Just do it... better

Kotaku interviews Simon Meek, alma mater of the Digital Adaptations project which was on the news some weeks ago. Here he explains what a Digital Adaptation with Wuthering Heights could look like as an example:

There's something seemingly scandalous, irreverent about Simon Meek's notion of "playing through" novels like Crime and Punishment or Wuthering Heights.
But in practice, Meek's work transforming the world's great literature into something experienced on a gaming console is more akin to performance art or theater than it is video games.
Meek seems to want to do for the video game generation what public broadcast television did for the television generation, adapting great works of literature into something that could expand the reach of a book.
What Meek and Scottish-based TernTV are creating to be experienced on computers, iPads and game consoles isn't video games, not really. The group is creating digital adaptations, works that put readers inside the scenes of a classic and asks them to experience the story from the inside out. (...)
Since Meek couldn't talk about the spy novel they are currently adapting, I asked him to explain one such setting for a book they're considering working on next, Wuthering Heights.
In one explorable scene in the Emily Brontë classic, players would find themselves in Cathy Linton's room.
"At this point they can see everything that is described in the book, filled out with all manner of objects that we know are in fitting for a room of that sorts," Meek said.
In the original work we read that the "whole furniture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top resembling coach windows."
Words pulled directly from the book float into view at the appropriate times, like "In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window," when the book's narrator, Lockwood, moves into the box bed.
Players would hear the wind outside, described in the book as howling.
"From there, the player gets to pick up the books (Myst style) from within the box bed room," Meek said. "In these books the player finds the text that is alluded to in the book."
In this case, that means viewers can expect to find "an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph, - rudely, yet powerfully sketched" and "faded hieroglyphics."
They would also come across this entry: "An awful Sunday, I wish my father were back again. Hindley is a detestable substitute - his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious - H. and I are going to rebel - we took our initiatory step this evening.... " (Brian Crecente)

The publisher Peter Owen talks with The Sunday Herald about his career:

Although they were old friends, it became impossible to contact Spark, he says, after he published her anthology, Essence Of The Brontës (1993), and she moved to Tuscany, where she lived with the sculptor and painter Penelope Jardine. (Jackie McGlone)

The Sun has a list of six books for beach reading:

Fame by Tilly Bagshawe
One of the best books of all time, Wuthering Heights is to be made into a film and with the talents of hotshot producer Dorian Razmirez at the helm it looks set to be the movie of the year.
Sabrina Leon is struggling to save her career and when she is cast as Cathy it's the lifeline she needs, if only she could appreciate it. Viorel Hudson plays the brooding Heathcliff - but can he handle the stress of being on location?
Naughty and glam, Tilly is my guilty pleasure. (Natasha Harding)

Curiously enough, The Telegraph (India) recommends Wuthering Heights in a list for rainy days:

Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë

This dark and delightful tale of all-consuming passion between the brooding Heathcliff and the lovely Catherine is best read sitting by the window on a stormy night, with a steaming mug of coffee for company. Guess what, ‘wuthering’ in Yorkshire means ‘turbulent weather’! (Kushaly Nag, Mohua Das, Priyanka Roy and Saionee Chakraborty)

The Irish Times tells the story of how a retired school teacher fought back depression with her love for theatre:

“It all started with Jane Eyre at the Gate Theatre in 2003. When the show was over the person who left the show was a different person. I was transformed by the experience and my love affair with theatre had begun,” she says. (Sylvia Thompson)

Hollywood.com prefers Robert Pattinson's role as Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter saga to his Edward Cullen for Twilight:

He speaks like he’s still stuck in a former century and retains those difficult qualities of other literary characters like Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre, who’s romantic in theory, but not practice. (Kelsea Stahler)

The Huffington Post vindicates William Wyler's career as film director:

I cannot overlook one of the director's finest works, 1939's Wuthering Heights, just because -- incomprehensibly -- it is currently unavailable on DVD. Wyler's adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel remains one our great tear-jerkers, and made a star (in America) out of Laurence Olivier, whose then wife, Vivien Leigh, was simultaneously shooting a little feature called Gone With The Wind. David Niven, who had third billing behind Olivier and the stunning Merle Oberon (as Cathy), relates in his memoir, The Moon's a Balloon, why the director was known as "Once More Wyler": He would habitually insist on endless re-takes, often while reading a newspaper, which drove actors mad. On Heights, Olivier finally complained he'd tried a certain scene a hundred different ways, and needed more direction on how to play it. From behind the paper came the quiet but steady reply: "Just do it... better." (John Farr)

The eternal book versus film controversy continues in the Wall Street Journal. Jane Eyre 1944 is one of its subjects:

Reading "Jane Eyre," I took Charlotte Brontë's physical clues about her heroine ("I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked") and filled in the gaps: I created my own portrait of Jane. Her fellow inmates at Lowood wore "brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion"; I designed some simple dresses for them. Jane looked out at "still green fields"—I colored those fields dark green.
Once I saw the movie of "Jane Eyre" with Joan Fontaine, the image of Joan as Jane was stuck in my head. As much as I admired Miss Fontaine's performance, she looked nothing at all like my Jane Eyre. And while that film version of "Jane Eyre" was relatively spare, in some English period films, Roger Ebert has noted, "Laura Ashley seems to have dashed in to dress everyone, while Martha Stewart was in the kitchen."Joan Fontaine also starred as the second wife in Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of "Rebecca." Reading the book, I had pictured the narrator as a mousy brunette ("The reflection stared back at me, sallow and plain"); here was the beautiful Miss Fontaine again. She won an Academy Award for the role, but I was glad I had my own interpretation of Mrs. de Winter before I saw hers. (Cynthia Crossen)

Corina Walbert posts on Associated Content about her Favorite Novelist: Charlotte Brontë; more on Charlotte and Arthur Bell Nicholls's Irish honeymoon on the Brontë Sisters; Felice's Log reviews Jane Eyre 1983; Rats Penats briefly posts about Wuthering Heights 1939 (in Spanish) and The Literary Gothamite reviews the Hesperus Press edition of Tales of the Islanders by Charlotte Brontë.

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Juvenilia, Movies-DVD-TV, Software, Wuthering Heights