The intricacies of Wuthering Heights

Several media report the opening of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival with the presence of Judi Dench, who was awarded with the Crystal Globe Award. The screening of Jane Eyre 2011 also took place. Picture source. A few reviews of the movie have been published in the Czech press:

Adaptace klasického románu Charlotte Brontëové nešetří dechberoucími panoramatickými záběry na skotská vřešoviště, kýčovitou romantikou, která k žánru patří, ale ani překvapivě ponurým, místy až hororovým laděním. (Irena Zemanová in IHNed) (Translation)

Film je ale také velkou podívanou, v níž hraje významnou roli doba ve všech detailech od prostředí až po kostýmy. Tvůrci pečlivě zkoumali a reprodukovali módu třicátých a čtyřicátých let devatenáctého století, kdy ještě neexistovaly šicí stroje a všechno se šilo ručně.  (Věra Míšková in Novinky) (Translation)

Check also ČTK, Zpravy Rozhlas, CT24 or Karlovarský deník.

As the film opens in Australia in a few days, Mia Wasikowska is featured in the Australian edition of Harper's Bazaar wearing pieces from the Louis Vuitton Autumn-Winter 2012 collection with a nineteenth century touch (like this and this). Filguiden (Norway) informs that the film entered the weekend box office top ten (it was number 8). Finally, good news for our Swedish friends, the Swedish Jane Eyre premiere will be a bit earlier if you are near Göteborg. The film will be screened at the Göteborgs Kulturkalas next August 20.

Precisely, the Jamestown Post Journal salutes the local screening of the film like this:

In a bold, new version of this oft-told tale, director Cary Joji Fukunaga infuses a contemporary immediacy into Brontë's timeless, classic story. Wasikowska ("Alice in Wonderland") and Fassbender ("Inglourious Basterds") star in the iconic lead roles of the romantic drama, the heroine of which continues to inspire new generations of devoted readers and viewers.

The Hemel Gazette talks about new stand-up comedians performing these days at the Tringe Festival. We are rather curious about this routine:

While Steph Peart’s knowledge of Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship in Wuthering Heights must surely have won her an A* at A-level, unlike her poor partner Jo Scott who, having never even read the book, is tasked with lecturing the audience on its intricacies. (...)
You can see the novice stand-ups as they perform around the pubs of Tring on Sunday, July 3, from 7.30pm to 10.30pm.
The two best acts will also be joining one of comedy’s elder statesmen, Arthur Smith, when he appears at the Court Theatre in Tring on Thursday, July 7, 8pm.

The Mumbai Mirror celebrates the memory of the author Mala Sen and Jean Rhys:

Rhys’ best-known book continues to be the re-write of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), which she titled Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).
It humanizes Brontë’s “mad woman in the attic,” the first Mrs Rochester by giving her a background where she grew up, people who loved her, before she was slowly driven to despair and madness.
The novel is set in 1834 or so, after the Emancipation of slaves in British-owned Jamaica. The slaves have been freed, but there has been no compensation. (...)
The novel also humanizes Mr Rochester who, in the Brontë novel appears to be an erotic fantasy figure. Rochester too is, in a sense, an orphan. As the second son of an English family, he has to find his way in the world, as the estate will go to the oldest son.
He goes to the West Indies in search of an heiress, and is persuaded by a bribe of 30,000 pounds to marry Antoinette. The marriage is arranged by Richard Mason, Antoniette’s step-father’s son. But he finds everything disturbing:
“Everything is too much,” he thinks.” Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger.”
Wide Sargasso Sea is a haunting novel. Jean Rhys was herself a white West Indian, born in Dominica. Despite the fact that she had written several fine novels and stories, she remained unknown till the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea. Her fame, she said in an interview, came too late for her to care very much about it.
While re-reading the book this week, I came across one or two details I wasn’t sure of. I thought, automatically, as one does, I must ask Mala. (Eunice De Souza)

The San Francisco Chronicle reviews The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vasquez:

Like Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest, which critiques Shakespeare’s take on Caliban, or Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, an ardent “prequel” of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, this second novel by Juan Gabriel Vasquez is first and foremost an extended meditation on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, published in 1904 and set in a fictional South American republic named Costaguana. (Roberto Ignacio Díaz)

The Village Voice joins in the current discussion of the 'artistic' condition of videogames (yes / no) with this comparison:

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court struck down a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors on the grounds that video games are art. You may argue that the highest court in the land knows bunk about either video games or art, but their decision gives Crash Bandicoot the same first First Amendment protection as Jane Eyre. (Nick Greene)

The Herald-Mail interviews Meg Cabot who goes one step further in admitting her Brontëiteness:

But Cabot never considered writing, "although I'm not embarrassed to admit I wrote 'Jane Eyre' fan fiction," she said. (Marie Gilbert)

