Wuthering Heights 2011: one more name

We have one more face and name to add to Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights Cast. The IMDb Wuthering Heights 2011 page now includes Oliver Milburn (pictured - source) as Mr Linton. Still Heathcliff remains a mystery.

On to the other Brontë screen production now, as Sally Hawkins - Mrs Reed in Jane Eyre 2011 - speaks to The Moviefone Blog.

Well, let's talk about Mrs. Reed first. She's a tough cookie, to say the least. What was your experience on 'Jane Eyre?'
She's definitely not a truth-sayer! She's quite a terrifying character, and it was a comparatively small part but she's quite a powerful character and force of nature. I sort of fall in love with every character I do; you have to to understand how they became what they've become, whether they're the ugly kind or the very beautiful kinds of characters. So she's gone through various things in her life, and as people do, it makes them become twisted in some ways and distorted and damaged and see the world in a very narrow, small blinkered way, and she's one of those people. And I felt incredibly sorry for her.
Jane Eyre, her youth, her vitality, her beauty, it's more than she can bear, and everything that Jane is, for Mrs. Reed, reminds her of what she isn't, and it's terrifying to her and destroys [her]. It saddens her, and she can't really deal with those types of emotions, and so she goes to the other extreme, which people do. When they're angry, the root of that is fear, and that's who she is. And she's a very scared woman who is hanging on and right to the end when you see her on her deathbed, she's hanging on to that -- all she knows in life is hate and anger, and to let that go would destroy her, I think, even though she's on the point of death.
I grew up with 'Jane Eyre,' reading it at school, and it's one of those, I think, for a lot of women, a lot of girls, it's the iconic story and so many girls relate to Jane Eyre and her character... The Brontë sisters -- they really speak to young girls in their writing. It's timeless and their stories will go on forever and ever and ever because they're great storytellers. (Jenni Miller)

We just wonder, though: Jane Eyre's beauty is more than Mrs Reed can bear?

More film stuff. The Press reviews Stephen Poliakoff's Glorious 39:

It is a chocolate box, Merchant Ivory-style period drama where you get to stare at lovely old cars and mansions, but with the dark undertow of a 19th century novel like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. There is always the sense that there is a Bertha in the attic of these perfect stately homes filled with the echoes of cut glass British accents. There is something of the gothic at play.
The gothic is adorned with an eerie, paranoid tone similar to The Wicker Man, Don’t Look Now or a creaky episode of Tales of the Unexpected. (Charlie Gates)

And Artinfo writes about Pierre Huyghe's The Host and the Cloud which can be experienced at the Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, through November 27.

Pierre Huyghe's new film has been causing a stir in the French art scene, with fellow artists, fans, and even students on field trips descending into the pitch-black basement of Marian Goodman's Marais space to experience "The Host and the Cloud." Filmed in a closed-down museum at the edge of urban Paris over the course of three days — Halloween, Valentine's Day, and the May 1st International Workers' Day — the film is less a love-it-or-hate-it affair than a two-hour endurance test composed of a cacophonous runway show with a model on an invisible catwalk, a profusion of white rabbits, and, most strenuously, a red-tinted disco scene with an unrelenting version of Kate Bush's shrill "Wuthering Heights" playing normally at first, then in reverse. (Nicolai Hartvig)

Erin Blakemore, author of The Heroine's Bookshelf, is interviewed by The Christian Science Monitor:

Several of your heroines (Anne Shirley, Laura Ingalls) are from children’s lit. How do their stories remain relevant as you get older?
“Jane Eyre” is actually a good example. I read it when I was far too young. When I was little it was a story about a little girl being oppressed by authoritative people. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had my own romances and relationships and struggles, and I have come to see the book as the story of a young woman sticking to what’s important to her in really extraordinary and terrible places. (Nora Dunne)

The Daily Mail takes a look at Kate Middleton's family tree and discovers the following:

In the rich tapestry of her father’s family, for example, there is Harriet Martineau, one of the Victorian age’s leading thinkers, and a renowned writer and philosopher.
A woman of immense strength of character, and a friend of Charles Darwin, Charlotte Brontë, Florence Nightingale and George Eliot, Harriet travelled to America as a single woman and brought back a bestselling book of her experiences. (Christopher Wilson)

It must be said, though, that Charlotte Brontë and Harriet Martineau were only friends for a time. They had a fall-out over Martineau's review of Villette and Martineau remained sour about it even after Charlotte's death.

The Brussels Brontë Blog has a post on how 'Brussels Brontë Group member Johan Hellinx explains came to write an article in the Breton language about the Brontës’ stay in Brussels'.

Jane Eyre - Tankar i samband med P1:s Bokcirkeln writes in Swedish about Jane Eyre in connection with the radio programme Bokcirkeln. Associated Content user Melanie Mullen picks Jane Eyre as her top favourite book of all time. And finally, Not Another Book Blog reviews April Lindner's Jane.

Categories: Books, Brussels, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Victorian Era, Wuthering Heights