Jane Eyre enters into its fourth weekend (I)

Jane Eyre 2011 opens in new places this weekend and thus the reviews begin anew.

Positive

The Santa Cruz Sentinel:

But the film's living breathing heart is Jane herself, superbly rendered by Wasikowska who sees Jane's loveless upbringing as the source of the girl's inner strength, and as a result internalizes her determination not only to live a decent life, but to be a decent person.
"Jane Eyre" has always been popular because it portrays love not as a destiny to be embraced with dewy eyes and swelling strings, but as a course of action that often defies the comfortable path and thus takes courage and moral clarity to follow. This new film version, thanks much to its understated performance of its lead actress, holds almost perfectly to that ideal. (Wallace Baine)

The Desert Post Weekly:

Wasikowska is not only picture-perfect as our undaunted Jane, she also gets the character's emotional pathos. The first time we see her, she's crying and rushing to leave Thornfield Hall. The tears coming out of her eyes are sorrowful, but one can also see relief. Wasikowska embodies the see-saw of emotion perfectly. [...]
Brontë's beloved novel may have been told 19 times on the big screen, but this version has a contemporary immediacy that you can't help but fall in love with. (Manny the Movie Guy)

First Showing gives it a 9 out of 10:

I want to preface this review with the fact that I have never read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and I knew nearly nothing of the plot before attending a showing of director Cary Joji Fukunaga's latest version of Jane Eyre for the big screen. Lucky me. Going into Jane Eyre completely unaware allowed for a thrilling, organic experience; the plot unraveled before my eyes, the dialogue was fresh and sharp, and the mystery remained just that until the climactic finale. Which is why I would suggest to any and all who have never read of (or cared about) the story of Jane Eyre to let this film be their first exposure. It's worth every penny. [...]
I'm approaching this latest incarnation of Brontë's beloved novel from the unique perspective of having never read the classic literature favorite nor seen any previous versions. I am not able to comment on the degree to which Fukunaga's version is true (though I hear it's a particularly accurate rendition) but in the end, I don't think that matters. This Jane Eyre can speak for itself, presenting a dichotomous 'tale of woes' to completely fresh eyes. I was fascinated by the love affair of two intellectual equals whose desires challenge the social norms of the period, and I was enthralled by what lay hidden behind the tapestry (you'll see what I mean.) It's a difficult task to make the hearts of your audience race both in rapture and suspense, but the stark moodiness of Fukunaga's Jane Eyre succeeds on each count. (Cate Hahneman)

The Madison Capital Times gives the film 3 1/2 stars:

The film avoids the usual extravagance expected of costume dramas, letting Wasikowska look plain in drab dresses. It makes her emotions the focal point rather than her appearance; elaborate costuming might have distracted from the intensity of her outstanding performance, the way fear, defiance and attraction mix in her steady gaze as she spars with Rochester. (Rob Thomas)

The Gateway's review is also positive but the reviewer considers Jane Eyre to be 'an early prototype of chick lit'.

Fukunaga proves his mettle by challenging the long tradition of Jane Eyre adaptations and producing a cinematic offering that does justice to the passionate romance between Jane and her master. As Jane would say: viewer, I liked it. (Carole Yue)

The Californian:

Fukunaga has turned what could have been a dry costume drama into a fresh and vibrant film. It manages to be romantic, spooky, funny and grand at the same time. (James Ward)

Isthmus:

Suspense is just one component of this lovely, absorbing film. It's mainly a very well-acted romance, the sort of buttoned-up Victorian love story that gets moviegoers sighing happily, as they did at a recent Madison promotional screening. I guess we can thank both 19th-century mores and the tightly controlled storytelling (Tamara Drewe scenarist Moira Buffini wrote the screenplay) for the fact that Jane and Rochester scarcely touch other as their ardor grows. (Kenneth Burns)

Mostly positive

The Monterey County Weekly:

The only aspect of Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre that is not fully palpable, however, is the passion that passes between the governess and her master. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender are both splendid as Jane and Edward (and if you detect a whiff of intentional appeal to Team Edward tweeners in this remake of a classic work of literature, you’re probably on target). Wasikowska has the “plain Jane” look down pat, and she easily exudes the kind of intelligence and naturalism that made her work in two of last years’ films – Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right – so exceptional. Fassbender, too, is a major talent, whom most will recognize from his work in Inglourious Basterds (but those who want to check out the full extent of his controlled brilliance should seek out his performances in Hunger and Fish Tank). Despite individually excellent turns, though, there is little spark, hunger or lust that ignites between the two separated-by-circumstance lovers. [...]
Although Jane Eyre wants for the depth of passion and heat we might expect from this Gothic couple who feel united in their souls, this film can boast a wealth of attention given to other visual and narrative details. Perhaps every decade gets the Jane Eyre it deserves: Is the emphasis of conscience over passion emblematic of our times? (Marjorie Baumgarten)

Hilltop Views:

For fans of the novel and previous film adaptations, the new "Jane Eyre" should provide a fresh, non-redundant way to revisit the classic.
However, those unfamiliar with the story may find the new adaptation a little thin on plot and lacking some character development. It's one of the most common pitfalls of adapting a novel to the screen — without hundreds of pages of character development, the love between Eyre and Rochester may seem to develop rather swiftly and shallowly. And like many classic novels of that time period, the leading male protagonist, Rochester, is not exactly likeable, so with only 115 minutes to delve into his hidden sense of humanity, he does not seem to fully redeem himself for the way he treats Jane and the others around him.
Wasikowska does an impressive job of bringing Jane's full-blooded independence, stubbornness and resilience to life. The dialogue, though period-appropriate, still seems fresh and biting, and the locations and characters are painted with mystifying cinematography. Overall, "Jane Eyre" breathes new, evocative life into this old classic. (Caroline Wallace)

The Fairfield Weekly gives it 3 stars:

In the opening scene the camera jiggles and the wind blows Jane's braids out of their bun, announcing that this is not your grandmother's Jane Eyre. Both Buffini's screenplay and director Cary Joji Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) go a little overboard on the gothic, hoping to lure the Twihards to better literature. But Brazilian cinematographer Adriano Goldman's lighting is exquisite; when a candle is flickering under Wasikowska's chin she looks like a De La Tour. (Ann Lewinson)

The Portland Mercury:

The newest adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's oft-adapted book embraces the gothic sensationalism of its source material, playing it straight and spooky, with nary a wink to the audience. Wind and rain whip across the moors, rooms are lit only by candle, and director Cary Fukunaga throws in a few good old-fashioned jump scares, just because he can. It's this commitment to Jane Eyre's gothic side that keeps the film from straying into camp, and keeps it fundamentally entertaining even as it tears through that goofy story: orphan Jane's heartless aunt, her hellish boarding school, her post as a governess where she meets the almost comically virile Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender) and learns his deep, dark secret. (Alison Hallett)

Mostly negative

The Las Vegas Weekly gives it 3 out of 5 stars yet considers it 'Yet another pointless remake of ‘Jane Eyre’'.

But like most novels worth reading, Jane Eyre derives most of its power from its author’s prose style and its characters’ rich interior monologues, neither of which translates well to the silver screen. What you wind up with in their place is a lot of tempestuous brooding that rings vaguely hollow.
This latest version, directed by relative newcomer Cary Joji Fukunaga (Sin Nombre), can be best described as serviceable—a solid two-hour study guide for high school students who can’t be bothered to read the book. Mostly, it provides a showcase for two exciting new actors. Mia Wasikowska, who also played the title role in last year’s Alice in Wonderland, makes for an unusually tremulous Jane, while Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Inglourious Basterds), though far too handsome for the role as written, nonetheless conveys Rochester’s off-putting quality through offbeat line readings that somehow suggest the physical ugliness he so conspicuously lacks. The two play beautifully off each other, but they still can’t quite fill the holes left by Brontë. (Mike D'Angelo)

Gut Check - a Riverfront Times blog - had 'this idea that we'd go watch Jane Eyre and then eat Jamaican food'. What follows is a very original review of the film. Metro lists the film as one of its '10 Reasons to go to the movies this weekend'. 


The Celebrity Cafe reviews Dario Marianelli's soundtrack for the film:

The soundtrack for the film helps to bring an authentic feel and to score the motion and feelings of the characters as they discover themselves and each other with something sinister still lurking in the background. (Ellen Stodola)

There's a new review of the film on Associated Content. Drunk Writer Talk, Men on Film, Critical Outcast, Le Footnote, Four Colours and the Truth, Reader's Well and Dave's Movie Site, all review the film as well.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV

The Brontës in Oxford

The Independent continues discussing Jonathan Holloway's controversial dramatisation of Wuthering Heights. Incidentally, an 'image of Emily Brontë' that actually represents George Henry Lewes (who was said to look like Emily - that's true) has been used to illustrate the article.

WTF, as Emily Brontë wouldn't say, is Radio 3 doing updating Wuthering Heights? Is the original not enough? Are they besieged with a new kind of audience that finds classic drama inaccessible and needs curse-ridden, reality-TV-style dialogue in order to relate?
Well, no, though Radio 3 would probably welcome being besieged by any kind of audience. For once, the Is-Nothing-Sacred school was wrong and Jonathan Holloway's adaptation had me glued to my radio like Catherine to Heathcliff's window. Not because of the language, though parts of the world's most romantic story were more like being shut in a Leeds pub at closing time. [...]
But how shocking is that? Frankly, a true updating of Wuthering Heights would have Heathcliff arrested for hanging Isabella's dog, and Cathy in therapy for unhealthy co-dependency. At times, gratuitous swearing detracted from the aching beauty of the dialogue. Catherine's stirring appeal, for example, acquired an ungainly expletive. "If the whole world was laid waste and only Heathcliff remained, I would still be happy, but if all else remained and he was annihilated then I would wish the whole fucking universe was burned to a cinder." But, ultimately, it was the use of rich, authentic Yorkshire accents that came as a surprise in this satisfying drama, rather than a few old F-words. (Jane Thynne)

The Oxford Times reviews Shared Experience's revival of Polly Teale's Brontë. The article opens with a reference to Jonathan Holloway's adaptation too:

Shock, horror, a few days ago there was a top-of-the-page story that Radio 3 is to broadcast a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, in which both Cathy and Heathcliff will utter the f-word. Proof, if proof were needed, that the Brontës and their novels remain right at the forefront of public interest.
In Polly Teale’s play Brontë, drunken Branwell doesn’t actually mouth the f-word as he stumbles back into Haworth Parsonage, but nonetheless he has an explosive effect on his three sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne — not to mention on his deeply religious and conventional father, the Rev Patrick Brontë. Teale’s parsonage is a grey, dreary, place (atmospherically suggested by Ruth Sutcliffe’s set design), and the sisters live claustrophobic, repressed lives within its walls. Their escape is in their writing: “I write to leave behind my miserable body,” says Charlotte, “I write to be unknown, unknowing, to exist outside and beyond myself.”
Teale’s play is extraordinarily ambitious. It fuses grinding domestic routine (“Mother was not there to organize tea parties, or make us wear pretty frocks”) with each sister’s very different personality, and then adds characters from the novels themselves. [...]
As scene follows scene in quick-fire succession, the character of each sister is built up. Domestic disputes are supplemented by sometimes barbed exchanges of literary opinion — spiced, in due course, by the arrival of publishers’ rejection letters. Charlotte (Kristin Atherton) comes over as the most antagonistic and dominant, yet sexually repressed, of the three, while Emily (Elizabeth Crarer) is much more wild — perhaps a little too much 21st-century rebelliousness jumps out here. Meanwhile the lesser-known Anne (Flora Nicholson) features as the great appeaser: she seems the nicest of the three. Circling round are the boorish Branwell (Mark Edel-Hunt), so out of control that at one point he makes a dive for Charlotte’s crotch (another 21st-century touch too far?), and wonderfully obsequious curate Bell Nicholls (Stephen Finegold), who appears to be directly modeled on Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice.
The overall result is a gripping, if stern, evening of theatre. Teale writes extremely well, as befits a play about such major literary figures. You can quarrel about some of the details, but you are left with an overwhelming impression of three truly extraordinary women. (Giles Woodforde)

The Times also reviews this production and gives it four stars. The article begins with sad news, though:

Shared Experience was one of the losers in yesterday’s Arts Council cuts, dropping off the funding list altogether. A shame for any theatre company — and a great shame for theatregoers when the company concerned is capable of work as oddly potent as this. Polly Teale’s play, first seen in 2005, asks how three women who rarely strayed from their Yorkshire parsonage came to write three world-beating masterpieces. Well, OK, two world-beating: “I am not so interesting to you,” as Anne Brontë admits to the audience early on in a production that began life last year at the tiny Watermill theatre in Newbury. I wondered at first how three actors, who start in modern dress before donning their 1840s garb, could make this bioplay fill a big space. But Nancy Meckler’s production shows the virtues of her and Teale’s company. Using physicality, lighting, ambient music above all a sense of the mysterious allied to propulsive storytelling, they create a vivid theatrical landscape that creates a rare sense of intimacy. And intimacy, Teale suggests, was something the Brontës could only really achieve in acts of imagination. Charlotte and Emily are the stars, as we peer at their straitened lives and see how Heathcliff and Mrs Rochester provided a relief from a world where they were supposed to serve men. On a stark stage, we are fed the facts or something like them. The sisters defer to their stern Irish dad and help their feckless brother Branwell. The greater the sense of isolation and confinement, the more wild and persuasive the sisters’ work becomes. Emily might look to be suffering from adolescent ennui, except we know that inside her she had Wuthering Heights — or Windy Heights, as her publisher asked her to call it. Charlotte, called “the weasel” at school, strives to be “free from her unfortunate body” by writing. Bioplays sometimes rush from one crucial event to another, mainlining on pivotal moments but leaving out life. Sometimes Brontë is visibly packing in the info, but mostly but it has a theatrical identity of its own. Frances McNamee stalks the stage in white as Emily’s Cathy, in red as Charlotte’s Mrs Rochester. The two male actors also play Brontë characters, interacting with the sisters, venting that buried passion. It calls for physicality, playfulness: get the tone wrong and it could be portentous, a jumble. But a fine cast judge it beautifully: Kristin Atherton is a taut Charlotte, Elizabeth Carer a churning Emily, Flora Nicholson a more pragmatic Anne. There is no one answer to what made these women what they were. But this evocative show is full of ideas, full of life. (Dominic Maxwell)

Before Eleanor Birne picks her 'top 10 books on motherhood' for the Guardian, she pauses to reflect:

There are weirdly few credible portraits of mothers in English fiction. Eighteenth and 19th-century novels, where one would normally start to look for such things, are full of orphans: there are governesses and surrogate mothers such as Jane Eyre or Miss Havisham, but the mother herself is often the hole at the centre of the story. What, you wonder, were novelists avoiding? Is there something about motherhood that fiction doesn't like?

In the particular case of the Brontës - with the exceptions of Agnes Grey and partly Shirley - they were merely writing of what they knew.

Also in the Guardian, Carmen Callil writes a profile of Italian writer Dacia Maraini. Callil considers that,

The Silent Duchess will, probably, remain her masterpiece, her Jane Eyre, replete with the added perfumes, flavours and smells of Gattopardoesque Sicily.

NorthJersey.com has another writer join the ranks of Brontëites: L.A. Kuehlke, author of the novel Pursuit.

Like her other interests — including her love of "Jane Eyre" and Starbucks — faith naturally found itself in the novel. (Stephanie Schwartz)

And it looks like Jane Eyre 2011 is not the only current film with a Brontë connection. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, this is part of the plot of Cat Run:

She and her baby are also tracked by Helen (Janet McTeer), a tony assassin with cheeky calling cards identifying her as Virginia Woolf and Emily Brontë. (Bill Stamets)

The Brontë Sisters mourns the death of Charlotte Brontë on a day like today in 1855. All Things Historical Fiction reviews Jane Eyre and CTrent29 Journal has uploaded screencaps from the 1983 adaptation of the novel. The Sleepless Reader has finished reading Villette. Abigail's Ateliers posts pictures of a dress that Caroline Helstone from Charlotte Brontë's Shirley would have worn. So Why Don't We Go Somewhere Only We Know? posts about Wuthering Heights.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

156 years without Charlotte Brontë

Not that Charlotte Brontë's afterlife has been a quiet one. Much to her husband's distress when it came to personal matters (not when it came to 'professional' matters, though), her popularity started even before she died on March 31st, 1855. And it has only got bigger and bigger ever since. These days, she and her Jane Eyre are quite the buzz words, bringing new people to her world every day.

We know that Charlotte once wished 'to be for ever known' ('careful what you wish for', would have surely been Arthur Bell Nicholls's advice) but we do think her current popularity - and not just for the Jane Eyre film, but for the rest of smaller-scale projects too - would surpass even her wildest dreams. Shy as she undoubtedly was, we do think that she'd be quite unable to hide a smile and a blush at all this. But oh would she be proud!

The picture is from the manuscript of the preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre (27 December 1847) which is located at the Rosenbach Museum and Library (Pennsylvania). Rosen-blog contains a few more pictures of the manuscript and a comment about the Thackeray-mad-woman-in-the-attic-controversy.

Categories: Charlotte Brontë, Reminder

Feverish anticipation and other news

Focus Features and iVillage have teamed up to create a book club:

NBCUniversal’s iVillage and Focus Features Celebrate Classic and Bestselling Novels Jane Eyre and One Day with the launch of iVillage Book Club Connection – in support of motion picture versions.
iVillage Strengthens its commitment to reading with the launch of its first digital book club at www.iVillage.com/jointheclub on March 28.
As part of iVillage’s ongoing commitment to reading, iVillage is launching the iVillage Book Club Connection, its very first women-focused book hub – with Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre and David Nicholls’ bestselling novel One Day being two of the book club selections. With over 100,000 book conversations happening on iVillage, the iVillage Book Club Connection will provide these avid readers with a virtual forum for meaningful community conversations about book themes.
The two-book partnership begins with Jane Eyre, the basis for the new Focus movie Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska, which opened this month in select cities to critical acclaim and the highest per-theater average gross of any 2011 movie so far. Each month, iVillage will select a book that will be the focus for that month’s book club read. One of the summer selection books will be One Day, which the author has adapted into Focus’ much-anticipated new movie starring Anne Hathaway and opening this July.
“Jane Eyre is a classic novel with one of the most beloved leading heroines of all time. Just the kind of woman who connects with and inspires the iVillage Community,” said Catherine Balsam-Schwaber, Senior Vice President of Marketing, iVillage. “Our collaboration with Focus Features will encourage our community members to share the joy of reading and inspire storytelling while engaging with each other in the extended experience Focus will offer through the cinematic interpretation of Jane Eyre.”
“iVillage was the natural choice to partner with. With their robust digital community of women, we are directly tapping into a sizable audience for these films,” said Nicole Butte, Vice President, New Media, Focus Features. “The iVillage Book Club Connection is a direct conduit to reaching these women and getting them excited about great stories.”
The book club destination will feature everything from “Tools and Tips on How To Create Book Clubs;” Jane Eyre -themed articles such as “3 Life Lessons Modern Women Can Learn from Jane Eyre; ” to “Easy Appetizer Ideas” for serving at your first book gathering! Other page-turning content includes “Hot Actor Alert: Jane Eyre Star Michael Fassbender;” “14 Great Books Turned Into Movies;” “10 Books For Style Mavens;” and “Parenting Books We’re Talking About.”
For those women who want to join the book conversations, but participate in an actual book club, iVillage has created new dedicated book message boards, where they can discuss the story themes directly with the iVillage community at: http://forums.ivillage.com/t5/The-Book-Club/ct-p/iv-bcbookclub.
Participants in the iVillage Book Club Connection who answer iVillage’s weekly story-themed question will be eligible to win a Kindle. In addition, 25 community members who join the iVillage Book Club Connection will receive a special “Book Club Kit,” which includes copies of the selected book and classic books that have been turned into award-winning Focus films, such as Pride and Prejudice and Atonement ; the Jane Eyre film soundtrack; and a book journal.

In the meantime, the film continues gathering reviews:

Positive

The New Haven Advocate:

The best moments of the film are whenever Jane finds her tongue: as when responding to Rochester's efforts to draw her out about her drawings, or to sound her on her views of him, or when trying to deflect an unwanted proposal from St. John Rivers, a clergymen who has helped her. She protests that she must respect herself, and we respect the film for respecting Brontë. At times we might say the film is too faithful, refusing to add, as other versions have done for dramatic effect, visuals of the fire that destroys much of Thornfield Hall. Nor is much made of Bertha Antoinetta Mason (Valentina Cervi), resisting any revisionist ideas that may accrue to “the madwoman in the attic.” (Donald Brown)

The Orlando Sentinel's Movies with Roger Moore gives it 3 out of 4 stars:

It’s a lovely looking film, period perfect in manner, look and speech. And Wasikowska makes a marvelously plain “Jane.”

RottenTomatoes reviews the film on YouTube.

However, The Dartmouth, not having seen it yet, doesn't seem to be looking forward to it.

Blogs reviewing the film: Love & Squalor, Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor, Culture-Vulture, Sorta That Guy, Andrewespe, The Flick Pick Monster. Quite Vampires has a review of the film as well as a 'battle of the Janes' comparing Jane Eyre 2011 to Jane Eyre 2006 in two parts: part one and part two.

Box office updates:

In Latvia: March 18-20  $7,921.  March 25-27 $6123 (total $21094) (2 screens)
In Estonia: March 18-20 $8071  March 25-27 $7472  (total $23959) (2 screens)

As for the other Brontë movie coming out this year, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, this is what The Times says about it at this point:

There are many great talents growing in Britain: Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights is causing feverish anticipation. . . (Kate Muir)

And speaking of Wuthering Heights adaptations, Jonathan Holloway's radio dramatisation is still being discussed. Today the Guardian wonders, 'Why shouldn't radio and TV mess with the classics?'

On Sunday, Radio 3 broadcast a "contemporary adaptation" of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights by the playwright Jonathan Holloway. "Contemporary" means, among other things, that it's got swearwords in it, something which apparently upset a good many of that esteemed radio station's listeners before the thing even been aired. What I suspect rankles more, however, is that a classic such as Wuthering Heights should be adapted, or updated, at all. Who does this Jonathan Holloway think he is, to presume to alter Brontë's sacred text in any way? Doesn't he know it's literature? (Cue awed gasp.)
I haven't heard the play, so can make no comment about its quality or entertainment value. However I do agree with Holloway's defence of his work in the Radio Times. "I wanted to elbow out this idea that (Wuthering Heights) is this cosy, greatest love story ever told," he said. " It's not." [...]
"Why mess with Wuthering Heights?" you ask.
Well, my first answer to that is, "Why not?" The idea that great literature should not be "polluted" by modern commercial fiction is, in my view, nothing but rank snobbery. Books are written to be read. It is possible, likely even, that more people will read my humble offering this year than will read Brontë's classic. But how wonderful if, through Fame, or Holloway's play, some of those readers and listeners are inspired to read the original. Or even if they simply come to know this unique and compelling story in a different form, a story they would otherwise never have stumbled upon for themselves. And how sad if books like Wuthering Heights are deemed suitable only for force-feeding to GCSE English students, or padding out those celebrity "what I'm (not really) reading" lists.
At the end of the day fiction, all fiction, whether great or mediocre, is about storytelling. Emily Brontë told a cracking story. It deserves to be told again. (Tilly Bagshawe)

We wholeheartedly agree.

The Orange Country Register has published two reviews of the local take on Jane Eyre. The Musical. First review:

Through a director's choice to have no side wings, the ensemble is visible at all times. They never break character and their dedication is apparent in the way they constantly interact within the scenes. (Lindsay Fiorentino)

And the second review:

Porrazzo's sweet demeanor [as Jane] and consistently docile and refined character garners the hearts of the audience. Narrating the tale with a soft, tranquil voice, she ensures that every movement is fluid and every footfall precise. Her astounding accent never falters, even as she sings, masterfully demonstrating both upper and lower registers, as in the song "Sweet Liberty" when she begs to be accepted as a valued person. Incorporating powerful emotions, from the horror of viewing the burnt mansion, shear pain writhing in her face, to the glowing gaze she gives Rochester, Porrazzo anchors the show magnificently.
With a pompous tone and a resonating voice, Davis personifies the Byronic Rochester. Flawless in distinct accent, his voice beautifully exudes his passion for Jane as well as his self contempt in the song "Sirens." Radiating his character's strength, Davis powerfully controls his insane, screeching wife, Bertha, portrayed impeccably by Melisa Osbourne. When serenely asking for Jane's hand in marriage or beseeching her never to leave him, Davis remains gallant and enigmatic.
With an outlandishly elegant voice and a scattered, swift manner, Katie Kontoulis expertly embodies the hard-of-hearing headmistress of Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax. Whether jubilantly babbling to Jane about Rochester's manners in the song "Perfectly Nice" or bluntly speaking her thoughts out loud in "Slip of a Girl," Kontoulis sprinkles the show with comic impropriety.
Costumes, designed and created by Blakely Collier, embellish the show with grand tailcoats, flowing gowns, and rich colors, reflecting not only the time period but also the lavish and prosperous mood of the manner and the emotionally depth of the show. (Vinny Tangherlini)

Andrea Corr mentions briefly her recent stint as Jane Eyre in an interview with eGigs:

With The Corrs you filled stadiums so, how are you going to feel playing quite small intimate shows?
Again, I'm excited about playing small intimate shows. Playing Jane Eyre, to just under four hundred people every night, I felt how special a small theatre performance can be. Each person in the room is part of the energy and it makes each night unique. Though I have loved playing stadiums with the Corrs, that energy obviously gets a little diluted. With intimate shows it can be like every single person, audience and performers, are having a secret amazing time and then walk out into the night a little more alive and with a sense you have really experienced something. That's the kind of gig I love and aspire to do. (Michelle Owen-Williams)

And Consequence of Sound comments on a recent live version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights by Röyksopp and their guest Anneli Drecker:

Every performer on stage was excellent, but Drecker deserves special note for being the center of most every highlight. She somehow pulled off a superb cover of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”, not an easy task. (Harry Painter)

And here are a few seemingly Heathcliff-like characters.

Little White Lies reviewing Sally Potter's Orlando (based on the novel by Virginia Woolf):

It’s a film which at one point features a Heathcliff-esque Billy Zane emerging spectacularly from some fog but, surprisingly, is none the worse for it. (Emma Simmonds)

The Telegraph reviewing the game Gray Matter:

The imposing Dr Styles, a cross between Heathcliff and the Phantom of the Opera, is undoubtedly the central focus. (Ashton Raze)

The McDonough County Voice reviewing Sucker Punch:

The hospital is run by a male nurse in a sweaty T-shirt, “Blue Jones.” He’s played full Guido by Oscar Isaac - who was “Prince John” to Russell Crowe’s “Robin Hood.” And while he might fulfill the Gothic formula as a “Heathcliff” (you just know he had a troubled childhood), he’s also has Phil Tattaglia’s mustache. (Tom Fortuna)

The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers discusses forgeries and mentions Charlotte Brontë as one of many writers whose handwriting has been forged. National Geographic's Intelligent Travel has an article on the Morgan Library exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives, which includes some of Charlotte Brontë's papers.

Sarah Fowler recommends reading Jane Eyre and Mrs. P's Book Reviews posts about Jane Slayre.

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

Emily Brontë by Chantal Joffe

An exhibition of paintings by Chantal Joffe at the Victoria Miro Gallery(19 Mar - 21 Apr) in London, contains an (imagined) portrait of both Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson:

Victoria Miro is delighted to announce an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Chantal Joffe. The show centres around a powerful group of seven large-scale paintings where the artist has restricted her palette to dark tones of black, red, blue and white. The works offer complex fictional portrayals of the artist's heroines painted chronologically and moving towards us in time from the 1840's. As well as conceptual explorations of representations of female icons, the works also engage with key moments in literature, painting and feminist history.
Both specific and non-specific, these are imagined depictions of women - some are real individuals and others hybrid figures - born out of Joffe's consideration of works of art and literature and the social climate in which they were created. Manet's The Drummer Boy, the writings of Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson, the paintings of Lee Krasner and Tamara de Lempicka are all referenced here along with the intimate musings of Edmund White and the passionate polemics of Susan Sontag. Each painting shows these young women at a point early in their lives, when they are beginning to find a voice and question what it means to pursue a dream of being an artist. Set against dark backgrounds and located somewhere not of this time, the strongly contoured bodies are depicted in awkward or sexual poses, distorted or kneeling but equally conveying a sense of vulnerability. The models - as is often the case in Joffe's work - are taken from photographs in contemporary fashion magazines and bear little or no resemblance to their imagined counterparts.

Next, Emilys Brontë and Dickinson merge into the single likeness of a young 19th- century author.

More information in the Evening Standard.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions

For the next generation

After yesterday's brief respite, the Jane Eyre reviews are back.

Positive

The Harvard Crimson:

In his movie “Jane Eyre,” Fukunaga emphasizes the aristocratic structures that separate Jane and Rochester. Through most of their interactions, Rochester speaks in convoluted and cryptic sentences, employing a wider vocabulary than Jane and often leaving her confused. Fukunaga also populates his film with many shots of Jane observing Rochester from afar, unable to engage fully in his life of privilege. [...]
Though the cast is strong in its own right, their characters also come alive due to the environment they inhabit. Filled with shadows and flickering candlelight, the feel of the film preserves Brontë’s gothic tendencies and casts an alluring yet frightening pall over the proceedings. [...]
Living up to Brontë’s iconic novel is a difficult task, something not lost on the makers of “Jane Eyre.” “Literary [adaptations] are more of a risk,” said Fukunaga. “You just have to hope people accept your interpretation.” Ultimately, the hope is that the film’s unique qualities of cast and production will justify it. By placing Wasikowska and Fassbender in a world full of foreboding mystery and poignantly illustrating their attempts to accept their respective vulnerabilities, Fukunaga looks to have his “Jane Eyre” do justice to its classic namesake, and take a respectable place among the long line of film versions of the story. (Lauren B. Paul)

Poptimal:

Not to mention, book-to-film adaptations can just downright anger some people. So that being said, how did Jane Eyre make it work? I’d say a large part of it was the brilliant cast of actors. [...]
In addition to the great cast, it was visually on key with the storyline. The scenery gave off a dark and foreboding atmosphere when Jane was going through harder times and a much lighter and rich one when things were looking more up. For me, the visual aspect of a movie is so important. It has so much to do with the ambiance of a story and in this case made me feel a stronger sentiment for the characters. [...]
For a Brontë newbie like myself, I felt it was satisfying story although I’m sure book experts will be a bit more critical. However, if you know the story of Jane Eyre or not, the film was so well done that it might be a pleasant surprise for both fans and non-fans alike. (Desiree Neall)

Chud:

I know this isn’t saying much, but Jane Eyre is quite easily the best film of the year so far. It’s very well-made, the narrative is presented in an interesting fashion and the cast is very good. Hell, this movie actually made me interested in what Mia Wasikowska does next. If you’re interested in a movie with strong feminist tones and you don’t mind trading fancy visuals for decent storytelling, check this one out. (William Thomas Berk)

The Dartmouth reports that Jane Eyre will be screened as part of the Dartmouth Film Society's Spring 2011 series British Invasion.

The New York Times brings up Jane Eyre 2011 when discussing women roles on current TV programmes:

Television reflects all kinds of vestigial double standards, and an enduring one is the different perception of anger: a man’s wrath often signals passion or zeal; a woman’s rage or orneriness borders on crazy.
One reason the “Jane Eyre” story never gets old — and a new version of that Charlotte Brontë novel starring Mia Wasikowska is now in theaters — is that its darkest themes still seem fresh. In the feminist canon, “Jane Eyre” symbolizes social repression — Mr. Rochester’s wife is so wild that she is labeled a madwoman and hidden in the attic. (Alessandra Stanley)

A few blogs also review the film: Feminéma, Ciao Domenica, Inside My Mind, A Beaten Copper Lamp of Deplorable Design, Movie Picks by Watson and Composing Kate. Also, via All Things Foe, we discover that the film already has its own South Korean website (release April 21).

The Dallas Morning News suggests visiting the 'landscapes that inspired the Jane Eyre author'.

On to the other Brontë topic of the week: Jonathan Holloway's radio adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The Telegraph reviews the production:

Otherwise it was an unremarkable if workmanlike compression of the text, with five minutes allowed per chapter for Volume 1 and Heathcliff’s plottings in Volumes 2 and 3 all jam-packed into the last half-hour. Badly cast and acted with more ferocity than fire it was thin, limping stuff and much cosier than the original. (Gillian Reynolds)

The Spoof mocks the uproar caused by this dramatisation.

Another adaptation of Wuthering Heights is the stage version by Lucy Gough, now touring Wales. The South Wales Argus reviews it:

Lucy Gough’s adaptation is however a faithful representation of the storyline with all the passion and turmoil that makes the original so great. Set to a multilayered backdrop of the dark brooding wild moor that reflects the freedom and constraints Heathcliff and Cathy experience in their love for each other the cast make the most of shadows and light rather than elaborate props to illustrate the different scenes.
Robert Vernon throws his all into the role of the self destructive Heathcliff. Vernon’s portrayal is energetic, powerful and believable and you feel empathy for his unrelinquished love for Cathy.
Rosie Holt gives a mesmerising and haunting portrayal of Catherine Earnshaw giving her an almost wildcat devil may care presence in life and the presence of a haunting spectre in death..
Jenny Livsey’s portrayal of Nelly is sympathetic giving a warm presence to the production while Jessica Guise is a formidable challenger to Heathcliff’s aggression as young Cathy. (Andy Howells)

According to the Guardian,

the Orange prize for fiction has joined forces with Vintage Classics to ask 100 people to name the one book they would pass on to the next generation – their so-called inheritance classic.
The choices are fascinating. Certain authors make more than one appearance: Woolf, Austen, Tolstoy, Hardy, Faulkner, Misses C and E Brontë, Orwell, Harper Lee and Homer had more mentions than I'd have expected. Interesting, too, was how proportionately few contemporary novels make the cut – White Teeth, Wolf Hall and Trainspotting are here, but no Money or Saturday.

EDIT 30 March 2011: Booktrade has further info on this.

Sarah Waters, a well-known Brontëite, may be one of those recommending the Brontës, as seen once again in an interview on After Ellen.

AE: When I came out someone bought me Tipping The Velvet and said "Here you go, welcome." And I definitely feel that it is still more than just a book for me, it's bigger than its pages and the characters kind of go with me through my life, if that makes sense? When you were growing up was there a book like that for you?
SW: There are books like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights that had a huge impact on me when I was a teenager. (Sarah and Lee)

After last week's obituaries mentioning her role as Helen Burns in Jane Eyre 1944, today we have come across a couple of Elizabeth Taylor - Brontë mentions that don't have anything to do with that film. The Philadelphia Inquirer on the letters relating to the first time she was engaged to be married:

The online auction, set for May 19-26, also will feature letters that Taylor's mother wrote to Pawley after the engagement ended, including one in which she wrote, "You have a nervous condition and a problem with jealousy, as such you and Elizabeth can never be together."
How harsh. It's like a Brontë novel. But mother should have known that saying never to a teenage girl could lead to . . . seven husbands. (Howard Gensler)

And The Cutting Edge on her relationship with Richard Burton:

Her personal tragedy was to find an alter ego in the person of the fiery Welsh actor Richard Burton, to whom she was twice married, yet be unable to sustain a happy marriage to him. Like Heathcliff and Cathy in Wuthering Heights, they seemed doomed to destroy each other. (Francis Philips)

EDIT: An alert from Florence (Italy):

Alla Feltrinelli International (Firenze, via Cavour 12 ore 18) Gabriella Sica parla del suo libro “ Emily e le altre” (Cooper). Un libro a cavallo dei generi che ruota intorno ad alcune figure geniali della poesia che sono state antenate o eredi, madri o figlie di Emily Dickinson: Charlotte ed Emily Brontë, Elisabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Margherita Guidacci, Cristina Campo, Nadia Campana e Amelia Rosselli. (La Repubblica)

Categories: Alert, Audio-Radio, Books, Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

Ponden Hall on the Market

Now's the time to search the couch and long-unused trousers for spare cash and see if you can collect £950,000. Ponden Hall, home of the Heaton family whose library the Brontës are said to have visited and supposed model for Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights is now for sale:

Ponden Hall, a Grade 2* listed house in West Yorkshire, high on the Pennine Way.

Ponden Hall is now for sale through Halifax estate agents Charnock Bates (01422 380100).

Click here for details.

Quoting from the Ponden Hall website:

Emily Brontë's association with the Heaton family at Ponden is well documented - one of the Heatons served as a churchwarden to her father Mr Brontë, and we know she used the library, reputedly 'the finest in West Yorkshire'.

A catalogue still exists, though the books have long been gone from the house, and studies have been conducted on what Emily had access to that might have informed the Gothic inventiveness of Wuthering Heights. Some books from the library were sold in the market place in Keighley in 1898; those unsold were used to wrap vegetables; no-one knows what became of the priceless Shakespeare First Folio. 

There has long been a tradition that Ponden Hall is identifiable with the Lintons' home Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights, although none of the sisters left evidence of such a link themselves. In part this is due to its situation, on the way up to the moors; in part to the fact there were so few larger houses in this area.

The house may well have seemed grand to the Brontës, and the tree-lined drive may have made it seem more of a 'great house' like Thrushcross Grange, but actually, the fairly humble Ponden Hall is far more identifiable with the house Wuthering Heights, and recently scholarly opinion tends to identify Ponden Hall with the home of Heathcliff for more details (see Wuthering Heights website).

The date plaque above the main entrance identifies the rebuilt house as dating from 1801 – also the date that begins the story in Wuthering Heights. And many have pointed out the similarity between the names Heaton and Hareton, though that may be pushing similarity too far.

There is another important link between Wuthering Heights and Ponden Hall. In an account by William Davies (published in 1896) after a visit he made to Haworth in 1858, he tells how, after meeting Patrick Brontë ("a dignified gentleman of the old school"), he was taken on a tour of the area:

"On leaving the house we were taken across the moors to visit a waterfall which was a favourite haunt of the sisters… We then went on to an old manorial farm called 'Heaton's of Ponden', which we were told was the original model of Wuthering Heights, which indeed corresponded in some measure to the description given in Emily Brontë's romance."

Readers and visitors must, of course, make up their own minds.

On the east gable end of the house, a tiny single-paned window is said to be the one Emily used in her novel, where Cathy's ghost, memorably, scratched furiously at the glass, trying to get in.

"I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!"

Finally, in the back garden are the withered remains of a now-dead pear tree, supposedly the gift of a lovesick teenage Heaton to an older, uninterested Emily.

Categories: Brontëana, Haworth, Wuthering Heights

Jonathan Holloway's Wuthering Heights: reactions

Last night Jonathan Holloway's controversial take on Wuthering Heights was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. It it available worldwide on their website for the next 6 days. The Guardian has published what seems like a balanced sort of review:

In a move to ditch what he sees as the novel's reputation as a cosy love story, and to restore the violent shock of the book when it was published in 1847, writer and director Jonathan Holloway has the young lovers reaching for expletives, while other characters taunt Heathcliff with racist jibes. [...]
"Fuck off," Hindley growls, "you're not 'avin' my 'orse." Heathcliff bellows: "I won't hit you back, you fucker." The original scene has the young men exchanging milder insults ("Off, dog!"), and it is hard to imagine today's readers – latching on to the novel for its portrayal of a love that respects no boundaries, not even death – getting the full impact of insults such as "imp of Satan".
The addition of swearing here is defensible: Heathcliff refers in the original to his habit of cursing, and Brontë's manuscript used blanks in some particularly heightened exchanges as if, even publishing under her alias Ellis Bell, she couldn't print everything she wanted her obsessed, cruel characters to say.
Other linguistic innovations in this production were less convincing, though, sitting uneasily in an otherwise impressive and faithful adaptation. Holloway has Hindley calling Heathcliff "pikey scum, you scrounging black bastard" and Mr Linton describing him as "a wicked little wog of some kind". Here, Brontë has already done the work for us, and the insults are vicious enough in her words: Heathcliff repeatedly called a gypsy and casually dehumanised as "it" when he first arrives at Wuthering Heights. The fear and mistrust of the outsider needs no underlining.
But it was Catherine's use of the F-word that felt most like an empty shock gesture. It came in her dizzyingly passionate description of how she loves Heathcliff, and is a pivotal moment in the plot which lurches us into the next phase of exquisite misery. In the original, Catherine cries that if all the world remained, yet Heathcliff "were annihilated, the universe would turn into a mighty stranger".
Holloway has her saying that if Heathcliff were annihilated "I would wish the whole fucking universe burned to a cinder". It was the only duff note in Natalie Press's otherwise haunting portrayal of Catherine, and sounded absolutely ludicrous, smashing the poetic beauty and structure of the speech. (Elisabeth Mahoney)

Twitter user LarryAdamSmith's opinion is straight to the point:

Dreadful version of Wuthering Heights on Radio 3. The guy playing Heathcliff worse than Cliff Richard.

And the Brontë Parsonage Blog also reviews the dramatisation:

However, the use of offensive language was not the problem. That aspect was a mere curiosity, artistically defensible if properly executed within a high quality production. In this case it was little more than a gimmick, and the whole best forgotten. Whilst there are many difficulties in the way of a satisfactory visual rendition of Wuthering Heights, it would seem perfectly possible to produce a creditable – even a great – radio version of the book. What we had was a disjointed script which gave the impression of being written by someone who had relied on a précis based on a skim-reading of the book. A listener new to the work would have been hard put to follow the plot, while those who know it well could only be infuriated. (Chris Went) (Read the full review)

And after that, it's back to Jane Eyre 2011, which seems to be doing very well. Rotten Tomatoes and others report:

Expanding indie titles did well too. The period drama Jane Eyre grossed an estimated $983,000 from 90 sites in its third frame for a solid $10,922 average for Focus. (Gitesh Pandya)

The Stir is giving away (US-only) a Jane Eyre Kindle pack.

A few blogs review the film: The Dirty Brunch Club, Tim Jackson Web, Neil's Movie Reviews, Quirky Reviews, The Film Experience (on podcast) and notoriousmadness.

Tribune Magazine reviews Faulks on Fiction:

The cheerful decisiveness with which he decrees Darcy’s neurosis and Emma’s ultimate intellectual superiority to Knightley does not follow the critic to Wuthering Heights. His comment is humble. “I hope it is not a readerly cowardice to declare oneself, however admiring, defeated by a book.” Not so defeated that he doesn’t have a furiously unorthodox view of the main character. His Heathcliff is not ruggedly attractive and a bit wild. He is the animaline extremity at which a man can stand. The romantic hero of popular assumption “has the curse that rings in our heads as long and as terribly as any howl in Lear or Macbeth”. He could never have been played by nice young Laurence Olivier in that lovely film. (Edward Pearce)

The Globe and Mail uses Jane Eyre to discuss state education in Britain:

By 1833, 85 per cent of Britain’s children could read and 53 per cent could write – an elementary-school literacy rate, Prof. West noted, not far off the U.S. rate in the 1970s. (As for the poor, think of Charlotte Brontë’s little orphan, Jane Eyre, at Lowood Institution.) (Neil Reynolds)

Lowood, though, still had to be paid for:

"Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?"
"We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each."
"Then why do they call us charity-children?"
"Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the deficiency is supplied by subscription."
"Who subscribes?"
"Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in London." (Jane Eyre, chapter V)

The Yorkshire Post asks singer Tony Christie:

If a stranger to Yorkshire only had time to visit one place, it would be?
Haworth. Go and have a look at the Brontës’ place, and the Dales.

We certainly agree with that, though we wonder whether Lonely Planet does too. According to the Daily Mail,

England has been damned as celebrity-obsessed with a ‘dicey’ economy and an addiction to junk food.
The verdict is in the latest Lonely Planet travel guide, which also portrays the Coalition Government as devious over spending cuts.
The guide, published this month and expected to be bought by 100,000 people worldwide, is regarded as a bible by many travellers.
Co-ordinating author David Else laments that the nation which spawned Shakespeare, Dickens and the Brontës has become obsessed with celebrity. (Jonathan Petre)

Austenacious posts about the Brontë vs Austen debate.

EDIT: An alert for tomorrow March 29 in Wolverhampton, UK:

St Peter’s Collegiate School production of Wuthering Heights will run from March 29 - April 1 at the Hayward Theatre.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

Countdown for Herrmann's Wuthering Heights at Minnesota Opera

As we have been reporting, the premiere of this new production of Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights opera opens next April 16 at the Minnesota Opera. Until then there are a series of related activities starting today March 28:

Monday, March 28, 2011 07:00 pm
Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis
Wuthering Heights: Is This Love?

Explore literature's most heartrending and complicated relationship. MinnPost's Book Club Club host Sally Williams will moderate a lively discussion focusing on Heathcliff and Catherine's romantic and family dynamics, patterns of repetition and how each generation plays out the unresolved issues of the previous ones. The distinguished panel includes Diana Postlethwaite, Chair of the St. Olaf English department and Brontë scholar; Sara Hoppe, co-owner and psychologist at Grove Psychotherapy in Minneapolis and stage director Eric Simonson. Minnesota Opera artists will present musical excerpts from the opera.

Co-presented by Minnesota Opera, MinnPost.com and the Loft Literary Center.

Admission: Free and open to the public
Call 612-333-6669 or RSVP by clicking the registration button below (please indicate your expected number of guests). More information in MinnPost.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 07:30 pm
In Context: Bernard Herrmann (Wuthering Heights)
Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis

Minnesota Opera, the Walker and Take-Up Productions bring fresh insights to Wuthering Heights and Herrmann's artistry in general through the screening of two classics preserved in the National Film Registry.

March 30 - Directed by William Wyler, Wuthering Heights is the Academy Award–winning 1939 film adaptation of Emily Brontë's haunting novel, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Join Walker film curator Sheryl Mousley and Eric Simonson, the opera's stage director and dramaturg, for a post-screening discussion on the novel's adaptations in film, television, and opera.
April 6 - Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles and part of the Walker's Ruben/Bentson Film and Video Study Collection, is widely lauded as the greatest movie ever made. Herrmann composed the score while the film was being shot, watching each reel as director Orson Welles completed it.

Co-presented by Minnesota Opera, Walker Art Center and Take-Up Productions.
Admission: $8 ($6 Walker members, Opera subscribers and students)
Call 612-375-7600 or purchase online at walkerart.org

Thursday, March 31, 2011 07:00 pm
Tempo Presents: Ghosts in the Graveyard
Joseph's Grill, 140 Wabasha Street S., St. Paul
6:00 p.m. - Happy Hour Gathering at Joseph's Grill7 p.m. - Tour Begins

Concealed in the shadows of history, hiding among folklore and legend, live tales of ghosts and hauntings. Passed down from generation to generation, whispered so as to not wake the dead, these tales endure the passage of time - refusing to go quietly into the night.
Gather up your courage and come along with Tempo on a haunted tour of Saint Paul, courtesy of Wabasha Street Caves. Join us as Academy Award-winning director Eric Simonson and Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Host John Birge discuss the supernatural elements of Wuthering Heights.
Spooky treats will be provided to guests brave enough to board the bus. BYOB for a little extra courage.
Park at Joseph's Grill located at 140 South Wabasha Street in St. Paul.
Film Festival: The Man Who Knew Too Much
Friday, April 1, 2011 07:00 pm
The Trylon, 3258 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis

Friday, April 1-Sunday, May 1
Herrmann: Eight Themes in the Key of Suspense
Beginning Friday, April 1, Minnesota Opera and Take-Up Productions will present a thrilling five-week festival of films featuring scores by Bernard Herrmann. Swap your Wuthering Heights opera ticket stub for a free small popcorn at any screening in the Herrmann series!
Riverview Theater, 3800 42nd Ave. S., Minneapolis
The Trylon, 3258 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis

More information in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. 

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Opera, Wuthering Heights

Jane Eyre 2011 enters into its third weekend (IV) or Branwell in The Kinks

A few more reviews of Jane Eyre 2011:


Positive:

New American:

The film is expertly crafted, and does justice to Brontë’s work. The expert cinematography draws the viewer into the isolated nature of 19th-century English country life, and develops the characters in a way that causes empathy with them. The set design and costuming serve also to develop the story, and the casting couldn’t be better, including the pleasant surprise of finding Dame Judi Dench portraying Rochester’s housekeeper. (Kelly Holt)

Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Director Cary Fukunaga's flashback-filled screen adaptation of "Jane Eyre" does Charlotte Brontë proud. He wrings every ounce of passion, fury and pain out of the Gothic romance tale. Mia Wasikowska in the title role masters the screen actor's magic trick of transfixing our attention while seemingly doing nothing. This "Jane Eyre" is unapologetic melodrama shot through with inspiration.

Killer Movie Reviews:

This is the finest filmed version of Jane Eyre to date. It doesn’t matter if the audience knows how the story will end, it is the emotional journey is thrilling, abetted by direction by Cary Fukunaga that homes in on the complex inner lives of the character. It’s true to the gothic spirit of the book with its startling and emotionally compelling Jane. From the sharp and jarring sound of Jane’s head being slammed against a window frame by her cousin when she’s a child, to the freezing mud of a north country moor as Jane faces the very real possibility of freezing to death, this is a Victorian age stripped of its romanticism. In its stead is passion. (Andrea Chase)

Beliefnet: (B+)

And it is that relationship, all smolder and repressed passion, that answers the question. The Eyre/Rochester romance has inspired happy sighs for 160 years and in these days, when so little is repressed that no one makes time for smolder, it still delivers. (Nell Minow)

Also The Jane Austen Film Club, Steak's Views, Reader's Well, steph's online diary and Joy in Being Broken.


Mostly Positive:


Review Saint Louis: (B-)

In the end, Jane Eyre is a fine picture that will likely mesmerize fans of the genre.  The film is a technical marvel and Fukunaga continues to solidify himself as one of the strongest young directors working today.  His cast is wonderful and while the film didn’t resonate with me like it will with its target demographic I still quite enjoyed the show. (Zac Oldenburg)

Also Cinemaholic Movie Reviews.

Negative:

The New York Review of Books:

The new film version of Jane Eyre isn’t all bad, but it’s all wrong. The story, despite a confusing flashback structure, is coherent. The dialogue is satisfying. The look is convincing. What’s lacking is Jane Eyre itself—Charlotte Brontë’s feverish inner world of anguish and fury. Instead, everything is pallid and sedate. (...)
Wasikowska is talented, certainly, but she’s yet to show that she can create a character; what she does instead is be herself: serious, sensitive, occasionally breaking out her lovely smile. She’s nowhere near intense enough for this iconic 19th-century emotional extravaganza that’s thrilled generations of young women (and men). As Jane she gamely goes through the paces, but no sparks fly—certainly not the crucial ones with Rochester. (Robert Gottlieb)

Another negative review on The Kenyan Girl.

The New Jersey Courier-Post talks with Mia Wasikowska and Cary Fukunaga about Jane Eyre 2011:

"I liked the idea of bringing out a darker side, and also a younger side," says the actress. "Jane was 18 (in the book). I think I was 20 when I did the role. So I was already two years older. She's really a teenager. She is a teenager like any other teenager now."
To prepare, Wasikowska pored over visual references "to form an image of Jane in my head." She studied photographs and drawings of the time, hoping to understand how "for example, people physically held themselves." (Amy Longsdorf)

Another Jane Eyre 2011 giveaway. From The Trades:

To commemorate this release, The-Trades is giving away one full-sized double-sided theatrical poster, along with a Vintage Classics copy of the novel -- including a bookmark bearing the image of Wasikowska as Jane.

Deadline: March 31 (US-only).

Detroit Performing Arts Examiner talks about the film and Haddon Hall. The movie is also featured in The Wichita Eagle and i, write, riot.
---
The Observer reviews the Capuchin Classics edition of Agnes Grey:

Brontë depicts in detail the isolation inherent in a governess's life, as an educated – but by necessity not too educated – woman trapped in an awkward halfway world between the classes. The governess is not a servant, but nor is she on the same social level as her employers, the very fact of her needing to take a job underlining that division.
Over the course of the novel Agnes serves time with two families: the Bloomfields and the Murrays. The Bloomfield children are hateful creatures, so spoiled and disobedient that Agnes has at times to restrain them physically. The Murrays are a notch up on the social scale and both children somewhat older, but they bring their own particular challenges: one sister is preening, manipulative and deeply self-involved, while the other is prone to playing with a horsewhip and cursing like a stableboy.
Agnes's character takes a backseat to those of her charges and when her voice does come through its prim, righteous tone can grate. But this seems fitting given that the governess was expected to be almost invisible, that her existence was often a source of discomfort to her employers and their set. People literally fail to see Agnes: doors are shut upon her and she takes pains not to walk beside anyone on the way to church to avoid unpleasant silences.
Salvation comes in the form of a man; not a tempestuous Rochester figure but the safe, kind curate Mr Weston, the only one to look at Agnes and see not a governess but a woman. (Natasha Tripney)

The Independent interviews Dave Davies (The Kinks), who makes an interesting reference to Branwell:

It seems somehow curious that a man of Dave Davies' abilities should have to carry the same burden shouldered by Fred Dickens, Fanny Mendelssohn and Branwell Brontë. It's undeniable that, since the break up of the Kinks, his career hasn't exactly kept pace with that of his brother, who has sustained his reputation as one of the most distinguished British songwriters ever, and in 2004 was awarded the CBE for "services to music". (Robert Chalmers)

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch reviews the HBO remake of Mildred Pierce:

Actually, though, it's not her inability to resist men that derails Mildred. The insurmountable problem is her daughter Veda (first Morgan Turner, then Evan Rachel Wood). Mildred thinks Veda is special. So does Veda, a little snot who at age 11 flounces around in a silk robe and talks like a character out of an Emily Bronte novel as she orders everyone around. (Gail Pennington)

We read in the Daily Express that the UK Education Secretary Michael Gove was quite impressed by what he saw in the US:

He was amazed that to escape from the poverty of their everyday life the New York pupils had discovered the delights of Charlotte Brontë and a host of classic authors. (...)
“In the Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science in Washington DC a group of primary age ­children in the middle of an engineering project stopped to tell me of their favourite novels, from sci‑fi and Dickens to Charlotte Brontë.”  (Hilary Douglas)

The Brontës' pen names are always handy when it comes to gender discrimination. In the New Straits Times (Malaysia):

The Brontë sisters adopted the names Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell to replace Anne, Charlotte and Emily. Brother Branwell didn't need to, but then he didn't write anything worthwhile. Jane Austen and George Eliot (really Mary Ann Evans) resorted to the same ploy. (Paddy Bowie)

Deccan Chronicle interviews author Aneesha Capur:

Q Who is your favourite literary character?
Aslan in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe from my childhood; Jane Eyre for her independence in 19th Century England, Anil Tissera in Anil’s Ghost for her bravery in war-torn Sri Lanka. (...)
Q Which book did you want never to end?
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys for its hauntingly beautiful reimagining of the story of Rochester’s first wife… I didn’t want it to end since I knew what would happen (which was tragic) from Jane Eyre.

