Positive reviews for Wuthering Heights

Tomorrow Wuthering Heights 2011 opens in the US and so the film is reviewed by a good many sites. A.V. Club gives the film an A-:

It’s sometimes hard to watch. There’s a frankness to its farm scenes—animal lovers should go in forewarned—that sets the tone for the way its characters treat each other. When Heathcliff and Catherine are children, their eyes lock as they wrestle in the Yorkshire mud, and the film turns that moment into the beginning of a long, tortured fall from grace portrayed with uncomfortable intimacy, and, in the final scenes, taken to a grim conclusion that threatens to turn the movie into a horror film. It’s an unexpected take on Wuthering Heights, one made all the more powerful, and no less faithful, for its unconventional choices. (Keith Phipps)

From IndieWire's The Playlist:

It's not quite a tearjerker, Arnold playing up the anger of the novel, and we sort of feel that's the way that it should be. It is, however, incredibly powerful, extremely sexy (there's one scene that takes place between Cathy and Heathcliff after the latter has been caned that's more erotic than anything we've seen in a while), and a truly remarkable reinvention of a text that beforehand, we weren't sure we ever needed to see on screen again. Arnold might misstep a little at the last with the use of a new song, "The Enemy," by Mumford & Sons, but for 99% of the running time the 2011 version of "Wuthering Heights" is a model of how to bring a classic novel kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. (Oliver Lyttelton)

From Word & Film:

Though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from watching the film’s loose interpretation of its source material, Arnold has spent the better part of the past three years sifting through piles of Bronte research and analysis of the novel and its creator. “When I started to think more about Cathy and what she was all about, I began to see how each of the characters represented a different part of Emily Brontë,” says Arnold, who has formulated a complex Freudian interpretation of the novel, in which Cathy represents Brontë’s selfish ego, Heathliff embodies her impulsive id, and his rival, the upstanding and gainfully employed Edgar, serves as Bronte’s rational superego.
As the film makes its way into theaters, Arnold has only just begun emerge from her own tormented relationship with Wuthering Heights. “The book definitely swept me up in all its messy emotions and I still have yet to recover from the experience,” Arnold admits. “It was a struggle finding my way through and I still feel a little raw from the whole experience of making this film. But I think that’s what kind of book it is. It keeps throwing up all kinds of questions with no real answers. That’s what makes it special. It battles people in a good way. In a way it should.” (Christine Spines)

Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+:

The interesting British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Red Road) retells Emily Brontë's famous 19th-century tragic-romantic novel with arresting eccentricity: The scratch of a tree branch on a windowpane and the smear of mud on a dress hem signify more than any dialogue. Heathcliff is black, and Cathy, his doomed love, is first seen as a fierce little girl whose passionate bond with the young adopted boy (described by Brontë as a "little Lascar") is of an almost animal physical nature. Willful, meandering, and intriguing, this Wuthering Heights is similarly headstrong. B+ (Lisa Schwarzbaum)

Twitch reviews it:

And what a perspective Arnold give us. This is raw, gritty, melancholy and visceral in its visualization of the landscape and the various creatures that inhabit it. The Yorkshire moors can seem a wild, desolate, terrible place, but Catherine and Heathcliff (though he is not native to it) are like that earth itself. Arnold dispenses with constant shots of the whole landscape, and instead focuses on the bodies within the landscape and of it. Arnold does not try to falsify the land with fancy effects or swooping, meaningless camera movements. Using handheld cameras, she frequently follows directly behind her characters, not necessarily to copy their perspective, but to make the spectator feel as though they are spying. She creates a palpable difference between the hardened, rough Earnshaw home and the more pleasant and manorly sterility of the Linton estate. It is much about class struggle being waged on top of this landscape which would seem to accept neither group, and Catherine and Heathcliff are caught in the middle. The moors mean freedom, at least for Cathy and Heathcliff, and they are dragged away from them by the confines of their societal statuses. During the second half, when we meet the adult Heathcliff and Catherine, they seem ill-at-ease in their new finery, lost unless they are together among the rocks and winds. (Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg)

And also interviews Andrea Arnold:

I know that the movie came out in the UK last year. I was wondering how it was received with a black Heathcliff. 
I can only go by Q&As (where people are always nice) I did, because I don't read reviews or anything. And people always ask me about that. There must be a big debate about that on some Brontë webpage, I'm sure. It's always mixed.
I think having a black man playing that role was the right choice. I mean, he is describe as a foreigner in the book. It's very topical for this day and age. I wanted to ask you about your process with non-actors in this film. I remember you describing the process in Fish Tank in a Q&A session a couple years back. You said you were holding back parts of the script from actors until just before the shoot, and encouraged them to improvise. Did you do that with Wuthering Heights? 
Well, it's a famous book everyone knows. Everyone knows what happens at the end. So I didn't really do that too much in this. Obviously with Solomon and Shannon (Shannon Beer, young Cathy) I did that a bit because they are new and I didn't want to overwhelm them too much. We couldn't afford to shoot it in chronological order anyway. So no, not really on this one.
The look of the film, my god, it's so gorgeous. Probably too gorgeous actually.
Too gorgeous? 
If the style sticks out that much, you failed a bit actually. That's what I think. (Dustin laughs) I always think that if one of the disciplines sticks out, I failed to bring all the elements together. But I think there is no music and much of the dialog taken out, it relies on the images even more and sticks out more. But I can't really tell if it's sticking out the right way or wrong way. (Dustin Chang)

The East Valley Tribune considers it one of '5 (indie) movies not to miss in October'.

More on film but not on Wuthering Heights. IndieWire's SydneysBuzz leaves us with a funny blunder when commenting on the film potential of the Trinidad and Tobago region:

Dominican writer Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, the prequel to Brontë's Jane Eyre, has been made in 1993 and in 2006 and yet remains mostly forgotten.  Perhaps it's time for a remake. (Sydney Levine)

Voir Montréal (in French) finds a Jane Eyre fan in actress Fanny Britt:

Elle trouve la force et le courage dans la littérature: elle lit Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë, "un livre qui a été très important pour moi. Jane Eyre était un modèle d’indépendance pour moi. Je n’étais pas bien dans ma peau et cette littérature m’a aidée à me projeter dans le grand, dans l’exaltation et les sentiments éperdus. Je me suis accrochée à mon imagination." (Elsa Pépin) (Translation)

Columbus Alive interviews author Chris Cleave.

How did you convey the intangible experiences of speed and velocity in this book [Gold]? I put lots of physiological cues into it. I struggled for months to write scenes with speed. It’s very difficult. Writers don’t usually go there; writers don’t talk about the body very much at all. We have these ideas of people as these massive brains and the body exists only to supply them. Do you remember the cartoon character the Mekon? If you read a novel from the Brontës or Jane Austen, you’d think that we were Mekons.
There was this big taboo, which was to write a sex scene. I’ve done a few in my time. The other taboo is to write about the athletic body, and people don’t really do it. I sort of worked out why — it’s really hard. I had to really push myself and get in touch with my own physicality to do it. (Kristen Schmidt)

The Washington Post has an article on a library that offers 'book speed dating'.

So, just what books would their future lovers have in tow?
Leitzia said he’d like to see a woman carrying one of his guilty pleasures, such as “High Fidelity.” Lucas prefers nonfiction. But Conklin has figured out a way to work the system. She brought in “Shantaram,” Gregory David Roberts’s 2004 novel tracing his escape from an Australian prison and subsequent flee to India. Conklin is more of a “Jane Eyre” type, but she figured “Shantaram” was guy friendly.
“I mean, what guy is going to want to hang out with me because I read ‘Jane Eyre?’ ” she said. “But a book about an ex-prisoner who ends up in a mob in Bombay? That’s hot.” (Megan Buerger)

One who appreciates good literature?

More Brontë at the Paris Fashion Week, as reported by the Financial Times.

The materials [used by Valentino] are super-luxe but never put on a pedestal, and though they can seem straight from a fairy tale or a Brontë novel, they adapt remarkably easily to everyday life. (Vanessa Friedman)

The Grand Valley Lanthorn and your typical - but cosy - seasonal reference with a twist:

Sure, you can tell me that the snow is beautiful and it matches well with a cup of hot cocoa in one hand and a Jane Eyre book in the other, but if it means that I have to put on more clothes when I’m in my own home, which I’m not a big fan of, then I’ll pass. (Garrick See)

The Huffington Post has an undoubtedly correct but limited understanding of why the Brontës used pseudonyms:

In my opinion, the way the arts reflect divorce shows how far society has moved on in recent decades in its regard of all matters marital. Less than two centuries ago, the Brontë sisters felt compelled to write under male pseudonyms because their views on relationships - and, yes, divorce -might not be considered "feminine". (Phillip Rhodes)

The Telegraph and Argus looks at the controversy about the new housing plans in Haworth:

Bradford businessman Perves Abbas has revealed plans to build 120 homes on grazing land at Weavers Hill, Haworth – and said that if the first phase is a success he will apply to build 200 more.
But, Christine Went, heritage and conservation officer for the Brontë Society – which draws its membership from across the world – said the development would be “disturbingly close” to the moorland which inspired the novels of the famous Brontë sisters.
It is next to a lane to Oxenhope known as “Charlotte’s Path” after Jane Eyre author Charlotte Brontë, where she and her future husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, held clandestine meetings before they were married.
In a posting on the Brontë [Parsonage] Blog website, Mrs Went said: “Large numbers of new houses in this part of the village would have an extremely detrimental effect on its setting and would bring inappropriate development disturbingly close to the moorland fringes.
“The local economy is founded on heritage tourism.”
She said the development was one field away from Dimples Lane, the boundary with Haworth’s moorland. “It is way too close,” said Mrs Went. “The last thing people visiting come to see is new houses.” `...
Mr Abbas said any new houses would be “sensitive” to the landscape.
He said: “There are already houses on Weavers Hill and this will complement those houses.”
In 2008 Mr Abbas was behind a plan for a hotel and apartments on the same site but Bradford planning officers recommended refusal.
The plans have also sparked concern from villagers, Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury parish council, and Bradford Council’s Worth Valley Councillors. A Twitter account - @SaveHaworth – has also been set up to rally opposition to the plans. (Marc Meneaud)

This is my World posts about Wuthering Heights while The World Spins Madly On has read and been trapped by Jane Eyre. Basia's Bookshelf and Birth of a New Witch both review Ironskin by Tina Connolly.