.

Children often say the lessons they learn in school, especially the literature they read, is old and out of touch.
But at Hickory Valley Christian School one teacher is using the classics to teach life lessons. [...]
Scott says, "I feel like I'm just a child with them and we just get so excited when we finish Jane Eyre or when we finish Tom Sawyer, so it's just been such a reward and such a blessing." (Renée LaSalle)

Apparently adults are also reading Jane Eyre in North Korea, as The Korea Times reports:

North Korea, the planet's deepest information void, appears to be dabbling with electronic books (e-books), a South Korean activist claimed Thursday.It's questionable how much an ecosystem for e-books would be relevant to readers living in perhaps the most censored country in the world. But according to Free North Korea Radio's Kim Seong-min, North Koreans have choices beyond government propaganda books to read on their computers, including translations of Western classics such as Shakespeare's plays, ``The Iliad,'' ``Don Quixote,'' `` Jane Eyre,'' `` Les Miserables'' and even ``Gone With The Wind.'' (Kim Tong-hyung)

Metro Vancouver suggests five ' locales to find the thrill of romance'. One of them is

4. Wuthering Heights
Yorkshire Moors, England
Emily Bronte’s novel of thwarted passion between Heathcliffe [sic] and Cathy is routinely voted the most romantic novel of all time. And looking out onto the brooding Yorkshire Moors in northern England, it’s easy to see how these rolling hills provided such inspiration. Even more haunting in the rain, which, it being Yorkshire, is highly likely.
Stay: Ashmount Country House, Mytholmes Lane, Haworth, West Yorkshire. ashmounthaworth.co.uk (Paul Baldwin)

Wuthering Heights is still present in Coronation Street, judging by a recent summary on the Coronation Street Blog:

Over in the Kabin, Mary’s reading Wuthering Heights. . .

And The News Star has an article on recent papers presented by 'five Louisiana Tech students [at] an English honor society’s international convention held in St. Louis, Mo.' One of them was “Anne Bronte’s Two-Tiered Morality in ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’” by Ashlee Clark, of Longview, Texas, in a panel on Victorian literature, though there were actually more Brontë-related papers than just that.

A couple of blogs for today: Sarah Louisa Whittle writes at length about visiting the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Transient discusses the fantasy world of the Brontës.

Categories: Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Scholar, Weirdo, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights