At least we can recite lines from Jane Eyre

Today another news outlet, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, claims that in all likelihood Jane Eyre 2011 won't be get any Oscar nominations.

Even realizing that, as a country, we are list crazy, it amazes me to go to movie sites on the Internet and find people already sharing their lists of this year's best films.
It's only April.
Quite probably, the two best films of 2011 have not even opened in Lubbock. I refer to "Jane Eyre" and "Win Win," both of which have thus far skipped the Hub City for no logical reason that I can fathom.
That said, quite probably (again), neither of those movies will be on any Best Films lists coming out at the end of the year anyway. (William Kerns)

In the meantime, Singapore Today Online is looking forward to it opening in Singapore on May 19.

The film is reviewed by Amused by Books, Brianne Blogs?, Michelle Martine Merrill, The Jane Austen Film Club, Velocity of Thought and Native Audio Grrrl.

And now for some thoughts on reading the Brontës when young.

From American Times, a Forbes blog:

I think teachers (and parents, hopefully) should do their best to instill a love of reading and a sense of curiosity and imagination in their kids.
If that means letting kids read comic books or Dragon Lance books or the Hardy Boys – great! To hell with the canon. If they’re going to read Great Expectations or Walden or Jane Eyre they’ll do so because they love reading, and because they have a driving curiosity to read older books. (E.D. Kain)

A columnist from The Harvard Crimson reminisces about reading Jane Eyre for the first time:

I remember reading “Jane Eyre” for the first time in a beat-up used paperback pocket edition. Its wood-pulp pages were so old and yellowed that they kept falling out the further I read. By the time Jane married Mr. Rochester, I was left with a stack of leaves between two covers. (Spencer B.L. Lenfield)

And on Eye Weekly, Shilpa Ray and the interviewer find they have something in common:

I grew up like that, too, because my parents were so religious. It makes you feel a bit out of time. I read the Brontës, not The Baby-sitter's Club.
I wasn't allowed to read The Baby-sitter's Club either! My dad would select books for us, so I would end up reading about natural science and Henry Kissinger at a really young age. Really bizarre. It's like when my grandmother gave me money for my birthday. I couldn't buy roller-skates. I had to buy a world map. (Sarah Nicole Prickett)

That might have been very positive in the long run, as they haven't ended up saying silly things about literature to The Sun, like singer Nerina Pallot:

First single Put Your Hands Up is a joyous soundtrack to the current wave of sunny weather.
However the upbeat tune contrasts with its lyrical inspiration.
Nerina, who was nominated for Best Female at the 2007 Brit Awards, explains: "I'd just read Wide Sargasso Sea the prequel to Jane Eyre.
"It's mental - all voodoo and obsessive love and I wanted to write a song about that.
"Because I hate all the Brontë and Jane Austen stuff - I wish women would stop reading that s***.
"Mr Darcy isn't going to turn up on a f****** horse and save you."

Someone should really tell her about that wonderful concept called 'imagination'.

Her words seem to only serve to emphasise what The Lantern says:

Over the past couple centuries, common parlance has slowly deteriorated into a subpar form of its erstwhile self. Leafing through a Victorian-era novel of any of the three Brontë sisters, this degradation is undeniably transparent. Modern-day articulation sounds disastrously cacophonic in comparison to the flowery prose of the foregone and now obsolete Victorian, and even Edwardian past. (Anusree Garg)

The Long Beach Press-Telegram reviews the stage production Anna in the Tropics by the Long Beach Shakespeare Company.

Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Cuban emigre Nilo Cruz, "Anna" tells the story of the Cuban cigar-making industry in the late 1920s in Florida. Carrying on a tradition from the island, the factories employed lectors who would read books and stories aloud to the workers as they labored rolling cigars by hand.
Lectors were erudite and educated in a world where many of the workers were illiterate, so in some ways they were the connection to a wider world, and the stories they read transported the workers from their dreary lives.
"We may not be able to read or write, but we can recite lines from `Don Quixote' and `Jane Eyre,"' the character of Ofelia says early in the play. (Greg Mellen)

Buddy TV reports that a guest character called Merv Bronte (played by Ray Romano) is coming to The Office:

I can't decide if I like Ray Romano as "Merv Bronte" (related to the sisters Brontë?) or James Spader as "Robert California" (related to the state California?) more. Character naming truly is an art. (Meghan Carlson)

Can't Sleep for Dreaming and Have a Little Faith in Words post about Wuthering Heights. A Book Blog. Period. gives an A+ to Jane Eyre. The Perfect Book has read and liked Agnes Grey. Black, White & Lace writes about Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë. Life and Art posts about a family walk in Brontë Country and Flickr user Samuel Meteyard Photography has uploaded an atmospheric picture of the Brontë Parsonage, unfortunately misspelling it 'Howarth'.

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