Cathy, Get Your Pits Out

Today at the Ilkley Literature Festival:

Sunday, October 16th, 2011, 3:00 pm at St Margaret's Hall 190.
Afternoon Tea with Bonnie Greer & the Brontës 
Speakers: Bonnie Greer Author, playwright and broadcaster

Bonnie Greer is passionate about the Brontës. Join her in conversation with Sally McDonald, Chair of the Brontë Society, about the Brontës’ influence on her work and on that of other contemporary artists. Then enjoy a delicious home-made afternoon tea to the accompaniment of the Canzona String Quartet, with music the Brontës themselves are known to have played. Includes afternoon tea.
In association with the Brontë Society.

The Independent gives the heads up on Wuthering Heights 2011:

What are we talking about?

The latest big-screen adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic novel (the first half, at least. Like most film versions, it ends with Cathy's death).

Elevator Pitch

Brontë gets gritty.

Prime Movers

Director Andrea Arnold, whose film Fish Tank was widely lauded, is behind the (often handheld) camera. Olivia Hetreed (Girl with a Pearl Earring) wrote the pared-down, yet expletive-heavy, script. Yep, you can even expect to hear Heathcliff uttering the C-word.

The Stars

Kaya Scodelario, best known as Effy from Skins, plays the adult Cathy to newcomer James Howson's Heathcliff. Two unknowns also play their younger versions: Arnold has an eye for raw talent, and has certainly found it in the teenaged Shannon Beer and Solomon Glave. (...)

It's great that...

Arnold has managed to genuinely breathe new life into a much-adapted, almost cinematically codified story.

Insider Knowledge

It's the first film to cast a black man as Heathcliff. Arnold justified the decision by pointing out the novel's references to his dark colouring: he is described as a "dark-skinned gypsy in aspect" and "a little lascar".

It's a shame that...

Despite its grubby realism and lack of syrupy soundtrack, the movie bizarrely ends with a specially commissioned song from MOR folk band Mumford and Sons; The Hollywood Reporter deemed it Arnold's only real misstep.

Hit Potential

Lacks star power and won't exactly please the bonnets'n' bustles parade, but film buffs and art-house audiences will likely love it. Arnold's brutal take on the story may even win over new audiences normally resistant to literary adaptations or period dramas. (Holly Williams)

The Sunday Times interviews Kaya Scodelario who says a few things about Andrea Arnold's film:

“Andrea said, at the beginning of the shoot, to all of the girls, ‘Grow everything.’ Everyone was, like ‘Urghh.’ I was, like, ‘Yess.’ I was really impressed with what I achieved in three months. We’d go to the pub in the evening and I’d hear people chanting, ‘Get your pits out.’ I’d just sit and show them.” In fact, Scodelario’s hairy armpits never make an appearance in the film. (...)
The part was right for Scodelario. The only problem was convincing her she was right for the part. “Coming from a Skins background, not going to drama school, not being the poshest person in the world, not being that blonde kind of girl, I just didn’t think I’d fit in. I always thought, ‘Wuthering Heights? That’s that romantic film.’ It’s Kate Bush’s fault. But it’s not that at all. It’s really dark and messed up. It’s probably the only period drama  that I can see myself in.”
Arnold’s Wuthering Heights allots as much screen time as the book to Heathcliff and Cathy as children, which means that Scodelario gets no more than half a film to show what she is capable of. Half is enough. She hurts and hates with equal vigour, reflecting, for once, the relentless violence that underpins the novel. She gives everything. (Benji Wilson)

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reviews Damned by Chuck Palahniuk:

Palahniuk's fans cherish his prose for its satirical intelligence, and he sprinkles literary allusions over "Damned" as if they're highbrow candy. Madison — an especially well-read girl — name-checks everybody from Jane Eyre to Palahniuk's patron saint, Jonathan Swift. (Doug Childers)

Check this previous post for the actual quote.

It seems that mentioning the Brontës is becoming a standard cliché in any review of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot:

The Marriage Plot is more sedate “To start with, look at all the books” inevitably suffers in comparison. But its characters are wonderfully imagined and its deconstruction of the marriage plot — that popular, old-fashioned device used so effectively by such beloved writers as Jane Austen, Henry James, George Eliot and the Brontës — in a modern-day setting is an irresistible set-up for any reader who loves books the way Madeleine loves them. (Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald)

The first, and longest, section of the book attempts to break from the epic approach that made the author's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Middlesex" such a wonder. We can't blame Eugenides for wanting a change in voice and scope. This time, he delves into Madeleine's love life and pits the romantic English major who adores Austen, the Brontës, Dickens and even Colette against the ironic semiotics gang who profess Derrida and sophomoric nihilism. (Richard Newman in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch)

 Jeanne Jakle in the San Antonio Express-News thinks that the latest Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch from the BBCseries) is

passionately geeky and Heathcliff-like[.]

John Sutherland is able to quote the Brontës even talking about Flashman. In The Independent:

The literary allusion currently stuck on David Cameron is, like the foregoing, somewhat inappropriate but, if one examines it carefully, richly informative about what, inwardly, we feel about our leader. He's Flashman. In Thomas Hughes's original Tom Brown's Schooldays, Flashman (like Heathcliff he has no forename) is the Rugby School bully who roasts poor Tom over a dorm fire to make the young fellow hand over a winning lottery ticket.

New Straits Times (Malaysia) gives tips for possible mash-ups:

Re-creative writing also allows you to explore the imaginative potential of merging published work — a highly entertaining aspect of fan fiction, which is essentially an experiment with Literature; could Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins be friends? Would Jane Eyre fare differently to Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984? (Emily Scanlon and Elizabeth Sanders)

Faith, Folk and Charity posts about Jane Eyre 2011; Jeeze, Julia! talks about Wuthering Heights; poetictouch2012 uploads to YouTube a reading of Emily Brontë's High Waving Heather by Kristin Hughes.