6 Days until Jane Eyre 2011 (II) ~ BrontëBlog

Saturday, March 05, 2011

6 Days until Jane Eyre 2011 (II)

Saturday, March 05, 2011 7:26 pm by M. in Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV No comments

The Oregonian gives details of a contest for local students (Portland area):

[T]he Multnomah County Library, the Heathman Hotel and Focus Features are sponsoring a contest for area students: write up an appreciation of Brontë's novel -- 500 words or less -- and submit before March 9, and you might win the chance to discuss the book with Portland novelist Chelsea Cain at the Heathman while supping on the sorts of treats Jane Eyre herself might have eaten back in the day, followed by a free advance screening of the film.

More information on Novel Novice. Kink FM also gave tickets for this screening.

Berry Cigarette posts some pictures of Mia Wasikowska at the Australians in Film screening in Beverly Hills (March 4) and on WireImage there are some imagesof the March 3rd screening in Los Angeles (2011 Film Independent Screening Series).

The imdb Jane Eyre 2011 board is quite active with some new reviews but beware of spoilers.

Another Michael Fassbender interview:
Wide Screen (via Michael Fassbender Online)

WS: With Jane Eyre, it's, like Angel, another period piece; Rochester is a character who's, of course, been played rather famously in other films. Was that something you were particularly conscious of, or did you want to ignore the other film versions and go back to the literary source?
Michael: Well, no, I watched pretty much I think all of them. As much as I could get my hands on. I watched Orson Welles; I'm a big fan of Orson Welles. But, while I thought I'd find some things for the character with what he did, what was going on in the [1943] film played in a very dated way. Very sort of over-dramatic, for the purposes of where we wanted to go with the piece.
That was the same feeling I had, when at one point I thought I was doing Wuthering Heights, and I watched Laurence Olivier's version and again, it was like wow, the particular approach here just dates big-time. And again, very dramatic, emphatic style. So I did dial it back to what I thought I could bring. I just studied the character as is in the book and the script, and what I found him to be... obviously he's like this Byronic hero, there's a little trace of that.
But I also thought there's something quite bipolar about him, and I just didn't want him, I don't know, to fall into total moodiness. I didn't want to play him with large brush strokes, I wanted to find all the little fine, strange details about him.
I think that's what the director, Cary Fukunaga, had in mind. That's what interested me as well. Number one, of course, is that my mom and my sister love the story! So I kind of thought, well, it would be nice to see if I can give them a Rochester they like; let's see what they think of my Rochester, sort of give it a go. So that was attractive to me from the beginning.
And then once Cary got on board I thought, well, this is really interesting now. And then Mia, I was like, oh, even more impressed. I had seen her on In Treatment, and I was blown away. She's got so much maturity and makes really original choices. I don't feel like she's ever lying in her performances. She's amazing as Jane. She comes on set and like wow, it's Jane. And then you see Mia as she herself is, and she's totally different.
WS: You bring a lot of physicality to certain roles, from the emaciated hunger-striking prisoner in Hunger to the object of desire for both mother and daughter in Fish Tank. What did you try to do for that side of Rochester?
Michael: I thought that he should have a weight to him. People of that era, I think, were used to riding horses and being in the saddle for hours and working out in the countryside. Obviously they're landowners, so they have to maintain the land. I really like the idea that he's a hands-on sort of guy around the land when he's there, when he's home.
I wanted this feeling that he's got this weight on him, Bertha in the attic. I wanted that with him everywhere he goes, this shadow sort of hovering over him. And he had that in his physical life as well. But yeah, I didn't... it didn't require me to put on weight or go the gym or anything like that.