"She could not speak until she had shed some tears"

TCJewFolk discusses the Minnesota production of Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights:

I found the production to be breathtaking and surprisingly accessible to somebody unfamiliar with the genre. It helps that the storyline is familiar and that captions are available above the stage – even though this opera is sung in English, there were times that my untrained ear had a bit of hard time catching an unfamiliar word or two (it is a Brontë story after all…). (Emily Cornell)

More comments about Jane Eyre 2011: In the Bluefield Daily Telegraph a column defends Jane Eyre as a role model:

The fictional Jane Eyre, the title character of Charlotte Brontë’s ground-breaking Gothic romance, is also a role model of strength and compassion. Orphaned and neglected, she rises above her immense loneliness and forges a life for herself as a governess. When she is finally offered love, she refuses to stray from the moral compass that guides her, the faith that steers her. She won’t compromise her values, even for love.  (Jaletta Albright Desmond)

Not so far from this review in The Curator Magazine:

Beautifully filmed and sustaining incredible emotional intensity, it captures well the spirit of the book. I watched the whole time curled up in a tight ball, thrilled by that intensity. Even as I recall it I have to remind myself to exhale. The movie has stayed with me these two weeks, and the scene I keep returning to is the one I believe defines Jane’s character. (...)
The contrast between Jane’s resolve and the moral relativism, now so dominant, is striking. How does a modern audience understand Jane Eyre’s wrenching choice to leave Mr. Rochester? My guess is that to most of my generation it makes no sense at all.  (Ashley Thorne)

Las Vegas Review-Journal:

(B) Charlotte Brontë's oft-filmed literary classic gets yet another big-screen treatment, this time with Mia Wasikowska ("Alice in Wonderland," "The Kids Are All Right"), spot-on as the beleaguered title governess, and "Inglourious Basterds' " strapping Michael Fassbender, who's a bit less convincing as the mysterious Mr. Rochester. Screenwriter Moira Buffini ("Tamara Drewe") shakes up the narrative, but director Cary Fukunaga ("Sin Nombre"), emphasizing the tale's darker Gothic elements, creates a persuasive backdrop for Jane's "tale of woe" -- which makes her ultimate success all the sweeter.

Ridgefield Patch:

The new interpretation of Jane Eyre has been committed to film, and the Playhouse is showing it today at 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Up-and-coming American director Cary Fukunaga is at the helm of this well-reviewed version of Charlotte Bronte's classic 1847 novel. (Michael Gibney)

Good Times (Santa Cruz):

Mia Wasikowska is a poised, yet fiercely self-directed Jane to Michael Fassbender’s wry, stormy Rochester in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s fresh take on the evergreen, Victorian-era Gothic romance. It’s a deeply felt, beautifully wrought little gem of mood and sensibility.  Moira Buffini’s smart script mines every nuance of feeling out of Charlotte Brontë’s story, spoken and otherwise; together, the filmmakers resist every temptation to resort to overheated melodrama, weaving instead a compelling narrative of urgent emotional suspense. (Lisa Jensen)

Ashland Daily Tidings:

Mia Waskowska, who portrayed Alice in Tim  Burton's "Alice in Wonderland," is a remarkable actress and perfectly cast in the recently released "Jane Eyre." (...)
Director Cary Joji Fukunaga ("Sin Nombre") does a marvelous job of capturing the period as well as creating an engaging if brooding film with a superb ensemble of actors. (Chris Honoré)

The Pacific Northwest Inlander:

The story of Jane Eyre — the lowly governess who falls in love with her employer and subsequently faces mysterious happenings while working at his mansion — clearly is begging to be told again, and apparently the newest movie is the most fantastic rendition yet. (Luke Baumgarten)

The Fresno Bee:

In a word, this "Jane Eyre" is spare, which seems to me a perfect approach to the Charlotte Brontë source material. Rather than heat things up with jolts of gothic romanticism, this version is content to simmer, not rage. (...)
The result is a crisp, modern interpretation that at the same time remains unflinchingly true to its 19th-century setting. (Donald Munro)

The Reader:

Much of Jane Eyre is perfect — its costumes and historical accuracy seem beyond reproach. Its moody musical score, all tremulous stringed instruments, complements its visual compositions, which, when inside, are all muted colors and inky shadows bleeding into one another. Outdoor shots feature barren, drizzly countryside. Visually, the film captures the loneliness and isolation of its main character.
Jane Eyre avoids the stilted period dialog that can hamstring and suck the fun out of these types of films. More importantly, Jane Eyre gives us a new version of memorable, believable characters that can stand on their own and aren’t dependent upon the viewer having read the source material in lit class. (Ben Coffman)

On blogs: The Mint Film Blog is eagerly waiting for the British release of the film, Christina Waters reviews it.

The Telegraph publishes an article about the English seaside:

Virtually simultaneously, the Romantics were labelling the ocean aesthetically “sublime” and in the process, inventing the sea view, which Charlotte Brontë found so sublime that she burst into tears when she first saw it at Bridlington in 1839.  (Travis Elborough)

Flavorwire chooses Helen Burns as one of their favorite secondary characters in literature:

After Jane awoke, she realized that graceful and studious Helen had died in her sleep during the night, with Jane’s arms still clasped around her neck. There’s a beautiful scene right before Helen passes where Jane questions her friend about the afterlife; Helen’s conviction of her place in Heaven is a comfort to her beloved schoolmate, as they each whisper to each other “goodnight” for the last time. We can guarantee that this passage has been making good-hearted, Victorian-loving girls swoon for years. (Kathleen Massara)

The Shawangunk Journal posts about Maureen Adams's Shaggy Muses:

The other is called, Shaggy Muses, by Maureen Adams. It is five stories about famous authors and their dogs. The people are: Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Wolf, Emily Dickinson and Edith Wharton. One passage I love is this: "In addition to providing a safe harbor and a secure attachment...they teach us how to tolerate and moderate our emotions. A child's powerful feelings are terrifying if experienced alone...we can cry or shout or read a poem we have written and our dog will keep us on track and always remains the same. They are our mute confederates." (Lucy Muller)

On UGO we read about a steampunk Iron Man figure by Jonathan Kriscak. The author of the article seems to love it rather more than Jane Eyre:

You've got a little over a day and a half to get your bid in on eBay, and it's already up to $300. If there's any justice in the world, it'll go for way more than that, Marvel will pay him for his design, it'll get mass-produced as an expensive (but doable) collectible, and we'll all get one for Christmas--even the filthy Victorian street urchins and all of the people responsible for making me read Jane Eyre. (Marissa Meli)

At The Brown and White we read a defence of the wonders of Twitter which begins like this:

A computerized screen could never replace the nostalgic feeling of holding a paper in your hands, reading the Sunday paper with your family over breakfast or sitting on your porch in the summer, enthralled in the characterization and plot techniques of "Jane Eyre." (Annamaria Anselmo)

State (Ireland) praises Tom Hardy's performance as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights 2009:

We know the man can act as he played the broodiest of them all in Wuthering Heights. Hands down the best Heathcliff. (Hayley Reynolds)

Today is International Mother Earth Day, and Mongabay.com talks about what nature adds to art:

Imagine My Antonia without the red grass of the American prairie or Wuthering Heights without the bleak moors. (Jeremy Hance)

Janet Mullany's erotic novella Reader, I Married Him is nominated to the 6th Annual Passionate Plume Awards (Passionate Ink) in the Best Novella category. The winners will be known on the 29th of June.

A new Brontëite in the Oregon Gazette Times; PagesofJulia's Blog reviews Erin Blakemore's The Heroine's Bookshelf;  Kristin Berky-Abbott does a Christ-like reading of Jane Eyre (very approppriate for Good Friday); Cyberwusel (in German) also discusses the novel and The Book Project is reading it; Felice's Log posts a photo gallery of Jane Eyre 1983.

Heather Griffin has posted some pictures of textile art pieces inspired by Wuthering Heights on Flickr and Amanda White - Contemporary Naive Art is making the final stages of a collage inspired by the Brontës and with the Haworth Parsonage as its main element (on the right).

More blogs celebrating Charlotte Brontë's birthday: Risky Regencies, citovulus sus, Where the Lovely Things Are, The Brontës Tumblr, the Brontë Sisters.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Opera, References, Wuthering Heights