"I wanted it to be very visceral"

Let's begin with a new round of Wuthering Heights 2011 reviews:

The Diamond Back is fascinated by the film:

Wuthering Heights is a movie relying more on showing than telling. The hazy cinematography is not only visually appealing, but changes from bright to dark as the mood of the film does. Furthermore, much of the story is told through symbols: Arnold focuses on moths and feathers to show the pair’s love and shows animals being killed to depict their demise.
The way Arnold relates the story highlights Heathcliff and Catherine’s passion. With few words and even less music, the audience is able to experience the way Heathcliff and Catherine so tragically fell for one another.
I leave one piece of advice for the audience — attend this movie in pursuit of an artistic escape, rather than for a few laughs with friends. It is worth viewing — so much so it convinced me to actually buy the novel.
In short, few films make love feel as magnanimous as Arnold’s adaptation does. It is, quite simply, a work of art, one which deserves to be appreciated. (Alicia McElhaney)

The Washington Examiner also publishes a favourable review:

Using unknowns is just one way Arnold ensures her films, despite their grand themes, remain naturalistic. "Wuthering Heights," despite its melodramatic source material, is no exception. This is the earthiest "Wuthering Heights" ever made. It emphasizes the gritty environment of the moors that so infused the novel and its strange characters. The near-silence of the beginning might puzzle viewers who associate the grand love story with big declarations. But patient watchers will be rewarded with an ultimately overwhelming experience that does great justice to a great book. (Kelly Jane Torrance)

The West Australian also likes the adaptation:

It takes a classic, boundary-pushing, difficult-to-adapt work of literature and makes it bracingly cinematic and new. Arnold goes beyond merely translating words to images, she steeps Bronte's story so elementally in the natural world - in the squelching mud, the wind-whipped moors and under the dirty layers of period clothing down to the bare, grimy, erotically charged skin - that you can practically smell it. (Pier Leach)

Another postitive review on Screen Invasion:

The film’s take-it-or-leave-it combination of blunt imagery and elliptical storytelling starts to feel stiff once Scodelario and Howson enter the picture. Yet Arnold still finds moments of beauty as her camera glides freely through the grass and mud, and she brings a refreshingly crude aesthetic sensibility to a genre that’s often too enamored with delicacy. Wuthering Heights is tragedy and romance with a strong emphasis on the former, a barbaric yawp of a film that allows its powerful images and raging emotions to resonate in places where words simply cannot. (Eric Ambler)

And The Thousands:

The inarticulate, truncated narrative may frustrate some viewers, as may the adult Heathcliff and Cathy’s (James Howson and Kaya Scodelario) poor resemblance to the more engaging younger actors. (The wimpy Scodelario, particularly, lacks Beer’s spunky presence.) But it beautifully summons Brontë’s central theme: of sublimated desire decaying into death and wrath. (Mel Campbell)

The Oregonian has a lukewarm review:

The film's look is decidedly anti-romantic. While some shots capture the desolate beauty of the barren moors, many others are overly muddy, both in the visual and literal sense. The environment is one of unrelenting cruelty and misanthropy, which certainly brings out the novel's darker themes, but can be something of a slog to watch.  (Marc Mohan)

Betsy Sharkey in Los Angeles Times has also a review with some pros and a few cons:

What's right with the film is also what is wrong with it. Sometimes there is nothing more artistically elegant than stripping a story down to the bare essentials to get at a more naturalistic world, as director Cary Fukunaga did in his minimalist take on another Brontë sister's "Jane Eyre" in 2011, or the ambient sounds and silences of director Kelly Reichardt's "Meek's Cutoff" in 2010. The danger, though, is that the very lack of artifice can become the artifice.
What enriches "Wuthering Heights" at the beginning weakens and wears down the film by the end. The branch that taps the bedroom window when the wind kicks up is but one of the images that becomes a nuisance over time, the overuse too pointed. The reliance on natural lighting, while beautiful in its shadowy grit, leaves the Earnshaw farmhouse so dark that it is often next to impossible to know what is going on. (...)
Still, Arnold's "Wuthering Heights" has its virtues. The reality she brings to Brontë makes the contrasts between social strata much starker. The look itself, raw and haunting, won director of photography Robbie Ryan the Venice Film Festival's top cinematography prize. Earnshaw's place has all the roughness of a working farm, while the Linton's manor, where Heathcliff and Cathy are caught spying and a dog bite changes everything, is wrapped in the aging grace of a more gentile life. Unlike earlier films, the weight of the story rests with young Heathcliff and Cathy, their older selves not much more than an epilogue. It's just that there isn't enough story — the book shouldn't be required reading for the film to make sense.

The Washington Post views clearly more cons than pros:

It’s as if Arnold took this impassioned tale and injected it with Botox. Where are the emotions? With the exception of the opening scene, the rare occasions when characters express feelings -- screaming or crying -- ring curiously hollow. Maybe that’s because there are so few highs. When a story lacks any moment of bliss, the despair doesn’t seem so desperate. (Stephanie Merry)

The Sydney Morning Herald interviews Kaya Scodelario:

''We didn't [study] it at school,'' Scodelario says. ''When I got the role, I wanted to read it but [Arnold] asked me not to. She wanted us to go in completely fresh … I will read the book one day, I promise.' (...)
'We have got to a point where period dramas are done in a certain way,'' Scodelario says. ''Everything is brightly lit, everyone walks slowly, speaks slowly and is classically beautiful … [Arnold] wanted us to ignore those conventions, to make it rough and natural. This is something different, which is terrifying and exciting.' (Louise Schwartzkoff)

StarPulse interviews the director, Andrea Arnold:

There was a scarce amount of dialogue in lieu of an arresting visceral visual storytelling for your "Wuthering Heights" – what inspired you to take Emily Brontë’s story in such a unique direction?
Andrea Arnold: I don't know – I did start at the very beginning thinking I’m just gonna make this film in the way I know how.  But I revisited the book and went through the book.  I felt it was a difficult book and I wanted to capture the essence of that for the film.  The brutality and the cruelty and the nature of things are very much a part of the book and I wanted the film to capture that - I wanted it to be very visceral.
There is an intimacy and urging eroticism between your Heathcliff and Catherine without almost any physical contact – what were some of the challenges of taking that approach?
AA: I’m glad you think that’s there because I’m not sure they thought that was there between them – it’s the magic of cinema isn’t it.  To try and capture that I would say that the thing that was difficult is that thirteen year-olds don't want to actually be around each other if they’re of the opposite sex.  They’re really wary of each other and Shannon and Solomon have that element.  (Laughs)  So I would say the biggest challenge was getting them to actually be in the same room together.  (Jason Coleman)      

Bed-Stuy Patch also talks about the film. More reviews on Jesther Entertainment, Hollywood Jesus, Movie Dearest, Battleship Pretension.

Once again English Heritage warns that the conservation of Haworth is still very much at risk. The Telegraph & Argus reports:

Haworth is one of the region’s ten most important sites at risk, heritage bosses revealed today.
Despite attracting local and international tourism, English Heritage has nevertheless placed the Haworth Conservation Area, renowned for being home to the Brontës, on its Heritage at Risk Register 2012 due to a general architectural decline.
The conservation area is one of 40 sites across the Bradford district to feature on the at-risk register published today.  (...)
Last night, a senior Bradford Council officer insisted the authority is doing all it can to preserve Haworth’s historical importance and said there is “no suggestion” it is suffering from neglect or deterioration, while English Heritage does concede that things are “improving”.
But John Huxley, chairman of Haworth Parish Council, urged English Heritage, the Council and traders and retailers in the area to work together better to save the conservation area from slipping into a terminal decline.
He said he believed there were “good intentions” towards the area to improve things but they could only be done in partnership.

He cited the problem of shopkeepers putting out A-boards in front of their stores. English Heritage wants them removed but retailers say they attract more people along the cobbled streets.
“The relationships are forming and I really believe English Heritage has good intentions towards the place,” said Mr Huxley. “But the opportunities to get businesses to key into it and to get businesses to join up is where English Heritage needs to work more in partnership.
“I don’t want to hit out at anyone but the whole thing at the moment is we keep hearing Bradford Council say we’re the jewel in the crown. If they mean that, they should be investing in our infrastructure. (Jonathan Redhead)

The Stuff's Reading is Bliss talks about what a real reader is:

There's also the point that many of the novels we would now consider as "classic" or "high literature" started life as popular fiction. Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment was first published as a serialised novel in 12 monthly instalments. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was the romance novel of its day.
For that matter, so was Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (poor orphan girl ends up marrying elusive rich man) and even Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, which was lambasted for being a "strange, inartistic story" by early critics. (Karen Tay)

A Telegraph reader is amazed by this detail in Emily Brontë's novel:

When Catherine Earnshaw’s father went to Liverpool and brought back the urchin Heathcliff, he walked the distance (as stated in the novel) of 60 miles each way in three days, and thought nothing of it. Assuming that he must have spent some time in Liverpool on business (though this is not described), this is an average of at least 40 miles a day for three days over rough country, for a man no longer young. Three miles an hour is a good pace, but this translates to more than 13 hours a day of walking.
Emily Brontë evidently found such an achievement nothing out of the ordinary. Nowadays, it seems to me to be of Olympian standard. (Bill MacDonald)

Dave Astor writes in The Huffington Post about biographies:

There are even biographies written by novelists. For instance, Daphne du Maurier authored books about Branwell Brontë (brother of Charlotte/Emily/Anne) and the du Maurier family -- which included her grandfather George, who created the iconic Svengali character in the novel Trilby. And Sir Walter Scott wrote an acclaimed book about Napoleon.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer talks about Beauty and the Beast, the CBS cult classic of the eighties with Linda Hamilton and Ron Pearlman whose character is described like this

who lived beneath the streets of Manhattan like a brooding superhero hybrid of Heathcliff and The Lion King. (Matt Roush)

Entertainment Weekly interviews Patti Smith who says

“I love Mia Wasikowka. I love the girl who plays Hannah – Saoirse Ronan. She’s brilliant. The depth of that girl. There’s a lot of interesting actresses and actors for any project. It’s a subject I like to think about. It gives me great hope when I see new young artists in any field,” said Smith, grinning. “People always ask me about my favorite new bands. I don’t really have any, but I have a lot of favorite new actresses. I love the movies. The first time I saw Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, I must have cried an hour. I just sat in the movie theater. I saw Mia again in Jane Eyre, and she was wonderful in that. I just enjoy the movies.” (Solvej Schou)

Nöjest Bladet (Sweden) reviews the latest album by Bat for Lashes:

Delvis skapad i ett gammalt konstnärshus i East Sussex bland dammtäckta möbler som en gång slitits av Virginia Woolf och T.S. Eliot, är albumet ett kärleksbrev till den landsbygd där skaparen växte upp. Hon pratar i intervjuer – typiskt brittiskt – om sin längtan efter en trädgård.
Natasha Khan, som hon egentligen heter, har förstått något väldigt viktigt. Naturen går inte att ladda ner. Det gör inte heller doften av en Charlotte Brontë-roman eller en bukett liljor. (Per Magnusson) (Translation)

JeanzBookReadNReview interviews the author Sonia Pereira Murphy:

If you could invite three favourite writers to dinner, who would you invite and enjoy chatting with?
Charlotte Brontë (while I love "Wuthering Heights" I feel Emily would be too wild-spirited for me), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Agatha Christie.

The Literary Quilter posts about Rebecca Fraser's The Brontës, Charlotte Brontë and her Family; ... and then there was Beatrix (in Swedish) reviews Jane Eyre 2011; Review Room posts about Tina Connolly's Ironskin; Bazard Total talks about Jane Eyre 1997 (in French); Onward, Curiosity! explains the experience of reading Wuthering Heights to a three-month old baby; SCW1842 posts a photo gallery of Wuthering Heights 1939.

An alert for today published by Nashville Scene at the 24th Southern Festival of Books:

Governess, remote estate, brooding hero — check, check and double-check as Margot Livesaypays homage to Jane Eyre in her well-reviewed The Flight of Gemma Hardy (3 p.m., Nashville Public Library, Grand Reading Room).

Finally, we love this picture just published on the Brontë Parsonage Twitter: Ann Dinsdale winds Mr Bronte's clock - at 9am not 9pm, as Mr Bronte did it.