A feast for the mind and spirit

Capital New York highlights Jane Eyre 2011 as one of the top films of 2011:

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre has been brought to the screen, large and small, more times than can be counted, and Cary Fukunaga's version comes the closest to capturing the eerie Gothic quality of Brontë's very strange book.
Every image is a carefully constructed work of art.  The picture oozes with mood and color, the interiors of Thornfield Hall chilly and vast, with the face of Jane Eyre emerging clearly in a circle of candlelight.  Fukunaga doesn't do too much, and he also doesn't do too little.  He is in service to the story.
The romance of Mr. Rochester and his employee Jane Eyre is singular in literature, and oftentimes film adaptations don't get it right.  It is a difficult dynamic to capture.  These two would never fit into Jane Austen's more polite world.  Their conversations are prickly, honest, and loaded with unspoken psychological backstory.  Both are misfits,  although Jane's position makes her status more unstable.  Both are lonely, wounded, and misunderstood.
Watching Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester banter in a quiet, dark room with a crackling fire is a great and powerful joy. Fukunaga actually lets the conversation play out.  He allows for silence, for tension to build, for there to be long moments where the two just look at one another, as though thinking: Can it be that I have found my match? Is this person before me ... the one?
(...) Jane Eyre was a feast for the mind and spirit. (Sheila O'Malley)

Other newspapers publish their own list:

Jane Eyre. The Kids Are All Right's Mia Wasikowska is haunting in the title role of Cary Fukunaga's new read of Charlotte Brontë's old book. Crushing stuff about a smart, independent-minded woman trapped by societal convention. Michael Fassbender is Rochester. Better to see him in this than as the soulless sex addict he plays in Shame. (Steven Rea in The Philadelphia Enquirer)

Entertainment Weekly talks about Michael Fassbender's year:

In March, he gave Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester a moody, broody makeover.

The film will be present at the Film Festival Las Condes 2011 in Chile.

RTÉ discusses the best albums of the year. We wonder what this metaphor means:

Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
Anna Calvi sounds as wild as a Brontë night as directed by David Lynch, corset ripped and stumbling across the moors, on these dark, dangerous and romantic songs.

A Christmas quiz in The Arts Desk:

Jane Eyre star Mia Wasikowska originally hails from which country? Clue     

National Post discuss marriage and weddings:

But will we say “will you?” I am 26; I have something that resembles a career; I’m independent and adamantly feminist. I have spent the last few years of my live-in relationship proving that I would make, at best, a disappointing wife. Were I to marry, I’d be way more Mrs. Rochester than Jane Eyre; I would burn that house down. (Sarah Nicole Prickett)

Movie Line publishes an alternative lady Christmas songlist:

Kate Bush. There is no other Kate Bush. In this ’79 Christmas special, she woos you with that ethereal voice that trilled about the plight of Cathy and Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights.” Now that every hipster in sight waits eagerly for her new releases, acquaint yourself with the kooky wraith we first met on The Kick Inside. (Louis Virtel)

Berliner Morgenpost includes Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights in a list of love songs:

Ich war fünf Jahre alt, unser Au-pair-Mädchen Louise hatte Liebeskummer und hörte in ihrem Dachkämmerchen "Wuthering Heights" in Endlosschleife, dieses Lied über die unerfüllte Liebe zwischen Heathcliff und Cathy und ihre verlorenen Seelen. Mein Bruder nannte Kate Bush "die Quietschstimme". Ich liebte das Lied. Ein dreifaches Debüt sozusagen, für Kate Bush als Popsängerin (1978), für mich als Pophörerin (1984), für Emily Brontë als Romanautorin (1847). "Sturmhöhe", die Vorlage für das Lied, habe ich erst 25 Jahre später gelesen. Cathy und Heathcliff sind rätselhafte, grausame Charaktere. Nur in ihrer Liebe zueinander sind sie gut und sanft und bedürftig. Wie in dieser Liedzeile. "Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home. I'm so cold." Und vielleicht habe ich mir das Lied bis heute nicht leid gehört, weil Kate Bushs Stimme so hoch ist, dass man einfach nicht mitsingen kann. (Eva Sudholt) (Translation)

The Philadelphia Star reviews Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot:

But The Marriage Plot by Pulitzer winner Jeffrey Eugenides tries to deconstruct the essential chick flick plot, which is roughly modeled on the Victorian novels of Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Henry James, George Eliot and others of the late 19th century. (Scott R. Garceau)

The Times of Malta discusses common sense in Christmas:

Real life requires application in order to fulfil certain obligations. There is little hope in hell of satisfying family and work commitments if you see yourself forever in the role of some romantic hero or heroine. Put it in another way – Cathy and Heathcliffe (sic) were great in Wuthering Heights but real life is more of a daily grind than grand declarations of love across the windy moors.  (Claire Bonello)

Kate Harrad suggests in The Guardian a new way to reinvent the classics, genderswitching:

In honour of the season, I've paused work on my newest project, James Eyre, and turned to A Christmas Carol instead.

El Nuevo Herald talks about Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea:

Una y otra vez nos quedamos con el enamoramiento victoriano de la virginal Jane Eyre y su atormentado galán, pero Rhys tuvo la genial ocurrencia de inventar sobre lo inventado al meterse en la piel de una mujer arrancada de cuajo de su hábitat para desfallecer en las húmedas penumbras de la campiña inglesa. Su alter ego estaba condenado a trastornarse en una mansión de piedra y unos jardines podados, que en nada le evocaban las coloristas casas y la indomesticable vegetación de su tierra.Jean Rhys, como su heroína, perdió la cabeza y descendió a los infiernos de una existencia ahogada en alcohol y tristezas. Murió sin saber que su breve y hermosa novela acabaría por reivindicar a esa otra mujer. La Berthe Mason de Charlotte Brontë, que en verdad era su Antoinette Cosway.

Read more here: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2011/12/19/1085457/gina-montaner-la-mujer-detras.html#storylink=cpy

Una y otra vez nos quedamos con el enamoramiento victoriano de la virginal Jane Eyre y su atormentado galán, pero Rhys tuvo la genial ocurrencia de inventar sobre lo inventado al meterse en la piel de una mujer arrancada de cuajo de su hábitat para desfallecer en las húmedas penumbras de la campiña inglesa. Su alter ego estaba condenado a trastornarse en una mansión de piedra y unos jardines podados, que en nada le evocaban las coloristas casas y la indomesticable vegetación de su tierra.
Jean Rhys, como su heroína, perdió la cabeza y descendió a los infiernos de una existencia ahogada en alcohol y tristezas. Murió sin saber que su breve y hermosa novela acabaría por reivindicar a esa otra mujer. La Berthe (sic) Mason de Charlotte Brontë, que en verdad era su Antoinette Cosway.  (Gina Montaner) (Translation)

todoMusicales (Spain) interviews the composer Albert Guinovart:

Si tuvieras que iniciar un proyecto musical, ¿cuál sería?
Tengo una idea que me gustaría hacer algún día. Me gustaría hacer algo clásico, porque creo que en este estilo me expreso mejor con la música. Me encantaría hacer ‘Cumbres Borrascosas’, pero ya está hecho… (Translation)

Una y otra vez nos quedamos con el enamoramiento victoriano de la virginal Jane Eyre y su atormentado galán, pero Rhys tuvo la genial ocurrencia de inventar sobre lo inventado al meterse en la piel de una mujer arrancada de cuajo de su hábitat para desfallecer en las húmedas penumbras de la campiña inglesa. Su alter ego estaba condenado a trastornarse en una mansión de piedra y unos jardines podados, que en nada le evocaban las coloristas casas y la indomesticable vegetación de su tierra.Jean Rhys, como su heroína, perdió la cabeza y descendió a los infiernos de una existencia ahogada en alcohol y tristezas. Murió sin saber que su breve y hermosa novela acabaría por reivindicar a esa otra mujer. La Berthe Mason de Charlotte Brontë, que en verdad era su Antoinette Cosway.

Read more here: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2011/12/19/1085457/gina-montaner-la-mujer-detras.html#storylink=cpy

the Brontë Sisters posts fragments of letters of the Brontës with Christmas mentions;  The Storyteller's Reality a character line up of a few characters from Jane Eyre; Splash! (in Spanish) and Kleine Zeitung (in German) review Jane Eyre 2011 (in Spanish) and Jeuxactu talks about the film (which premieres in France next June 6, more than a year later than in the US); Fionnula Doran publishes a funny webcomic: Brontë to the Future; poetictouch2012 uploads to YouTube a reading by Emma Fielding of Emily Brontë's No Coward Soul is Mine; this journalist from Expansión (Spain) is reading Wuthering Heights; El Norte de Castilla (Spain) mentions Renée Fleming's Wuthering Heights aria as performed in Valladolid.