A Brontë reference in an article about night shifts in the Napa Valley Register:

Out of doors, the night scenery takes a different shape. The field at the end of Craig’s street is like a scene ripped from “Wuthering Heights,” with barn owls hooting and trees silhouetted against the sky.  (Victoria Rossi)

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday continues the Taliban-like integrist crusade against Jonathan Holloway adaptation's of Wuthering Heights that will be aired tonight on BBC Radio 3:

It is quite important that this dramatisation fails and is seen to fail, and that it receives a large number of complaints when it is aired. If they can get away with Wuthering ****ing Heights, it won’t be long before we have David ****ing Copperfield, (...) For goodness sake, we already have Martin Amis if you want this sort of stuff.

We don't know if the dramatisation will fail or not. You know, before saying things like that you should listen to it beforehand.

Sunday Salon discusses Rochester as a Byronic hero (The Gray Willow seems to be a fan); Literary Relish is reading Jane Eyre and A Reader's Nook has just finished it; My Way or the Pie Way? and Voyage Livresque (in French) review Wuthering Heights; Along Came a Story... compiles several clips of Jane Eyre adaptations; Teens Know Best! reviews April Lindner's Jane; La Professora d'inglese (in Italian and English) reviews Kay Woodward's Jane Airhead; alita.reads chooses a soundtrack for Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë; Les Soeurs Brontë (in French) finds interesting similarities between the Brontës and the sisters of Constantin Hansen; charlotteBermond has uploaded to YouTube a brief clip of the Reza Hammadi choreography "Les Soeurs Brontë".

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Dance, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights

Bismarck and Cosby

A couple of forthcoming alerts:

1.  In Bismarck, North Dakota:

The Bismarck-Mandan Branch of AAUW is collaborating with the Young Professionals Network to sponsor a "Dakota Discussions" series.
March 27, 7 p.m., "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte;
April 27, 7 p.m., "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys;
May 25, 6 p.m., "Jane Eyre," a showing of the 1944 Orson Welles film.

2.  In Cosby, Leicestershire:

And at Cosby Library, literary expert Helen Peden will be taking a closer look at Charlotte Brontë’s heroic protagonist Jane Eyre, and at the daring ideas found in the pages of this classic novel.
This entertaining talk takes place on Monday 28th March, and begins at 7pm. (Source)

Categories: Alert, Talks

"Emily Brontë’s book endures because the kind of passion that she wanted to convey is shocking in any age"

The Telegraph anticipates what will be a very Brontë autumn in the UK:

This coming autumn marks the battle of the Brontë films. As reported here last week, the new version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, already a Stateside hit, opens in Britain on September 9.
Sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights, from British director Andrea Arnold, follows it into our cinemas just three weeks later.
There is talk that Wuthering Heights is a candidate for competition in Cannes, where Arnold’s talents are well-regarded. Her film stars Skins television actress Kaya Scodelario as Cathy, and newcomer James Howson (a genuine Yorkshireman) as Heathcliff.
If you’re thinking these novels get frequently adapted for the screen, you’re right: this will be the 23rd film or television version of Jane Eyre, and the 15th of Wuthering Heights. (David Gritten)

So many Jane Eyre reviews are beginning to affect film critics. This one from Time Magazine is on Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch:

You could say that Sucker Punch is a nymphet version of The Snake Pit or Shutter Island,
or [...] in its backstory about a decent girl deprived of her inheritance and consigned to grow up in a prisonlike environment, a gloss on mid-19th-century classics from Jane Eyre to Little Dorrit. (Richard Corliss)

The Guardian discusses some 19th century literary aunts:

But the twin apogees of Austenian aunts are, of course, are the supine Lady Bertram, welded to her sofa, and the ghastly Mrs Norris, in Mansfield Park. The latter's insidiousness and subtle power almost outweighs the brutality of Charlotte Brontë's cruel creation Mrs Reed, who consigns her niece Jane Eyre, monstrously, to the red room. (Charlotte Higgins)

and John Mullan's Guardian's Ten of is devoted to locked rooms:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The third-floor staircase door at Thornfield, "which of late had always been kept locked", conceals a sealed apartment where Mr Rochester's servant, the enigmatic Grace Poole, presides. One day Jane hears a terrible mirthless laugh from behind it, "a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber". What could it hide?

The Independent joins the ranks of those scandalised by the profanity of the upcoming radio adaptation of the novel by Jonathan Holloway. None of them has listened to the programme yet:

Talking of books, a Radio 3 adaptation of Wuthering Heights is going to contain four-letter words. I feel a little queasy about that. Emily Brontë was no doubt a feisty character and harboured strong emotions, but there's no record of either her or her masterpiece letting rip with expletives.

I'm even more surprised by the reasoning given by the man doing the adaptation. Playwright and theatre director Jonathan Holloway said: "For me Wuthering Heights is a story of violent obsession, and a tortuous unfulfilled relationship. This is not a Vaseline-lensed experience. The F-words are part of my attempt to shift the production to left field, and to help capture the shock that was associated with the original book when it was published."

That's a curious logic. Many great works were shocking when they first appeared, but the way to re-create that shock is not simply to throw in a few swear words. Violent passion still shocks, all by itself, without any gratuitous swearing. I wonder what else Radio 3 has in store. That mouthy Jane Eyre is surely ripe for a John McEnroe style-outburst. (David Lister)

And the Belfast Telegraph:

Fresh off the back of that Marie Stopes pregnancy ad, it now transpires that Radio 3 is to air a version of Wuthering Heights - on a Sunday evening - which will contain more effing and blinding than breakfast at Buck Pal when the latest red-top revelations regarding Airmiles Andy drop from the corgi's jaws.
Really, no one could call me a prude - I'm not so much Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells as Blase of Brighton - but it is my very worldliness, I feel, that makes me resent how 'grittiness' is now forced on us, like the artistic version of being moaned at about eating one's five-a-day? (Julie Birchill)

Fortunately, Erica Wagner in The Times is much more balanced:

Few things make me so glad as an old book that can still cause a stir. I’m talking about a book that was described this way, shortly after it was published: “This is a strange book. It is not without evidences of considerable power: but, as a whole, it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable; and the people who make up the drama, which is tragic enough in its consequences, are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.”
Strange was definitely the word that the critics could agree on: “a strange inartistic story” another review began; and again, “a strange sort of book, baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish it; and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it”. Readers, indeed, have been talking about it ever since — ever since Mr Lockwood paid his first visit to Mr Heathcliff (“A capital fellow!”) and described how apposite was the name of his neighbour’s house: Wuthering Heights.
And now it’s going to be on the radio — with swearing. I could say, in what I fantasise is the idiom of the era, that you could knock me down with a feather, or I could say, in more up-to-date fashion — oh, no, I won’t, but I will let you guess what might have to be asterisked out. I wouldn’t want to shock you, after all: is that what Jonathan Holloway, the playwright who has adapted Wuthering Heights for the radio, is trying to do? (...)
Read the reviews of Wuthering Heights and you will see that this is a book that bothered its first readers.
“Impossible to begin and not finish it”: you sense a wish that the urge could have been resisted — but the book was simply too overpowering. Too strange. Too compelling. Too troubling. So where does swearing come into into this? Now, I haven’t heard the dramatisation, so I can’t comment on its quality. Holloway (co-founder of the Red Shift theatre company in the early 1980s) is an experienced dramatist and adaptor of the classics; but I wouldn’t call him a safe pair of hands — that’s a bit boring. I think he wanted to remind his listeners that this book was shocking when it appeared; it is, after all, an account of uncontrollable, uncontainable sexual passion, and it was published in 1847. We like to think that they didn’t have that kind of thing back then — but they did; and Emily Brontë’s book endures because the kind of passion that she wanted to convey is shocking in any age. I’ll swear to that, and be glad of it.

The Oxford Times briefly mentions the current performances of the Shared Experience production of Polly Teale's Brontë in Oxford:

The Beaumont Street theatre’s new resident company Shared Experience took to the stage for the first time on Thursday, to present a new play about the authors of masterpieces Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
The production of Brontë, written by Polly Teale, is set in 1845, as drug-addled Branwell Brontë returns home to the home of his sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne in Haworth, Yorkshire, where they were working on their masterpieces of Victorian fiction. Actor Mark Edel-Hunt, who plays Branwell, said: “The opening night was such good fun. It was great to get in front of an audience.”

The Guardian also mentions the production.

The Scunthorpe Telegraph follows the Hull production of Jane Eyre. The Musical, particularly two of the younger members of the cast:

Two young friends have swapped their 21st century school-uniforms for the Regency styles of 1845 to star in the stage musical of Jane Eyre.
Elsham youngsters Frances Foster, nine, and Abigail Brumby, ten, are starring as pupils of Lowood School in the musical of one of Charlotte Brontë's greatest love stories.
This week Jane Eyre is on stage at Hull New Theatre with an orchestrated score from Paul Gordon, with lyrics from John Caird. (...)
She said: "It was really good. The best bit was when we first walked on stage. I got butterflies but it was because I was enjoying it. It's my second time performing at the theatre so I knew where I was going and I was less nervous.
"When I'm on stage I feel like acting is for me. I want to do more acting in the future. I like my costume but it isn't something I would want to wear every day. We have watched the DVD and thought that was good and we remembered which part it was during rehearsal." (...)
She said: "The opening night went well and I really enjoyed it. Seeing people's costumes was the best bit for me. I wasn't nervous at all about my parts and it was good to have my mum in the audience.
"Our grey dress with a white apron is very different from the school uniform we wear today but my school uniform is much better."

