A Total Joy

Sally Reeve, Martha in Jane Eyre 2011, has published on her website a picture in her Jane Eyre costume:

I’m currently filming Jane Eyre – directed by the wonderful Cary Fukunaga and produced by Ruby Films. Obviously as we’re in production I can’t say TOO much – apart from I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had on a film set. Just finished my first chunk of filming and it’s a total joy. There’s a wonderful company feel – no huge egos, no stress, just a group of people working together on an amazing script by Moira Buffini. I love everything about this job – it’s a dream! More details as they come and a sneek peak here of me in my costume….

Juliet Gael, author of Romancing Miss Brontë is a Wichita native and the local newspaper Wichita Eagle has an article on her and invites readers to a book signing next Thursday, April 29:

The Romantic period of English literature and romance itself figure into the title of the new novel "Romancing Miss Brontë" (Ballantine, 414 pages, $25) , says author Juliet Gael. She has taken the life of Charlotte Brontë — author of "Jane Eyre" — as a subject. The book is fiction, but based on the facts of Brontë's life: her tragic family life that included the loss of her mother and all of her siblings, her and her sisters' foray into writing and pseudonymous publishing, her later fame as an author, and, ultimately, her marriage to her father's curate at an age long past when she'd been considered an "old maid."
Gael, a Wichita native and North High graduate who now lives in Italy, studied literature at KU and went on to become a screenwriter. She turned to novels, she said in an e-mail, for two reasons: storytelling and control. "I'm a reader and I love words — I love the flow of words and language and I love storytelling." In Hollywood, she said, "I met a lot of screenwriters who never read novels."
And screenwriting is an inherently collaborative process, since ultimately it takes hundreds of people to produce a film. "But the work of a novel," she notes, "begins and ends with the writer. The novelist takes full responsibility for what ends up on the printed page."
"Romancing Miss Brontë" is her first foray into novel-writing, but the seed was planted nearly two decades ago when Gael visited Haworth, the Brontës' home village in the Yorkshire moors, in the course of a graduate seminar on the Brontë sisters. She found the story of Charlotte's life in particular fascinating, and kept the story of "Romancing Miss Brontë" very close to the events of Brontë's life. (...)
Gael said she's hoping readers of her book will rediscover "Jane Eyre" and other Brontë novels. "There are a lot of readers who will, hopefully, be drawn to read and discover the Brontë literature from reading about their lives and the creation of their work," she said. "'Jane Eyre' continually engages readers. Charlotte captured, in that little plain-Jane governess, the heart and soul of all passionate women who long to be seen and loved for qualities other than their appearance." (Lisa McLendon)

Reading and book-signing by Wichita native Juliet Gael, author of "Romancing Miss Bronte"
Watermark Books, 4701 E. Douglas When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Free For more information, call 316-682-1181.

The Telegraph thinks that Chris Morris, director of the upcoming film Four Lions, and Emily Brontë are twin souls:

The distance between Emily Brontë and Chris Morris is not as great as you might imagine.
If it really existed, Brontë’s much-filmed Wuthering Heights would be just up the road from the sharply realised Sheffield of Four Lions, Morris’s astonishing, soon-to-be-released comedy about terrorism. (I’d recommend leaving the M1 at junction 38, proceeding through Huddersfield and Halifax, turning left just before Keighley.)
And both stories deal with Yorkshire grit, bookending a long tradition of uncompromising movies set in God’s Own County. Here, in chronological order, is my top 10:
Wuthering Heights (1939)
In William Wyler’s Oscar-winner (for best black-and-white cinematography), Laurence Olivier plays Heathcliff opposite Merle Oberon’s Cathy. The original review in Variety complained: “Dramatic episodes are vividly etched, without benefit of lightness. It’s heavy fare throughout” – as if this was inappropriate! The recent success of the Twilight series of novels (and films) has apparently revived the popularity of Brontë’s tale, with the result that a new movie version is in the works. (Marc Lee)

Los Angeles Times's Jacket Copy talks about Meg Cabot's latest book:

She’s a geek -- she used to write "Star Trek" and "Jane Eyre" fan fiction. (Casey Chan)

On the Galveston County Daily News the English vs American "language war" is recalled:

Generations of Americans were intimidated by these haughty British claims, and many Americans conceded automatic superiority to anything English, especially in matters of speech and literature.
Americans slavishly looked up to Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, while the British refused even to read American writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville. (Harold Raley)

The Times publishes an article about Katharine Hepburn's affaire with Howard Hughes and a reference to her performing Jane Eyre in theatre crops up:

But she certainly wasn’t heartbroken, and threw herself into preparing for a starring role in a play based on Jane Eyre. It was now a year since her first encounter with Howard Hughes, and he was about to re-enter her life once more by descending from a clear blue sky. (...)
“He asked me if I could have dinner with him the next week. I told him I’d be in Boston, where I would be doing Jane Eyre. When I arrived in Boston, there were flowers from Howard, who had taken the largest suite at the Ritz, where I was staying. My room was so filled with flowers, there was hardly room for me. (Charlotte Chandler)

More mentions: A bookcase is not complete without Wuthering Heights according to the Times-Transcript, The Hindu publishes a belated review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:

What begins as a life saver soon becomes a life line and as Juliet soon discovers, the core members not only show an interest in Shakespeare, Seneca and the Brontës, but are also fiercely protective of one another. (Nirmala Lakshman)

Fantasy/Sci-Fi Lovin' Giveaways! gives away three copies of Sherri Browning Erwin's Jane Slayre (deadline: May 4); A Literary Fest reviews Wide Sargasso Sea; a little right reading posts another photo collage contribution to Brontë-Along!; you old chicken posts about Wuthering Heights and Chen's Blog about Jane Eyre.

Finally, bronteana1 has uploaded to YouTube several talks (well, just the first minutes of them) of the latest Brontë Society Conference (York, July-August 2009). So far Margaret Smith, Dudley Green, Miriam Bailin, Christine Alexander, Paul Edmonson and several students and a clip of the Brontë Books Exhibition can be found.

Categories: Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wide Sargasso Sea