Brontë barmy

Malta Today reviews Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre:

Despite its many cinematic predecessors, it hardly surprising that yet another adaptation – officially the 11th – of Charlotte Brontë’s enduring governess drama has once again graced the cinemas. But this time, the international cast and crew, led by up-and-coming Californian director Cary Fukunaga, have put together something that has little affinity with either Hollywood or the BBC. The film is quiet, earthy and built on ominous dread, with only a true romance can deflate. A lot like the source novel, and all the more admirable for it. (Teodor Reljic)

And the Dumfries Standard reviews it very briefly:

Mia Wasikowska was an insipid Alice thanks to Tim Burton but here the Australian actress shows far more depth of character in her restrained but convincing performance as the abused, introverted but stoical heroine.
Michael Fassbender is a rugged Rochester and there is the familiar delight of Judi Dench as Mrs Fairfax with strong support from Jamie Bell as the frustrated St John Rivers. (Bill Cunningham)

Ham & High features Jack Liebeck, who played the violin in Dario Marianelli's soundtrack.

And, if you’ve heard that score, you’ll know it’s virtually a violin concerto with the soloist embodying the soul of Charlotte Brontë’s heroine as she progresses through the cumulative anguish of her life. [...]
Finding time to record Marianelli’s score was an issue in itself. There was a gap in Liebeck’s schedule but only because he was due to go on honeymoon last December when the sessions took place. [...]
“I didn’t know Dario but we were put together by my record company, Sony. I met him on a Friday. We started recording the following Thursday and, three days later, it was all done. Much of it was with me effectively sight-reading because there hadn’t been an opportunity to learn the notes beforehand.”
Listening to it on CD – just out from Sony – you wouldn’t know how how quickly it was put together. Rich in texture, sweepingly expansive, it’s a film score in the grand manner and constructed with the technical accomplishment of a composer who, before he took to Hollywood, was writing quirkily contemporary music for the BBC Symphony Orchestra to play at mid-week concerts in Maida Vale.
An interesting outcome of the project, though, is that composer and performer struck an instant friendship and there are plans for continuing collaboration on a concert piece: something unrelated to film music that would take Marianelli back to the concert world in which he trained.
Liebeck, meanwhile, is luxuriating in the triumph of his big screen debut – though it’s not exactly his first contact with the industry. (Michael White)

The San Francisco Bay Guardian's Pixel Vision writes briefly but very enthusiastically about Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights:

Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, UK) Adapting Emily Brontë's novel from 1847 is a perfect project for the stark realist Andrea Arnold. Her previous films Fish Tank (2009) and Red Road (2006) have captured audiences with their brutal honesty and inspired storytelling. With perhaps the most visually poetic atmosphere since Lynne Ramsey and Claire Denis, Arnold manages to emphasize every snowflake in this austere tale of lost love without a single lazy hint of narration. Do not miss this for the world. (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

BBC News and the Surrey Comet list the film among others to look forward to.

The Bristol Evening Post announces that Blake Morrison's We Are Three Sisters is soon to be on stage locally and can't help but make a reference to the current Brontëmania:

The country appears to have gone Brontë barmy; with the release of two films this autumn, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, the inspirational sisters look set to rival even Jane Austen.

And What's On Stage reviews the production as seen at The Dukes, Lancaster, and gives it 3 stars:

There’s much to like in the piece, the acting for one - as the performances are excellent and very evocative. Yet it also feels like an experiment in cleverness - rather than wanting to entertain, challenge or inspire the audience.
Right at the end of the play the sisters sit around the table and talk about how they will be remembered when they die - it was a quiet, subtle moment and one I would have liked to have seen a lot more of in the rest of the play. (Susan Riley)

And please don't forget about our special offer regarding the play script of We Are Three Sisters!

Stella Duffy discusses the 'sympathetic character' in The Huffington Post:

I'm not sure when the 'sympathetic character' became a necessity for modern authors. Certainly the Brontës didn't feel constantly pressured to write sympathetic characters, or they'd never have got away with Mr. Rochester (a bigamist bully with an ex-wife locked away in the attic) or Heathcliff (basically a stalker, albeit a very charismatic one), and we have to acknowledge that Becky Sharp would never have been created if Thackeray had had to make her sympathetic with redeemable qualities at the end.

The Vancouver Sun features a shop that is still renting VHS and not without reason sometimes:

Le also keeps a wide selection of VHS tapes on the shelves - a format film distributors abandoned in 2002. Le said keeping them around is a bit like saving an endangered species, or in this case, endangered works of film art.
"Up to now, there are still a lot of movies haven't been duplicated on DVD yet," he said, grabbing a copy of the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier.
"This is a classic collection, and it hasn't been turn turned into a DVD. ... If we don't hang on to this movie, one day someone will be looking for it, and it won't be here." (Brent Richter)

The JC wonders whether the holocaust can be art:

There was a girl in my Holocaust literature class at university who took exception to an assignment we were given to assess various survivors' memoirs. She thought it wrong to subject them to the kind of process one might accord to a Brontë novel. Yet how else do you assess art? And are Holocaust works art at all, or should they be viewed purely as historical documents? Would you ever want to read a review of The Diary of Anne Frank? (James Inverne)

An MA Student confesses to San Antonio Express-News that she's trying to watch 'all the Jane Eyre movies'. Broadway World Philadelphia announces a local production of The Mystery of Irma Vep with the usual reference to its Brontë inspiration.

Early Bird Film Society and The Velvet Café review the new Jane Eyre film.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights