Posh Lintons

Stephanie Green, writing for The Huffington Post, praises the new Jane Eyre:

As a stridently confident Brontë fan, I can say without equivocation that our dear friend Charlotte would be most pleased with the new Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska, who plays Charlotte's triumphant heroine with artistic vigor. [...]
I think the reason this film version appealed to me is that it does not sacrifice the book's dark side.

Comic Book Resources also comments briefly on the film:

Jane Eyre was surprisingly good. The direction was strong and really brought in the gothic elements of the book. I found some of the character stuff a little too convenient/superficial, but, overall, I enjoyed it. (Chad Nevett)

My Fox Lubbock tells the story of going to see Jane Eyre and having an unpleasant neighbour in the room.

And about this year's other Brontë film, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, The Times has an article on casting director Lucy Pardee:

She has just finished casting duties on Andrea Arnold’s new high-profile Wuthering Heights adaptation, and here, though she was still casting non-professionals, the remit for perhaps the first time in her career was to cast for posh (for the roles of the well-heeled Isabella and Edgar Linton). “I was a little bit nervous about going into a private school,” she says. “And I was perhaps being a bit of an inverted snob about it, to be honest. But actually, the kids were lovely and what they had to offer was real talent.” (Kevin Maher)

Although Gails Stevens is credited with the main casting for the film (the grown-up Heathcliff and Cathy, for instance), Lucy Pardee - uncredited on IMDb, though - seems to have been in charge of casting the young children. She worked with Andrea Arnold in Fish Tank too. What is confusing though, is that it says that, 'she has just finished casting duties', given that the film is now, as far as we know, in the editing room.

The Arty Semite - a Jewish Daily Forward blog - has an anecdote about the classic adaptation of Wuthering Heights in an article about Viennese harpsichordist Alice Ehlers:

While awaiting this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood from April 28 to May 1, the Turner Classic Movie channel broadcast William Wyler’s 1939 “Wuthering Heights,” starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. Cinema fans recall that in that film, during a party, Isabella Linton (Geraldine Fitzgerald) announces to Heathcliff (Olivier): “Oh, Madame Ehlers is going to play the harpsichord” (although Fitzgerald mispronounces the name “Erliss”).
A lookalike of the Polish Jewish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, with a Landowska-ish hairstyle, sits at a huge, Landowska-custom-built Pleyel harpsichord, and plays an acerbic rendition of Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca. The resulting spine-tingling chills epitomize the excitement of Landowska’s approach to music, jangling the lovers’ nerves as they stare feverishly at each other in close-ups.
Director William Wyler (born Wilhelm Weiller to an Alsatian Jewish family of music lovers) cast an ideal stand-in for Landowska: Alice Ehlers. (Benjamin Ivry)

And The Jewish Week wonders,

Can you imagine “Wuthering Heights” under a sunny blue sky? (Hilary Larson)

The Telegraph and Argus reviews Jessica Cox's Brief Lives biography of Charlotte Brontë.

Jessica Cox’s book augments the best of earlier works on the remarkable family, offering the general reader both a summary of life at the top of Haworth from the time Charlotte was moved there at the age of four, and an analysis of the times in which she wrote her four novels: The Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette. (Jim Greenhalf)

This month's issue of The Australian Literary Review includes a 'list of classics to anchor a contemporary humanities curriculum'. However, the editorial itself remarks on a few gaps here and there:

In that vein some will look at Schwartz's canon and tut-tut about the absence of George Eliot and the Brontës. (Luke Slattery)

And so here we are duly tut-tutting about it, of course.

The Montreal Gazette reviews the play The Book Club, by Ned Cox, at the Freestanding Room, where

There's a 19th-century ghost (Johanna Nutter, looking very Jane Eyre). . . (Pat Donnelly)

And a couple of reviews of Stevie Nicks's new album In Your Dreams mention her song Wide Sargasso Sea. According to Paste Magazine,

a more representative track is “Wide Sargasso Sea,” a corny, overcooked tale of fading beauty, tarnished lust, and backfiring arson. (Ryan Reed)

Whereas for HitFix's The Beat Goes On,

there are some misses, like “Wide Sargasso Sea” (Melinda Newman)

Notes of The Dreamer writes in Indonesian about Jane Eyre, Tales from the Saner Side reviews Jane Eyre 2011 and Livros & bolinhos posts about the 2006 adaptation. Coincidentally enough, Cindy's Book Club is asking 'which is the best Jane Eyre?'.

Categories: Biography, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights