Burned Dollies

Alt Film Guide thinks that Jane Eyre 2011 is not performing very well in box office:

After 36 days, Jane Eyre, starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, has brought in $5.87m; that's not bad, but those are hardly "blockbuster" figures for an arthouse release. To date, Jane Eyre's expansion has been quite modest: 247 sites this weekend. Even so, the film's per-theater average on Friday, when it added $265k, wasn't exactly the greatest: $967. (Zac Gille)

Dawn reviews the film:

For some fans, the 2011 Jane Eyre will be an unsolvable conundrum. More than every other adaptation, it strives to stay true to its source material. But that doesn’t make it the best Jane Eyre movie yet. That distinction still belongs to the transcendent 1944 iteration. (Nadir Hassan)

Bethel News:

[Michael Fassbender] gives it his best shot, with a Rochester that is perhaps too approachable, almost from the get-go.  Up against the frank honesty of Wasikowska’s Jane, he doesn’t stand a chance.  His performance may be the only weak link in this otherwise flawless production. (Peter Weyl)

The blogosphere is still reviewing Jane Eyre 2011: Wordnest, Upper East Side Film, Notes from the Alyssaverse, JHR on Film, George Kelly, Fabulous 35mm-"Does this make my film look fat?", Observations from the 2nd Floor, Little Larsen's, The Chronic Critic.

Hollywood Movie Costumes & Props posts some pictures of a Jane Eyre 2011 burned doll prop on display at the Universal Studios Hollywood.

The Guardian reviews Allegra Goodman's The Cookbook Collector. Describing the story, the reviewer says:

Less than an hour north, in Berkeley, Emily's sister Jessamine is a graduate student in philosophy, working in an antiquarian bookstore, earnestly doing her part to save the California redwoods, and living a life straight out of Dickens or possibly Charlotte Brontë. (Francine Prose)

The Boston Globe interviews the anthropologist and author Richard Wrangham:

When you are in the jungle do you read books that will transport you from it?

Yes. I think it’s why I go back to some familiar English authors, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë. I enjoy getting away from the heat and chaos, and getting into a calm, ordered, familiar, delicate world. (Amy Sutherland)

The Arizona Daily Star reviews a local production of Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep:

Sure, this "Irma Vep" doesn't have the purity or smooth touch of the earlier version ATC did. But there's no denying that playwright Ludlam loved his source material (Shakespeare, du Maurier, Brontë, "Curse of the Mummy" among them). (Kathleen Allen)

The Poughkeepsie Journal mentions the The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing Life: Inspiration and Advice from Celebrated Women Authors Who Paved the Way by Nava Atlas:

In "The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing Life," Atlas explores what it is like to live the writing life through the journals, letters and diaries of 12 celebrated women writers, including Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Madeleine L'Engle, Anaïs Nin, George Sand, Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf.

Another blogger who attended the dress rehearsal of the Minnesota Opera production of Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights writes in the Twin Cities Daily Planet. Another attendee, Dr. Mark Says praises the production but thinks that the opera is quite deficient per se:

This Opera fails and the fault is entirely Bernard Herrmann’s who lacks the musical skills and dramatic instincts to produce a compelling musical drama. Herrmann takes a leaf out of Richard Wagner’s book, and uses the technique of a musical phrase known as Leitmotif to identify principle characters.  However none in my view were memorable and I can  not remember one two days later.

We highly disagree with the reviewer as we rather think that Herrmann's music for this piece is quite memorable.

Donna Lea Simpson posts about Margot Peters's Unquiet Soul. A biography of Charlotte Brontë; La petite Lydia has just finished Wuthering Heights; Been There, Read That reviews the novel;   Modern Brontës is a blog where "Charlotte, Emily and Anne blog about their modern lives"; pellicolascaduta reviews in Italian Jane Eyre 1996. Thomasenqvist uploads yet another short video of the Brontë Society 2009 Conference; poetictouchchannel uploads a reading by Kristin Hughes and Stella Gonet of Emily Brontë's Remembrance.

Finally, an excellent article, as usual, on Abigails Ateliers about what the Brontës wore when they were young.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Opera, Poetry, References, Wuthering Heights