Las Provincias (Spain) interviews the writer Silvia Grijalba:

-¿A qué obedece el cambio de registro de sus ensayos hacia 'Contigo aprendí'?
-Me lo pedía la historia, que está inspirada en la vida de mi abuela, es ella la que inspira el libro, pero no es una biografía, está pasada por la ficción. Necesitaba una estructura clásica, casi decimonónica, al estilo de Jane Austen o las hermanas Brontë. (Translation)

The same author is also interviewed in El Mundo (Spain):

-¿Tienes algún escritor de referencia?¿Te gusta alguna obra en especial o que recuerdas siempre con un cariño único?
-Tengo muchísimos y muy variados. Desde las hermanas Brönte(sic), Jane Austen, Fitzgerald o Thomas Hardy e Ishiguro que han podido influir en esta novela[.] (Translation)

Several Spanish media celebrate Bernard Herrmann's 100th birthday and mention his Wuthering Heights opera:

Esperemos que este año de conmemoración sirva para conocer también mejor sus partituras no cinematográficas,en la que destaca su ópera Wuthering Heights (Cumbres Borrascosas), basada en el gran clásico de Emily Brontë, para algunos su gran obra maestra[.] (Ana Vega Toscana in RTVE.es) (Translation)

Aunque para uno de sus filmes -'Hangover Square', entre nosotros 'Concierto macabro'- ya había escrito un concierto para piano y orquesta, las partituras de ese tipo son en general ajenas al cine. Las más importantes son una sinfonía, varias obras para cuerdas, incluidos una cuarteto y una 'sinfonieta', piezas para orquesta de cámara, un ballet, diversas cantatas, obras para voz y piano y piano solo. También escribió una ópera basada en 'Cumbres borrascosas' y una comedia musical. (César Coca in El Diario Montañés) (Translation)

Also in La Nación (Argentina). QoBuz (France) announces the possibility that a recording of Wuthering Heights (possibly the one at the Montpellier Festival last year) will be released by the Accord label. Finally NMZ (Germany) says:

Bei 20th Century Fox fand Herrmann ab 1944 ein Jahrzehnt lang eine neue musikalische Heimat. Schon die Motive aus seinem ersten Fox-Film "Jane Eyre" sollten den "schwarzen Romantiker" lange verfolgen und später in seiner großartigen Bronté-Oper "Wuthering Heights" wieder auftauchen. (Viktor Rotthaler) (Translation)

20 Minutos (Spain) reviews the recently published En voz activa. El papel de la mujer en la ficción inglesa (XVII-XX) by María del Mar Rivas Carmona where:

Desde The Contract (Margaret Cavendish, 1656) a The Summer before the Dark (Doris Lessing, 1973), pasando por las obras de Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, las hermanas Brontë, George Eliot o Virginia Woolf, entre otras, es "posible rastrear un hilo conductor a través del que las mujeres han descrito su tradicional adscripción a un papel fijo y a una esfera limitada, la privada". (Europa Press) (Translation)

Las Horas Perdidas (Spain) quotes the director Pablo Berger saying about his upcoming Snow White film:

La acción se desarrollará en los años 20 y la película será muda y en blanco y negro. Berger asegura que su versión de Blancanieves será un melodrama gótico, que no se acercará a la versión animada de Walt Disney sino a Cumbres Borrascosas de Emily Brönte (sic). (Translation) 

Le Monde (France) publishes an article about the comic author Yumiko Igarashi, creator of Candy, Candy:

Avec ses yeux verts, ses taches de rousseur et son optimisme à tous crins, Candy doit aussi beaucoup à Anne of Green Gables (Anne, la maison aux pignons verts, 1908), un roman culte de la littérature de jeunesse écrit par la Canadienne Lucy Maud Montgomery. Certains, comme Patrick Gaumer, auteur du Dictionnaire mondial de la BD (Larousse), verront également dans la quête initiatrice de la petite orpheline des allusions à Charles Dickens (David Copperfield) ou Emily Brontë (Les Hauts de Hurlevent). (Frédéric Potet) (Translation)

A valedictorian speech with a mention to Jane Eyre in the Dansville-Genesee Country Express; a local Brontëite in the Hamilton-Wenham Patch; Livraria da Folha (Brazil) mentions the Portuguese translation of Brian Dillon's The Hypochondriacs (Tormented Hope). On the blogosphere both Book Shelf and With Love post about Jane Eyre, Paperblog posts about her author, Charlotte Brontë in Spanish, Celluloïdz reviews I Walked with a Zombie 1943 (in French).

Finally, do you remember this campaign of air fresheners with unexpected Brontë references? The Yekaterinburg bookstore has received a Bronze Media Lion at the recent Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Opera, References, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights