BBC News reports that at long last the most important part of the Haworth Main Street cobbles replacement is going to take place:
Thousands of stone setts, or cobbles, are to be re-laid in a West Yorkshire village.
The work begins on Monday on Haworth Main Street and is the
last piece of a £600,000 refurbishment in the home of the Brontë family.
The famous literary family moved to Haworth in 1820 where the Reverend Patrick Brontë was appointed Curate of Haworth.
Thousands of tourists walk the steep hill running through the village.
Bradford Council said the renovations will maintain the historical character of the village
The road will be closed in short sections as the work is carried out, although pedestrian access will be possible at all times.
The work is expected to last until the summer but the road
will be re-opened over weekends and there will be no work on bank
holidays.
Also on
BBC News we read the results of the latest "Emily Brontë portrait" auction. Unsurprisingly, the auctioneers announce yet another Brontë portrait to be auctioned in April:
A portrait believed to be of the author Emily Brontë was sold for £4,600 at a Northamptonshire auctioneers.
The 33cm by 24cm (13in x 9.5in) oil painting went under the hammer in Towcester on Thursday.
Auctioneer JP Humbert said it had attracted a moderate amount of interest after a previous sale of another painting.
The auction house sold that portrait of the reclusive writer for £23,836 in December.
This latest painting, which is annotated 'Emily Jane Brontë', was estimated to fetch between £5,000 and £8,000.
Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert said: "We have another Brontë
painting which we will put up for auction in April and we are hoping to
make it three out of three."
AutoStraddle interviews the members of the art collective All the Cunning Stunts. One of them, Marnie Slater makes the following rather enigmatic statement:
Marnie: Hehe. I think Rachel [O'Neill] for sure hand-washes her laundry more often than all the Brontë sisters combined. (Effing Dykes)
Sarah Pyles remembers in
The Huffington Post her love of reading:
As I grew older, my love of reading continued. I think I must have read
Little Women over 15 times as a teenager. Other favourites included Jane Eyre, Emma and The Outsiders.
And more Oscar predictions:
Best Costume Design. Another very tricky category. The traditional pick would be Anonymous,
because it's a lavish period piece. My friend Howard calls this the
Most Costumes award. But that movie truly was anonymous in every sense
and has been so thoroughly forgotten it seems unlikely. And when you
think of Hugo, the costumes do not come to mind. That means it's down to the glamour of The Artist versus the realism of Jane Eyre. Glamour wins every time. Mind you, the Costume guild gave it to Madonna's movie W./E.,
which is also period and very glamorous. And this category has been
willfully offbeat for the past 10 years. Still, that's not how voters
think when they're voting; that's just how we think when we're trying to
predict how voters think. Michael O'Connor of Jane Eyre won before and that never hurts. But I'm sticking with the "obvious" choice of The Artist. (Michael Giltz in The Huffington Post)
In a relatively quiet year for British cinema at the Oscars,
the nation can still turn to that reliable standby, the best costume
design award, for a little welling-up of patriotic pride. Four out of
the last five winners have been British, and two of them – Sandy Powell
and Michael O'Connor – are in the running this time. O'Connor is up for
Jane Eyre, but the smart money is on Powell, for her work on Martin Scorsese's early-cinema fantasy Hugo. (Andrew Pulver in The Guardian)
And the winner is: Hugo. This is an especially tricky category, and it's not impossible for an impressive period piece with no other nominations like Jane Eyre to swoop in here. But Hugo's
Sandy Powell has won this award three times and seems well poised to do
it again. This is one of the tightest races in the technical
categories, though, so many other things are possible.
(Katie Rich on CinemaBlend)
The world’s largest costume supplier, Angels has provided a selection of
clothing and accessories for all four films nominated for best costume
design at this year’s Oscars — “W.E.,” “Hugo,” “Jane Eyre” and
“Anonymous.” (WWD)
The lush set designs that characterized both critical darling Jane Eyre
and less-well-received Anonymous provided appropriately rich backdrops
for the examination of such weighty subjects as love and art. In Eyre,
the opulence that Jane encounters at Rochester’s estate serves as a
deliberate contrast to her forlorn upbringing. (The Globe and Mail)
Em Jane Eyre, a indumentária tem o estilo da era vitoriana e ajuda a
compor o clima sombrio do filme, além de ser um marcador da evolução da
personagem Jane Eyre. Os vestidos escuros e de tecidos rústicos vão
dando lugar a peças mais claras à medida em que a própria personagem se
transforma ao longo da trama, abandona a aura de tristeza e solidão, se
apaixona e ainda se torna uma rica herdeira. Tudo muito eficiente, mas
não faz brilhar os olhos. (Pollyana Teixeira in Mundo Ela) (Translation)
Poi viene Jane Eyre,
un film i costumi sono perfette macchine di significazione: basta
dargli un’occhiata e lo spettatore capisce lo stato sociale del
personaggio, il suo percorso emotivo, la sua età. C’è anche una grande attenzione ai dettagli (come si evince da certi cappelli), al peso storico dei materiali e alcuni momenti di lirismo creativo. I costumi di Jane Eyre sono per noi anche migliori di quelli favolosi che Michael O’Connor ha realizzato per The Duchess
(per cui ha già vinto un Oscar) eppure l’Academy non si sofferma su
certe sottigliezze e pensa piuttosto come un PR, assegnando premi più al
film che ai suoi singoli componenti. (Emanuele Lugli on Vogue.it) (Translation)
The Huffington Post also discusses films with no Oscar endorsement:
Jane Eyre. You've probably heard a lot about German / Irish actor Michael
Fassbender lately. Mostly I'm sure about his enormous penis, which is
on prominent display in his Golden Globe-nominated performance in Shame. But before that he was very memorable as a young Magneto in X-Men First Class, and before that he turned in an impressive and sexy performance as the cold and distant Rochester to Mia Wasikowska's Jane Eyre.
