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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Saturday, July 31, 2010 2:24 pm by M. in , , , , , , , ,    1 comment
Several Yorkshire news outlets echo the press release from Visit York which listed the best things in/from Yorkshire:
According to brand new research, Yorkshire is best known for its food and drink offering with the Yorkshire Pudding named as ‘The Best Thing to come out of York and Yorkshire’.
The survey, conducted by Visit York, polled over 4,000 people from all over the UK and overseas and found that almost half of all respondents put the classic Sunday lunch accompaniment within their top three choices of the best thing to come out of York and Yorkshire; second place went to Yorkshire Tea with 18% of the votes cast; closely followed by Wensleydale Cheese with 16% of votes.
Leading lady, Dame Judi Dench took centre stage in terms of the most popular person to have come from the region with 15% of votes, giving her fourth place overall. The Brontë Sisters meanwhile reached the wuthering heights of fifth place with 14%. Captain James Cook navigated his way into sixth place with 12% of the votes and Michael Palin travelled to seventh place with 11%.
The survey was conducted by Visit York to celebrate the opening of its new £900,000 state-of-the-art Visitor Information Centre, which acts as a gateway of services for the region, offering visitors plus local residents and businesses with the keys to unlock both York and the wider Yorkshire and Humber area.
Janice Card, the writer and director of the viral video Jane Austen's Fight Club is interviewed on Entertainment Weekly. Upcoming projects?
So does that mean that she’s planning on making a sequel? “People are asking, ‘What’s next?’ I think the first thing that comes to mind is Emily Brontë’s American Psycho. Because that’s what Heathcliff was. Except British.” (Keith Staskiewicz)
We read in the letters to The Guardian a response to Gabriel Josipovici's attack on modern British authors. The missive has a Brontë reference:
Writers from Charlotte Brontë and Dickens to Graham Greene and Kingsley Amis knew that if a truly gifted novelist is telling a story, he or she is already using language as magic. (Richard Cooper)
This article in the New York Times about the upcoming NFL seasons contains an unexpected Brontë mention. Talking about the player of the New Orleans Saints, Pierre Thomas:
Saints running back Pierre Thomas missed the start of camp, but Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis characterized contract talks as “cordial,” which would be ideal if they were negotiating with a Brontë sister. (Mike Tanier)
The Guardian reviews several books for children:
The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
Romance without any vampires makes a welcome change for teen readers. Not that death is entirely absent. When her gorgeous and successful older sister drops dead unexpectedly, Lennie has to learn to live again. Perhaps because of her passion for Wuthering Heights, she finds herself falling in love. How grief and love run side by side is sensitively and intensely explored in this energetic, poetic and warm-blooded novel.
The main character in that novel is described like this in the San Jose Young Adult Literature Examiner:
She is a band geek and a Wuthering Heights hopeless romantic. (Barbara Bell)
The property section of The Times has an article about Scarborough:
Other highlights include the impressive Victorian architecture of the Grand Hotel, and St Mary’s Church, where Anne Brontë is buried.
Also in The Times a top ten of spots by the river for picnic:
Hebden Water, West Yorkshire. Brontë moors. Walking by the river up this quiet cleft in the flank of the Brontë moors, it is hard to imagine the roar and clatter of milling that filled this dale scarcely more than a century ago. There is a café at the nearby National Trust-maintained Gibson Mill. Start & finish: Hardcastle Crags car park (OS ref SD987292). (Christopher Somerville)
David Gillett travelled around Derbyshire and chronicles it in The Globe and Mail:
We explored Chatsworth, lost in the endless corridors of Mr. Darcy's overblown Pemberley, gliding with reverence through the sculpture gallery, catching glimpses of Her Ladyship's chickens beyond the sash windows. We walked the misty shadows of Haddon Hall, that most perfectly preserved medieval pile, which stood in for Lizzie's bedroom, featured prominently in The Other Boleyn Girl, and played Thornfield Hall in the most recent Jane Eyre. (...)
On the way back down to the village, rain threatening, we passed isolated North Lees Hall, an Elizabethan manor house where Charlotte Brontë had Mrs. Rochester jump from the roof to her death in Jane Eyre.
Priya Ramani summarises in Live Mint (India) her favourite book, Daddy-Long-Legs:
When she goes to college she realizes that she’s missed out on a whole slice of life. She has never heard of Jane Eyre or Robinson Crusoe or Holmes or that Shelley is a poet and George Eliot a lady.
Jerusha and me clicked immediately. She’s the kind of girl who gets indignant when she hears a bishop preach that the poor were put on earth in order to keep the rest of us charitable; Wuthering Heights is her favourite book (I have yet to meet a woman who didn’t think Heathcliff was a hottie)[.]
Margaret Atwood is promoting her latest book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, in India. The Hindu interviews her:
Even in the 19th century historical novel, money was important. In Jane Austen debt features consistently. In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff goes away poor and comes back having earned a fortune to extract the house from its previous owner. (Bulan Lahiri)
We don't think that Wuthering Heights can be the best example for this discussion on New Zimbabwe:
In societies of past generations (African or Western), marriage was very much a vessel for stability as depicted in several literary works, think Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. (Mtshumayeli Ndebele)
Dick Wolfsie in The Shelbyville News makes the weird Brontë comparison of the year. Discussing the website I Write Like he says,
I took three of my recent newspaper humor columns and entered a few of the funniest paragraphs. Was I as wry as Buchwald or Bombeck? Apparently not. Instead, my style was likened to Charlotte and Emily Brontë, the Smothers Brothers of the 19th century.
A pity that the Smothers Brothers were only two, Anne is not included in the comparison.

The Nashville Gospel Music & Entertainment Examiner takes a (Christian) look at Twilight and doesn't forget the Brontës:
Twilight's teenage vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is a handsome, brooding, hero much in keeping with old Brontë sisters and Jane Austin[sic] novels. (Kathryn Darden)
Le Monde interviews the composer and director of the Festival de Montpellier, René Koering. The journalist seems more interested in knowing why part of the audience deserted during the second half of the recently performed Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights opera than in the quality of the piece:
Pourquoi, après vingt-cinq ans "d'éducation" de votre part, le public a-t-il déserté la salle en deuxième partie de l'opéra "Les Hauts de Hurlevent" du compositeur hollywoodien Bernard Herrmann, le 14 juillet ?
Je pense sérieusement qu'une partie du public imaginait que l'oeuvre s'arrêtait après une heure trente. L'autre partie a manifesté un dédain ordinaire pour la musique américaine (comme pour les musiques finlandaises, hollandaises ou portugaises, qui ne figurent pas ou plus dans les neurones lyricomanes ordinaires). A cela s'ajoute que le public "cultivé" pense qu'il est incongru d'offrir à un compositeur de musiques de films un fauteuil de velours rouge à l'Opéra. (Renaud Machart) (Google translation)
Fortunately, there are many who enjoyed and discovered Herrmann's opera:
C'est la première partie des « Hauts de Hurlevent » que Fletcher a choisi de raconter, celle traitant des amours de Catherine et d'Heathcliff pour ceux qui se souviennent du roman. Les cinéphiles auront reconnu certains thèmes musicaux de « Citizen Kane », de « La Mort aux trousses » ou de « Sueurs froides ».
Les autres auront découvert une musique ultralyrique, flamboyante et opulente, qui colle parfaitement à l'action de ce mélodrame passionnel : on ne s'ennuie jamais pendant les trois heures que dura la version concert donnée le 14 juillet au Corum de Montpellier. Herrmann y montre une science de l'orchestration inouië, et un talent manifeste à créer des surprises. Normal, pour quelqu'un qui a si longtemps travaillé pour le cinéma.
