Don't Call it a Chick Flick

Delano (Luxembourg) presents Jane Eyre 2011 which opens in Luxembourg next January 13:

The film is an honest and visually seductive film, quite faithful to the Gothic romance that, in the words of critic Roger Ebert “attracts us with a deep tidal force.”
Mia Wasikowska stars as the wretched heroine, who suffers misfortune and abuse but rises above all with dignity to end up a wife and mother. Alongside Fassbender, Judi Dench makes a significant contribution as Rochester’s housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax.
Fukunaga brings out the dark side of the novel in what is a slow but impressive film made all the better by its lead actors.

The Spanish Cinema Goya Awards have nominated Jane Eyre 2011 to the Best European Film category:

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia
Roman Polanski’s Carnage
Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist
Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre

The American Society of Cinematographers will release its nominations tomorrow and Guy Lodge on HitFix makes his own predictions:

There are more exciting directions they could go in -- it'd be great to see "Drive," "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "Jane Eyre" or even "Melancholia" slip in here -- but I'm not sensing much independent spirit on the guilds' part this year.

The Reel Breakdown lists the film as one of the five overlooked films of the year:

In this nearly forgotten Michael Fassbender ("X-Men: First Class") film, the studly Irish actor who generated so much commentary for his full-frontal nudity in "Shame" creates more heat while fully clothed. He plays the tortured Victorian gentleman, Rochester, opposite Mia Wasikowska's plain-Jane governess. Based on the Charlotte Brontë classic, with lush cinematography and gorgeous sets and costumes, this is the ultimate smart girl's romance. Just don't call it a chick flick. (Thelma Adams)

The Montreal Gazette has an article about the visual effects studio Modus FX:

At Modus FX, for example, we have developed expertise in surfaces, such as the trains in Source Code and the water plane in Barney's Version, as well as CG environments and invisible effects, such as when we changed the season from winter to summer for several scenes in Jane Eyre. (Marc Bourbonnais)

The latest episode of Castle (Season 4, Episode 11: Till Death do us Apart) contains a Jane Eyre reference:

A 28-year-old naked jumper named Michael Bailey has landed on a street side fruit cart, having either hurled himself, or been hurled, out of a seventh floor hotel window. He has scratch marks on his back, which prompts Beckett to say, “looks like he did the deed before taking the dive.” Lipstick on the sheets upstairs make that seem likely, and the room booked under the name Jane Eyre give credence to the theory. (Stephanie Krikorian in Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy)

Esposito thinks Lanie is hooking up with her assistant. They go up to the eighth floor and Kevin tells them all about their victim, Michael Bailey. The room was booked by Jane Eyre and paid for in cash. Rick calls the woman a black widow.(Jessica Lefevre on Earsuck)

The Wall Street Journal talks about Bollywood adaptations of Jane Austen and mentions the Brontës:

The brooding Brontë heroes from “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” have been portrayed by “tragedy king” Dilip Kumar. (Beth Watkins)

In Sangdil 1952 and Dil Diya Dard Liya 1966, respectively.


The Gainsborough Standard is waiting for the local premiere of Wuthering Heights 2011:

Kicking off February will be the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights by Andrea Arnold.
Starring Solomon Glave and Kaya Scodelario, this is said to be the most realistic adaptation on film of Emily Bronte’s classic novel.
Arnold has aimed for total authenticity - with wind, rain and tragic passion as Heathcliff and his elusive Cathy roam the moors in search of eternal love in a powerful and uncompromising vision.

Slate reviews among others the film Dream House by Jim Sheridan:

Daniel Craig gives a terrific performance as a family man who loses everything; the picture is more a cross between Douglas Sirk and Emily Brontë than a Paranormal Activity-style blockbuster, and how the hell can anyone make money off that? Sadly, these days you can’t. (Stephanie Zacharek)

Playbill publishes the obituary of the press agent Bill Schelble who had a curious anecdote of his infancy:

Born April 11, 1930, in Milwaukee, he became starstruck after his mother took him to see Katharine Hepburn in a touring production of Jane Eyre. (Robert Simonson)

Brendan Tapley discusses masculinity and greef in Slate:

Downton Abbey became a gateway drug. After, I devoured adaptations of even older romantic tales: Dickens’s Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Nicholas Nickleby. I read with great absorption Brontë’s 600-page novel Jane Eyre. For all the men in these stories, the stakes of love remained high—which made their disappointments like stakes in the heart—but in their grief they never came across as weird, or naive, or effeminate. Rather, there was a dignity, strength, and honor that surrounded their despair because, to the other characters and now to me, they had gone somewhere only the stout of heart can go.

MSBNC publishes an extract from the upcoming biography of the Queen Elizabeth II: "Elizabeth The Queen" by Sally Bedell Smith.

Throughout her girlhood, Elizabeth had time blocked out each day for “silent reading” of books by Stevenson, Austen, Kipling, the Brontës, Tennyson, Scott, Dickens, Trollope, and others in the standard canon.

Wales Online quotes Una Stubbs saying about Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock)

Veteran actress Stubbs said she found her male co-star attractive, and that she liked to "ruffle" up his hair when it was "wild, like Heathcliff". (Sherna Noah)

Katie Crouch writes on Salon about infidelity but makes the following passing reference to Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea:

I pitched “Anna Karenina” at the door, then passed the rest of the night with a bottle of Malbec and one of my very favorites: “Wide Sargasso Sea.” Ever read that one? The heroine gets so crazy over the loss of her husband’s love she sets herself on fire, along with Thornfield Hall, the home of the much less endearing Jane Eyre.

Mostly Reading YA interviews April Lindner, author of Jane:

For folks who don’t have a copy of your book (and therefore can’t read your Author’s Note), can you tell us about your inspiration to rework the classic tale of Jane Eyre?
Sure. I’m addicted to modernizations of literary classics, and have a special fondness for retellings of Pride and Prejudice, but as much as I love Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has long been my favorite novel. My husband and I were sitting around one night after dinner, and I was lamenting how few modernizations of Jane Eyre had been written recently. (That was a few years ago; it seems a lot more have been written since.) I wondered out loud if the reason might not be how hard it is to recreate the gaping class divide between Jane and Mr. Rochester in present day America. And the moment the words left my lips I realized there was a way to make it work: by making Mr. Rochester a celebrity. Even better, make him a rock star. I knew right away that would be a book I’d want to read so I decided to go one step further and write it myself. (...)
If you could have dinner with 3 fictional characters, which would you choose and why?
The character who immediately popped into my mind is Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. Wouldn’t she be fun to hang out with? I had to work a lot harder to come up with the other two dinner guests, though. I didn’t want to pick him because he seemed such an obvious choice for me, but I have to say Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre because I’d really like to hear Elizabeth Bennett’s opinion of him! (I already know I love him.)

The Spectrum talks about a literary trip to Europe which included the Brontë Parsonage Museum; Elisa's Miscellaneous Musings reviews Agnes Grey; The Attic has visited Haworth and the Parsonage;  La Matinée (in Portuguese) reviews Jane Eyre 2011; Ephémère (in French) reviews the original novel; The Brontë Weather Project posts about the moorlands and how the climate change is affecting them; Dawn's Dress Diary discusses one of the gowns of Jane Eyre 1996.