Directed with moody gothic chilliness by Cary Fukunaga, this adaptation
never feels boring or austere. This is technically another cheat
because it did get an Oscar nomination for best Costume Design, but it
is much better than just a well-costumed period drama. (Bill Augustin)
Why has Jane Eyre no more nominations?
The Daily Californian says what we already know:
If “Jane Eyre” had opened in the fall instead of in March, Mia
Wasikowska would probably have earned a very deserving nomination. (Braulio Ramirez)
The Seattle Times joins in the recognition.
IndieWire's The Playlist mentions her partenaire:
Best Actor - Michael Fassbender - "Shame"
It's become something of a tradition for the best performance of the
year to get overlooked by the Academy, and that's exactly how we thought
of Michael Fassbender as Brandon in "Shame."(...)
The actor put in several excellent performances in the last year (he
easily could have managed a nomination for "Jane Eyre" too), but this is the one that will be remembered as putting him into the big leagues. (Oliver Lyttelton)
ContraCosta Times has some alternative nominations:
Most Tragic Ruins
The
great smoking hulk that once was Thornfield Hall in "Jane Eyre" again
reminds us to deal with that crazy woman in the attic before things get
out of hand. (Kathryn Pritchett)
Like
The Times:
Best Use of Mud: Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights. Here the mud was brilliantly deployed and liberally splattered on characters, on animals and across locations, both inside and out. The mud not only suggested the hardships of life on the moors in early 19th-century Yorkshire, but it also gave you something to look at when the acting of the older kids started to get a bit rubbish in the second half. (Kevin Maher)
The
Phoenix Film Industry Examiner interviews Cary Fukunaga about the origins of the film:
“I would say I found ‘Jane Eyre’, I was thinking about adapting the novel on my own while I was waiting for ‘Sin Nombre’
to get made. I was thinking about other scripts to write, I had just
finished another adaptation and was thinking about other stories of my
youth and Bob Stevenson’s version of Jane Eyre was one of my favorites
and thought it would be a great adaptation.
But it didn’t happen (with a chuckle); I got busy with ‘Sin Nombre’.
While I was promoting ‘Sin Nombre’, I found out that the BBC had a
‘Jane’ on their slat and I wanted to find out what their take on it
was! So I asked to read it, liked the script, and I asked to meet the
producer and the screenwriter Moira Buffini! They liked me and my
approach to the story, and, I liked them so I said ‘Let’s make this
movie. That’s how it happened!” (Stan Robinson)
The
New York Times reviews
By Blood by Ellen Ullman:
And literature would be bereft without the love triangle in all its
variations — one party dead (“Rebecca”), oblivious (“Othello”), mad
(“Jane Eyre”) or a pile of old letters (“The Aspern Papers”). (Parul Sehgal)
The Guardian interviews the writer
Reggie Nadelson:
Who's your favourite writer?
Philip Roth … but only one? Can I have Graham Greene, Salman Rushdie and Charlotte Brontë, please (Only for Jane Eyre).
Keighley News informs about a local accident with some bizarre Brontë connections:
The driver of the other vehicle, Haworth man Ellison Moore, who works for Haworth-based haulage JVM, escaped injury.
He had been driving his vehicle -- named "Jane Eyre" -- back home towards Keighley after dropping off a load in Manchester. (David Knights)
Outlook India publishes a satirical piece about P.D. James:
There are still queries on why I wrote Death Comes to Pemberley, a sort of sequel to Pride and Prejudice.
In media interviews, I said I loved Jane Austen and her Pemberley and
why not stage a murder among familiar scenario and characters. I got
some weird feedback though. Like why not murder off the arrogant Darcy
and let ‘smarty pants’ Elizabeth Bennett solve the crime. Or get the
idiot Mr Collins bashed on the head and killed, with the post-mortem
revealing a total absence of brains!
But here, I can reveal the real reason. I was getting a bit tired of
my longstanding hero, Adam Dalgliesh, who was getting on my nerves. I
got him married off in my last book, his faithful assistant Kate Miskin
will no longer sigh after him and perhaps his poetic faculties had also
dimmed. Mind you, he had been with me since 1962 and had he been in real
police service would have retired long back. Will I do murder sequels
of more classics? Here too suggestions poured in. ‘Murder at the
Orphanage’ (Oliver Twist), ‘The Guillotine Killings’ (A Tale of Two Cities), ‘Descending Heights’ (Wuthering Heights) and so on. Let me think about this. (V. Gangadhar)
Vernon Morning Star reviews a local concert of the electronic duo Chairlift:
The rain and mist of the dark English moors have drifted across the
Atlantic to Brooklyn, once home to Sweathogs like Barbarino and
Horseshack. (...) Illusion is made concrete as the Brontës are dropped off in front of the pizzeria. (Dean Gordon-Smith)
Financial Times reviews the novel
The Prisoner of Paradise by Romesh Gunesekera:
The Prisoner of Paradise is a delightful study in method writing, an affectionate, playful tribute to Lalla-Rookh, Jane Austen, the Brontës and the historical romance itself. (Susan Elderkin)
Simon Schama shares personal memories also on
Financial Times:
So
the fit between being British and being Jewish seemed to my parents,
and to their two children to whom they had given the very British names
of Simon and Tessa, utterly natural, beshert even –
historically fated. As well as Dickens and Shakespeare on the bookshelf
at home, there was Fielding, George Eliot, Austen, the Brontës, Hardy,
Wells and (a special passion of Arthur’s who spoke as if he had known
him personally) anything written by GB Shaw.
An alert from the
Concord Journal:
Margot Livesey will be at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday to read from, answer questions and sign copies of her new novel, “The Flight of Gemma Hardy.” At
once an homage to and a variation on the beloved classic “Jane Eyre,”
Livesey’s take on an iron-willed orphan girl, determined to find her
place in the world despite the odds stacked against her, is set in
Scotland in the early 1960s.
Like many readers, Livesey says she first fell in love with “Jane Eyre”
as a child, relating to Jane’s plight because of her own childhood
unhappiness — details of which she has incorporated into Gemma’s story.
“I have reread Jane Eyre a number of times since my first
passionate reading and my understanding of the novel has shifted with
each experience,” Livesey writes. “Like most readers I was initially
riveted by the discovery of Bertha in the attic, but on rereading I saw
that Jane had a larger part in her own fate than I had first
understood….The Flight of Gemma Hardy is, in my mind, neither my autobiography nor a retelling of Jane Eyre.
Rather I am writing back to Charlotte Brontë, recasting Jane’s journey
to fit my own courageous heroine and the possibilities of her time and
place. And like Brontë I am, of course, stealing from my own life.”
Publishers Weekly talks about Jeannette Winterson:
Winterson’s mined the circumstances of her young life for her fiction,
notably her first, hugely successful novel, Oranges Are Not the Only
Fruit (U.K.’s Pandora Press 1985). But while she’s written novels,
nonfiction, children’s books, and screenplays since then, she never
expected she would write a memoir. It was discovering her adoption
papers that “compelled her to start the journey” to find her mother. “I
believed that my mother was dead,” Winterson says unapologetically.
“Where do you think I got my information? The arch fiction writer, Mrs.
Winterson. I thought, ‘if she can make up the ending of Jane Eyre, she
can sure invent a dead mother.’ ” (Louisa Ermelino)
Carlos Colón writes a moving obituary of his own mother in el
Diario de Sevilla (Spain):
Por eso lloro Rebeca en el Llorens una noche de marzo de 1943; una jovencita de 16 años leyendo Cumbres borrascosas en la edición Crisol de Aguilar, sentada en el cierro de una casa de la plaza de Argüelles[.] (Translation)
Il Corriere della Sera (Italy) talks about Orhan Pamuk's views on literature:
Gli sembra di sognare: vede il mondo cogli occhi dei personaggi di Cime
tempestose o di Anna Karenina ; passeggia nei paesaggi che essi
frequentano. (Citati Pietro) (Translation)
Coopération (Switzerland) interviews the journalist Nathalie Ducommun:
Et j’aime me replonger dans des livres qui m’ont marquée, comme «Voyage
au bout de la nuit» de Céline ou «Jane Eyre» de Charlotte Brontë.» (Didier Neto) (Translation)
The Berliner Morgenpost (Germany) lists several famous sisters, including the Brontës. Maria Ripenberg at the
Upsala Nya Tidning (Sweden) is a truly Brontëite:
Till den riktiga hyllan skulle jag t ex köpa Charlotte
Brontës reade bladvändarklassiker Jane Eyre. Om jag inte redan ägde den
alltså, och dessutom hade läst den två gånger. Likaså skulle jag satsa
på Hjalmar Söderbergs Den allvarsamma leken – en roman som sannerligen
förtjänar omläsning. (Translation)
The Times reviews
Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton;
Nekultura (Czech Republic),
Review Every Day and
Los calcetines no tienen glamour (in Spanish) review
Jane Eyre 2011;
hourglassphilosophies,
La Petite Charmande de Prose (in French) and
Books Anna Recommends post about the original novel;
Parenthetical Views and
elledoubleyouu do the same with
Wuthering Heights; the
Brontë Parsonage Blog gives information on yesterday's
Gothic from the Brontës to Twilight conference;
fearless... posts a poem inspired by
Wuthering Heights;
Abigails reviews
Jane Slayre;
Without an Art? doesn't like at all
Villette.
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