La révélation d'une chanteuse
Marianne CrébassaIl faut dire que ces « Hauts de hurlevent » était défendue par une distribution sans faille soutenue avec une merveilleuse science des voix par le jeune chef Alain Altinoglu. A noter la révélation de la jeune mezzo soprano montpelliéraine Marianne Crebassa dont c'était un des premiers rôles. Elle fit la surprise au public de jouer une partie de piano solo, puis de chanter en s'accompagnant elle-même. Instant magique. (Nathalie Krafft in Rue89) (Google translation)
René Koering rappelle les retombées économiques bénéficiaires du festival et fait aussi un bilan artistique. Il place en tête L'Étranger et Hurlevent et mentionne : la palme à Piramo, le choc à Berezovsky, le rire à Fazil Say, les honneurs au chef Juanjo Mena. (Michèle Fizaine in Midi-Libre) (Microsoft translation)
Dans ce dispositif, le Festival de Radio France à Montpellier "tient une place à part". "Les festivals de Salzbourg et d'Aix-en-Provence sont prisés mais le festival montpelliérain, original, est recherché pour ses oeuvres rares. Cette année, par exemple, l'opéra Les Hauts de Hurlevent de Bernard Herrmann, le compositeur fétiche de Hitchcock, a été très demandé". (Olivier Morel-Maroger talking with Valérie Hernandez in La Gazette de Montpellier) (Google translation)
Writer Ana María Shua suggests an interesting explanation on why Wuthering Heights is more widely considered a love story than Pride and Prejudice. In Clarín (Argentina):
“Sin desdicha, separación, pérdida, sufrimiento, no hay novela,” cuenta Ana María Shua. “Por eso no recordamos Orgullo y Prejuicio, de Jane Austen, como novela de amor (termina demasiado bien), y sí en cambio Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë.”(Paulina Villegas Vargas) (Google translation)
AlCinema (Italy) reviews the Italian DVD release of Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión:
Un film pieno di invenzioni surreali, sorrette da un portento ironico davvero invidiabile. Invece nella trasposizione di Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë, viene messa in luce la burrascosa storia d’amore tra Alejandro e Catalina. L’irrequieta ragazza cerca la serenità nell’amore, senza sapere cosa le porterà il destino. Quest’opera si presenta con un carattere duro, nell’esplicare l’amour fou nei suoi aspetti più pessimistici e profondamenti dilaniati, che lasciano un aurora di mistero intorno a questa pellicola dalla sua denominazione critica inclassificabile nel corpus creativo di Buñuel. (Maria Laura Platania and Matteo Merli) (Google translation)
And Film-Dienst reviews the German edition of Jane Eyre 1944:
Sie gehört zu den schönsten Schauerromanzen, die die britische Literatur hervorgebracht hat: Charlotte Brontës viktorianische Erzählung um die vom Schicksal gebeutelte, aber aufrechte Waise Jane Eyre, die ihr Herz dem mysteriös-düsteren Lord Rochester schenkt. Eine der besten Filmadaptionen des Klassikers bleibt Robert Stevensons Film von 1944, für den kein Geringerer als Aldous Huxley Brontës Roman in eine stimmige Filmdramaturgie übersetzt hat. Die Hauptrollen werden von der ebenso zarten wie unbeugsamen Joan Fontaine und dem jungen Orson Welles gespielt; die Schwarz-Weiß-Ästhetik erweckt kongenial das von verhängnisvollen Schatten der Vergangenheit heimgesuchte Anwesen Thornfield zum Leben. Die von Alive vertriebene DVD präsentiert den Film in guter Bild- und Tonqualität. (jög) (Google translation)
The Spenborough Guardian lists 'its Brontë heritage' as one of the attractions of Spen Valley, the New York Times reviews Lyndall Gordon's biography of Emily Dickinson and describes as 'highly regarded' her biography of Charlotte Brontë:
Gordon shows how literary these love lives were, how scripted and plotted according to the latest novels. “Susan was sober, a reserved Jane Eyre aware of an orphan’s position as visitor in others’ homes,” she writes of Dickinson’s ­sister-in-law. (Christopher Benfey)
韓裴之隨筆 posts about Jane Eyre and Народная Газета discovers a "Belarusian Jane Eyre" The Sherlockian uploads a Jane Eyre book trailer on YouTube. Finally, the Brussels Brontë Group has an article about the repavement of the Rue Terarken, one of the few surviving stretches of the narrow cobbled streets of the Quartier Isabelle.

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1 comment:

  1. Regarding "I Write Like", I put in some Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and didn't get any Brontes in the results! They are, in fact, writing like James Joyce. Apparently.

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