Earthy Heights

The Observer reports more details of Film4's pre-Cannes party which showed a teaser of Wuthering Heights 2011:

Interesting spot among the celeb crowd at Film4's pre-Cannes drinks last week was Venice film festival supremo Marco Mueller. The bespectacled curator was in town scouting projects for his own late-August festival and confided that he was "very impressed" with what he'd found going on in British film. He was also confident that "two or three" big British films that weren't ready for the Croisette would be gracing his Lido by the end of the summer. The biggest "poach" looks like being Andrea Arnold, whose enigmatic four-shot teaser for Wuthering Heights wowed the assembled crowd during a montage of Film4's upcoming slate. Arnold's career was kickstarted by Cannes and its support and awards for Red Road and Fish Tank, but her youthful take on the Brontë classic seems destined for Venice. From what we saw, the film looks earthy - shots of moths and beetles in the grass - and the unknown actor cast as Heathcliff (James Howsoncorrect) looks tremendously charismatic. (Jason Solomons)

And Jane Eyre 2011 is still being reviewed. Times (South Africa):

This version of Jane Eyre is bold and passionate, and the emotions on screen are raw and real. There is no overdressed period glamour or mawkish Victorian romance to stifle the novel's powerful feminist theme. (...)
Fukunaga deals deftly with the novel's dark secrets, which lend a touch of horror for viewers who are not familiar with the story. He does so by breaking up the novel's time-line into segments that enable him to create a sense of mystery without losing sight of Jane's emotional journey.
Adriano Goldman's exquisite photography complements the direction by finding flinty poetry in the rocks and empty spaces on the moors, under bleak grey skies. The same is true of Dario Marianelli's opulent music. The costumes created by Michael Connor are exquisite, exactly true to the period, but perfectly woven into the film's simple design.
Technically speaking, the film is beautiful, but the actors make it come alive in all its emotional complexity, and if you have not yet encountered Wasikowska on screen, her performance is dazzling. (Barry Ronge)

Cleveland High Patch recommends the movie for Mother's Day.

The Batley & Birstall News reports the publication of Borrowers of the Night by Anna Best:

A fireside tale of a woman who was brutally murdered 180 years ago has been transformed into a book by her distant relative.
English teacher Anna Best, of Halifax, grew up hearing her grandmother’s story of red-haired, striking great-aunt Elizabeth, whose throat was slit by an unknown killer on New Year’s Eve, 1832.
A lifelong fascination led her to research the unsolved crime — and after finding the coroner’s report on the internet, Anna decided to make the story into a book. (...)
Anna said researching the story was doubly fascinating because of her family and local connections.
The family went to St Peter’s Church in Hartshead where Elizabeth was baptised by the Rev Patrick Brontë. She is thought to be buried there in an unmarked grave. Her mother, Betty Chew, was from Birstall. And the presiding magistrate was Sir George Armytage of Kirklees Hall.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reviews Francine Prose's My New American Life:

Zeke's mother abandoned the family on Christmas Eve in his childhood and he has never recovered. Lula muses about Ginger the missing mother, and Prose seems influenced by Broadway's Next to Normal and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Scenes from both come to mind in the course of the novel. (Susan Balée)

Today we have a Brontë mention from Barbados, no less. A pity that it comes with a "small" blunder, though. The Barbados Nation News begins a review of Etched by Annette I. Smith like this:

What do Ezra Pound, Jane Eyre (BIG SIC), Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw and John Milton have in common?
They are on the list of great authors whose writings have stood the test of time.
At some point in their illustrious lives and outstanding careers, they turned to self-publishing to get their words into print. (Tony Best)

Fluttering Butterflies interviews the author Celia Rees:

Who is your favourite fictional character? And why?
I'm not very good at favourites - I have too many! One of my favourite characters is Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was the first classic novel I read all the way through without stopping. I loved her bravery and determination, her resourceful common sense and the way her seemingly quiet ordinariness hid her passionate nature.

Penelope's Romance Reviews and Annette's Book Spot post about Jane Eyre; laharri4 uploads on YouTube a clip with a brief biography of Charlotte Brontë.


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