Breathing life into the birthplace

Moviehole interviews Andrea Arnold:

Your adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” is unlike other film versions of the story. Had you seen many of them before working on this project? I haven’t seen any. I did see the Lawrence Oliver version when I was eight—so I saw it a very long time ago and haven’t seen it since. I thought it would be better not to. Whenever I work on a project, I try not to watch things that are similar because I don’t want to be influenced. I want it to come out of my own head. (Justine Ashley Costanza)

The Bayside Patch looks at 'this week at the movies' and concludes that,

The week’s sole recommendation is for Scottish director Andrea Arnold’s fresh spin on Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.”
This version of the story is grittier, darker and more ethereal than most versions of the classic tale. And the cinematography is stunning.
In Brontë’s novel, Heathcliff was believed to be a gypsy, but in Arnold’s version he is black. This adds an angle of racism not present in the book once the Earnshaws – with the exception of Cathy and her father – begin mistreating Heathcliff.
Otherwise, Arnold’s film stays pretty close to the book. But similar to the classic 1939 version, the film ends at the book’s halfway mark.
What makes this film different from any other version of the story is its visual style. The Earnshaw’s property and most of the film’s characters are continuously caked in mud. And the violence is grittier than you might have imagined from reading Bronte’s prose.
Both Solomon Glave and James Howson give strong performances as the child and adult versions of Heathcliff, while Kaya Scodelario makes a striking adult Cathy.
Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights” moves at a measured pace, but those willing to give themselves over to it will be rewarded. (Nathan Duke)

More reviews on Minx, Greg King's Film Reviews, Trespass Magazine and The JK Review.

A.V. Club looks at forthcoming TV shows.

Like a ragamuffin taken under the wing of a wealthy sponsor and given the sexiest actors that money not spent on optioning intellectual property can buy, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is aboard the steamer to The CW, joining a class of recent, similarly lifted-from-the-public-domain TV inspirations like The Count Of Monte Cristo, Dracula, Tom Sawyer And Huck Finn, Hamlet, Wuthering Heights , and The CW's own Alice In Wonderland and Sleepy Hollow in the high society of low originality.  Like most of those projects, the new Great Expectations will get certain modern-day twists necessitated by its being on The CW, including the obligatory streamlining of the title to Expectations, and gender-swapping the lead. (Sean O'Neal)

The Manila Bulletin has an article in the current TV-series/soap-opera Walang Hanggan, loosely based on Wuthering Heights.

“Walang Hanggan” has become one of ABS-CBN’s highest rating shows that empty the streets during its time slot with people glued to their TV seats. Loosely based on “Wuthering Heights,” the TV series features love that revolves around characters from three different generations: the love triangle among Henia (Susan Roces), Margaret (Helen Gamboa), and Joseph (Eddie Gutierrez); the ill-fated lovers Marco (Richard Gomez) and Emily (Dawn Zulueta); and young sweethearts Daniel (Coco Martin) and Katerina (Julia Montes). (Jojo P. Panaligan)

Flavorwire lists '15 Scathing Early Reviews of Classic Novels', including one of Wuthering Heights.

On Wuthering Heights: “How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.” — Graham’s Lady’s Magazine, 1848 (Emily Temple)

Diaries at the ready - here's an operatic alert for May 2013. From TheaterJones:

Excerpts from eight new operas, ranging in theme from Lady Macbeth to the Negro Baseball League to Jane Eyre, will be presented at the 2013 Fort Worth Opera Festival.
The Fort Worth Opera has revealed the eight works that have been chosen for its inaugural Frontiers showcase, in which there will be short presentations of new operas at its 2013 Opera Festival. The call for submissions was announced in January 2012.
The eight works range in theme from baseball to mythology to broadcastcast journalism, and include adaptations or inspirations from Eudora Welty, Charlotte Brontë and Shakespeare. They will be presented May 6-11, 2013.
Here is more from the Fort Worth Opera's release, for info about the works and the composers and librettists: [...]
Brontë fans will want to hear the operatic interpretation of composer Louis Karchin's and librettist Diane Osen's Jane Eyre, based on the famous novel by Charlotte Brontë about a young orphan raised by a cruel aunt who falls in love with a man not knowing he is currently married. [...]
Louis Karchin, composer: Jane Eyre
Louis Karchin's music has been performed world-wide, most recently at the Alba Music Festival and La Fenice, in Italy, at Mozart Hall, Seoul, South Korea, and at Tanglewood's Festival of Contemporary Music. [...]
Diane Osen, librettist
Librettist Diane Osen earned a BA with honors from Vassar College and an MA in English from Rutgers University before embarking on a career as a writer, consultant and teacher. In addition to serving as a communications executive at Polaroid, Columbia Pictures and NBC, she has taught writing at New York University and has consulted for non-profit arts institutions such as the National Book Foundation, the American Museum of the Moving Image and Concert Artists Guild. (Mark Lowry)

The Forth Worth Star-Telegram echoes the news.

The Telegraph and Argus reports on the campaign to 'breath life' into the Brontë birthplace at Thornton.

Can there be the slightest doubt that 72/74 Market Street, Thornton, is one of the premier league literary birthplaces in the country?
For it was in this double-fronted stone cottage between 1815 and 1820 that the writers Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë were born, and their brother Patrick Branwell, an aspiring painter whose picture of the three sisters remains the most memorable of all the images he left behind. [...]
Since it was purchased at auction by a London property investor for £180,000 in June, 2007 and subsequently converted into flats, the three to four-bedroom house has been allowed to deteriorate.
At the same time this was happening, the reputation of the Brontës was being used by tourist agency Welcome to Yorkshire to promote the region.
Now a group of concerned individuals have got together and formed the Brontë Birthplace Trust (2012) to try to retrieve the house and restore it to its former glory when, in the ownership of the writer Barbara Whitehead, it was a museum and a tourist attraction. In one year people from 17 different countries visited the house.
Chairman of the BBT is Steve Stanworth. He lives in nearby Allerton, but has had an attachment to Thornton for 25 years following the baptism of his daughter in St James’s Church. He is also actively involved in fundraising for the Bell Chapel, opposite the church.
He said: “We are looking to raise about £200,000, based on a valuation of the property of about £130,000. It’s in receivership, so it shouldn’t be full market value. There’s quite a bit of structural work that needs doing.
“If we can get the house up and running it could have a positive effect on the rest of Market Street. We could start a Brontë trail through Thornton from the house, going on to the Bell Chapel and the church.
“We need a five-year plan. And if we set up as a charity, we need £5,000. We did approach the Brontë Parsonage with a view to creating a sub-museum in the house, but they said their constitution doesn’t allow them to spend their reserves on buying property.”
Conservative Councillor for Thornton and Allerton Valerie Binney said was also at the inaugural meeting of the BTT. She said: “I would just love to see the house restored and brought back as a museum with guides. Nobody owns it at the moment, so it could be cheaper to buy.”
The former Liverpool homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney are owned by the National Trust. When I visited them in 2008, the McCartney terraced house was lived in by a man – also a left-handed guitarist – whose job it was to give visitors a guided tour.
This arrangement seemed to work well. He lived there rent-free and the National Trust had someone looking after the house where teenage John and Paul wrote songs that became The Beatles’ early chart-busting hits.
Thornton-based writer and university lecturer Michael Stewart came to Thornton 12 years ago. Within a week of moving into his Market Street home, he went across the road to visit the Brontë birthplace which, at that time, was owned by Barbara Whitehead.
He said: “Barbara gave a short tour and a selection of well chosen anecdotes. It was a great welcome to the village. At the time, Market Street was thriving, there was a butchers, a bakers, a cafe, a pet shop, children’s clothes shop, lots of other shops.
“Most of these are now boarded up. It may be a coincidence that the decline of Market street correlates to the closing of the museum, but the saving of the museum could really inject new life and opportunity into the village.
“This is a place of great cultural significance. The Brontës are known all over the world. With the onset of the birthday bicentenaries of the three sisters, the time is ripe to turn the fortunes of their birthplace around.”
The Brontë Birthplace Trust (2012) is due to meet next on October 31. (Jim Greenhalf)

Here's one of the reasons why CIO's Martin on Mobile Apps recommends getting a Kindle with ads:

Kindle e-readers without ads display line-art drawings of dead authors whenever the device is in sleep mode. I can’t tell you how tired I grew of looking at Agatha Christie, John Steinbeck, Charlotte Brontë, Alexandre Dumas, Emily Dickinson and others. I mean no disrespect to these talented writers. I just don’t want to look at the same drawings of them over. And over. And over. And over. Yes, I know you can jailbreak your Kindle to create custom screen saver images. But I’m not willing to put my Kindle at potential risk just for that. (James A. Martin)

Página 12 (Argentina) features Muriel Spark and mentions her biography of Emily Brontë in passing. A Year of Living Adventurously–Hitting 30 posts about the female Gothic and Wuthering Heights. Risky Regencies think they are celebrating the anniversary of the publication of Jane Eyre late but they are actually celebrating it early, as the actual date is October 16th. Ageless Page Reviews writes about Tina Connolly's Ironskin.