Jane Eyre: pulp fiction

Digital Spy has talked to Cary Fukunaga (on video too):

The filmmaker, who helmed this year's adaptation of the novel starring Mia Wasikowska in the title role, told Digital Spy that the quality of the novel was not in its storyline.
"There are elements to the 19th century which just don't work for contemporary audiences," Fukunaga said. "The surprise of the locked up woman in the attic is an essential part of the story, but some of the intrigue around it feels very dated now.
"What's great about Charlotte Brontë''s book - and this may sound like blasphemy to some - is not the plot. The plot is a bit of pulp fiction, if you will."
He continued: "It's the complexity of the characters, and how well they're described and the quality of the dialogue, which is unsurpassed in some ways, especially in terms of Rochester and Jane's interaction.
"It's just incredibly entertaining and smart and wonderful use of the English language - that's what makes this story amazing. Part of my job was distilling this stuff into something that's still believable to an audience today."
Asked about the pressure of adapting such a classic novel which had been filmed so many times, Fukunaga said: "I only get this question in the UK, because I think that here you grow up with the heritage novels so much.
"For me, the only Jane Eyre that I knew of at the time of signing on to the project was the Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine one, directed by Bob Stevens [sic], and of course the novel.
"There was no sense that it was more important than any other piece of British or American or French literature." (Mayer Nissim)

Canada.com reports Robert Gottlieb's opinion and he doesn't seem to see eye to eye with Cary Fukunaga:

Gottlieb jumped into to say that it’s difficult to make a good movie out of a good book. He said the new version of Jane Eyre, for instance, is all “moors and clothes,” without much Charlotte Brontë. (Jay Stone)

IndieWire bemoans the fact that Jane Eyre has been left out of the 21st Gotham Independent Film Award nominations.

On the other side of the coin, the Guardian reviews Restless, Mia Wasikowska's new film, and slips the following enthusiastic comment into the review:

Restless stars Dennis Hopper's son Henry (whom I already like more than his dad) and Mia Wasikowska (lately the best Jane Eyre ever) as an oddball couple who meet, Harold and Maude-style, at one of the funerals he obsessively attends. (John Patterson)

The List reviews Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights but is not so enthusiastic about it (to put it mildly):

The director seems more concerned with paying homage to Robert Bresson and the Dardenne brothers than she is with telling a winning story. Her big, bold move is to make Heathcliff black. It doesn’t work. At no stage is race treated as anything other than a simple explanation as to why the white community tilling the land in the Yorkshire moors don’t like this potential suitor to Catherine. [...]
Arnold demands that the lines, whether delivered by professionals or non-actors, have a stilted quality delivered with no emotion. Stripping the story of romance and trying to make a statement about man and nature proves both pointless and self-defeating. (Kaleem Aftab)

The Irish Times reviews the stage adaptation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls where

We know Kate’s romantic desires, so incompatible with the world, have been shaped by Yeats, Joyce, Brontë – books. (Peter Crawley)

The Telegraph and Argus reports that the Bradford Monopoly finally hits the shops today.

After suggestions were made by Bradford residents, spaces have also been allocated to Bradford supermarket giant Morrisons, the Bronte Parsonage Museum and the Bradford City and Bulls grounds. (Tanya O'Rourke)

The University Observer has suggestions for Halloween:

A vintage dress - You may need to raid your mum’s (or granny’s) wardrobe for this one. Give a dramatic, vintage-style dress a corpse-bride twist with blood-red lips and as much black eyeshadow as you can for a gothic, ethereal, Jane Eyre-inspired costume. (Sophie Lioe)

Reading Blog posts about Jane Eyre, Wonders in the Dark discusses the 2006 adaptation and Tommaso de Brabant (in Italian) reviews the 2011 adaptation. Flossie on Film has seen Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights at the London Film Festival and discusses it at length.