This article in The Guardian is spot-on about the love-hate relationship that the Brontës and the inhabitants of Keighley and Haworth have:

[Keighley i]s a spirited town – knocked about a tad in the 60s, but who wasn't? The Brontë family of Haworth just about sums up the area: hard and hardy as millstone, tender and compassionate as a lamb.
The case against… The Airedale Centre: how, when, why? Haworth's regular inundation with Brontë and (Kate) Bush fans: thousands seeking eeee-by-gum folksiness that the village, sadly, more than delivers. (Tom Dyckhoff)

Ann Arbor talks about a very curious project:“Flopped,” the latest production by the Thurston Community Players:

Set in 1985, students of the fictitious Arborville Academy of the Arts are preparing for their school play, a musical version of the literary classic, “Jane Eyre.” But when Hollywood movie-makers get wind of the production, it eventually becomes an ever-changing movie set going from '80s romantic comedy to a “Star Wars” sing-along. (Danny Shaw)

Another curious performance-art production is Blue Man Group in Washington (Warner Theatre). From the Washington Post:

Giant iPhone-like panels emblazoned with app icons appear next to the Blue Men and proceed to relay factoids about spam, or display goofy reductions of literary classics (“Wuthering Heights,” “Hamlet,” etc.) in Twitter-feed-like format. (Celia Wren)

Crosswalk features Jane Eyre in an article about the importance of saying no sometimes:

Power, even omnipotence, is useless to the lover in the face of intransigence. In the novel Jane Eyre, Jane is unwilling to break the laws of God despite her passion for Rochester. Rochester knows he could take her body–Jane is unable to stand against him–but he wants her voluntary love. He longs for her soul and the soul can only be given freely. (John Mark Reynolds)

Film Journal uncovers an anecdote we werent't aware of. It seems that Jane Eyre 1970 was one of the first films that used Dolby sound:

Dolby’s cinema program began in November of 1970, with the experimental application of A-type noise reduction to excerpts of the film Jane Eyre, then in production at Pinewood Studios in London. (Bill Mead)

The Wellingtonista (New Zealand) mentions Mary Taylor's Wellington connection:

Above the cutting runs Paterson St, one more potential victim of the hungry highway. The tunnel, a shortcut born of Depression, cheap labour and a dogged faith in the automobile, is preparing for further expansion. It’s time has returned.  Among the threatened houses is number 7, tucked back behind a nondescript block, but with a “fancy colonial” style and sweeping driveway that attest to its grander history. It was built for Waring Taylor (politician, fraudster, “well-meaning muddler”), and is likely to have been visited by his sister Mary (shopkeeper, pioneer feminist, delicately described as a “close friend” of Charlotte Brontë). (Alf Rune)

The Manila Bulletin interviews Susannah Carson, author of A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Writers On Why We Read Jane Austen:

How did you first come to know Austen?
SC: I was in my early teens when I first read Jane Austen. My grandmother liked to read old-fashioned historical romances, such as those by Victoria Holt and Georgette Heyer. I should confess that I read these modern adaptations first in my eagerness to read “grown-up” novels. When I discovered that these were modelled on the novels of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, I read them all in quick succession and haven’t stopped re-reading them since. (Karen Anne C. Liquete)

We are shocked to know that according to Inc., Watson (IBM's artificial intelligence computer system) doesn't know its Brontës:

He recently spoke with Inc.com's Christine Lagorio about fostering innovation within a mature company, leading diverse workgroups, and what exactly Watson doesn't know. (Hint: Don't ask him about the plot of Wuthering Heights).

Fiona Walker talks to the Daily Mail:

I have never been able to get into Dickens, despite many attempts. I know I should love him, but I like to read - and write - at a furious pace and I find his novels too mannerly and laborious. A part of the problem is probably that my first taste of Dickens was Little Dorrit, a set text for A-Level which seemed to take an eternity to get going; the other set text was Wuthering Heights, and there really was no contest.

The Newcastle Chronicle interviews singer Camilla Kerslake:

Kate Bush is my favourite singer. When I lived up in Preston, at 10 I entered the North West Talent Competition and I sang Wuthering Heights. There were 4,000 people there. (Gordon Barr)

The Hindu reviews the film Barney's Version:

Until Miriam enters Barney's life — and Barney's Version — we witness the unremarkable milestones of an unremarkable man. But when he rids himself of Wife Number Two, and when he declares, dramatically, to Miriam that he'll do anything for her, she tempers his throbbing passion with practicality. She does not want to be Catherine to his Heathcliff — merely wife to his husband. (Baradwaj Rangan)

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is reviewed in The Guardian:

McLain retells [A Moveable] Feast [by Ernest Hemingway] from Hadley's perspective, in the tradition of novels such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, giving voice to a pivotal and yet comparatively silent woman from a classic book. (Sarah Churchwell)

Red Deer Advocate presents Against the Wall Theatre’s world premiere production of Dead Lover's Day:

Definitely there are people who cling onto things for years and years,” said Goldade — whether it’s the memory of a failed marriage or any relationship long after it’s over.
Think of Heathcliff’s obsessive longing for his dead soulmate Cathy in Wuthering Heights or, on an even scarier scale, Glenn Close’s fixation on Michael Douglas’s character in the movie Fatal Attraction. (Lana Michelin)

Reason Magazine publishes the obituary of its founder Lanny Friedlander:

Jesus, how did he so quickly become a ghost at the very mag he'd started? It wasn't due to some sort of Balzacian heist or gothic double-cross that's just as common at magazine startups as it is at Web 2.0 ventures. Though to be honest, there is a bit of Jane Eyre to it. (Nick Gillespie)

The Hartford Courant asks 'What's That College Education Worth?':

It's also fine to be a Gina-type, who revels in the liberal arts and ponders the mysteries of "Jane Eyre," but these days, you sort of need a rich daddy to major in such stuff. (Laurence Cohen & Gina Barreca)

The Daily News reviews Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson:

Shades of Jane Eyre meets Sherlock Holmes, circa 1776: two murders near a country manor in West Sussex; a Lord accused; and insanity, fire, orphans. (Karen Corvello)

El País (Uruguay) reviews  Los peligros de fumar en la cama by Mariana Enriquez:

No es casual que las referencias a las locas encerradas -que retrotraen a la fundacional Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë- estén aquí traídas una y otra vez, llenando de terror al lector mientras le llega el viento molesto del amarronado Río de la Plata.  (Andrea Blanqué) (Translation)

Il Sole (Italy) reviews American Gothic by William Gaddis:

Gaddis è un narratore impegnativo. Spesso i dialoghi terminano con sospensioni che non ci danno l'esatto concetto ma ce lo fanno intuire, e Gotico americano (che allude al famoso quadro di Grant Wood) è un collage post-modernista sorprendente in cui la citazione ha larga parte: infatti, incastonati nel testo, troviamo rivisitazioni di Charlotte Brontë, Robinson Jeffers, Joseph Conrad, nonché brani da pubblicazioni scientifiche reali e persino scene di film di Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Hitchcock. (Renzo S. Crivelli) (Translation)

and Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm:

Alcuni personaggi sono esilaranti: il cugino predicatore, un animale che sputa come un mantice parole di fuoco a memento dell'inferno che tutti attende; o lo scrittore con la fissa del sesso che si è ritirato in campagna per scrivere la biografia del fratello delle Brontë e dimostrare che era lui il vero autore di Cime tempestose. (Translation)

Le Devoir recommends a visit to Haworth:

Si vous avez le temps: Haworth, dans le Yorkshire, pour les soeurs Brönte (sic) (Les Hauts de Hurlevent et Jane Eyre). (Lio Kiefer)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany) talks about manga kids at the Frankfurt Book Fair:

Virginia und Petra, zwei Fans der enorm erfolgreichen Beyblade-Videospiele (sie Kampfkreisel: Der große Dreh), halten es mit Terry Pratchett ebenso wie mit Charlotte Brontë. Wenn sie schreiend und fuchtelnd ihre Kampfkreisel aufeinanderhetzen, ist schwer vorstellbar, dass auch Cathy und Heathcliff zu ihrer Welt gehören. (Daniel Haas) (Translation) 

Cheap Brontë books in The Hindustan Times; SMR mentions the Judith Caldwell's Wuthering Heights painted steel panels in the Alexandria Building in Seattle; Masdearte (Spain) talks about the Penagos Award given to Paula Rego and mentions her connections to Charlotte Brontë; The Arts Blogger posts a lengthy and not always fortunate review of Jane Eyre ("the only notable book [Charlotte Brontë] she wrote"), film and novel. Diana Quincy Romance Author has reread the novel; Phantasma posts about Wuthering Heights; La professora d'inglese posts about Wide Sargasso Sea (in Italian); Bibliojunkie plans a Wuthering Heights read-along; Rosey's Reviews posts about the Jane Eyre audiobook read by Josephine Bailey; Huujuu posts about the Three Graces masonic lodge in Haworth.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights