Celtic Jane

Celtic Jane: The Diaries of Jane McIver is an independent/amateur film project that seems to be moving on. The Aberdeen Press and Journal informs that Jane has been cast:

Drama students at Inverness College and local acting stalwarts have lined up to take part in a Highland film version of one of literature’s best-loved tales.
The vast majority of the cast are now in place for Celtic Jane – The Diaries of Jane McIver, which is being made by Great Glen Film Arts.
The story is inspired by Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, but is set just after World WarI in the Highlands. (...)
The adult Jane will be played by 18-year-old Amy Hasson (picture) from Fortrose, a drama student at Inverness College.
Director Clive Malcouronne said Amy was a star in the making.
'She is just ideal,' he said.
'She has got a lovely face and very expressive eyes. She could just pick up the dialogue and really bring it to life.
'Her screen test was full of feeling and emotion -- it was exactly what I wanted.'
A leading man aged 30-40 is still being sought to play the hero, Captain Andrew Ross, and severe headmaster the Rev Blandford-Grant.
Mr Malcouronne, 74, is also on the hunt for suitable locations before filming starts in the new year.
He said: 'Captain Ross needs to be fairly handsome. He is charismatic and also the subject of quite dark moods.
'We have got to find an old-fashioned school suitable for the 1920s and we also need a very large house which will fit in with the period.'
Mr Malcouronne, of Cabrich, near Inverness, said he decided to write the screenplay because Jane Eyre was a novel that had intrigued him for most of his life. (Laura Paterson / Rita Campbell)

Other members of the cast include Iona Thomson and Shanzie Kennedy.


The Telegraph & Argus talks about the full peal of bells that took place yesterday at Haworth Church and elsewhere and includes a video:

Celebrations were held at the weekend to mark 200 years since the Reverend Patrick Brontë, father of the famous literary sisters, married Maria Branwell.
A full peal of bells was attempted at two churches significant to the Brontës on Saturday – firstly at Guiseley Parish Church, where the original wedding ceremony took place, and later at Haworth Parish Church, where Patrick Brontë was vicar from 1820 to 1861.
A band of ringers from the Yorkshire Association of Change Ringers were drafted in to help and organise the full peal at both churches.
A full peal consists of 5,040 changes and takes about three hours to complete. It requires great concentration from the ringers, because any mistake can invalidate the performance.
Simon Burnett, the bell captain at Haworth, where the six bells were installed by Patrick Brontë in 1845, said that the attempts at both churches had been successful.
He added: “It’s only the 20th full peal on these bells, which were installed in 1845. Patrick Brontë actually raised the money for them to be installed. So to complete a full peal this weekend was quite an achievement.
“It took us two hours and 47 minutes, with 5,040 changes and three different methods. It’s quite a feat of concentration as there must be no repetition of a particular sequence of bells.”
It was exactly 200 years to the day since the Brontë wedding that the demanding full peal, involving nearly three hours of constant bell ringing, was attempted twice.

The Herald publishes a summary of 2012 in Scottish theatre, including the all-male version of Wuthering Heights premiered in Glasgow:

Tucked away in Arches Live!, Peter McMaster's quirky, affecting all-male Wuthering Heights went where few pieces of performance have gone for a long time: he looked at the changing roles and preconceptions of men in a post-feminist society. Clearly times have been a-changing, and work like this brings cogent debates centre-stage. (Mary Brennan)

And The Saint Louis Times-Dispatch remembers the local dance proposals of the year:

In September, choreographer and St. Louis native Annie Loui brought her Counter-Balance Theater to the Edison Theatre for performances of “Jane Eyre,” her interpretation of the classic novel. The show was an imaginative adventure in storytelling through text and movement. (Calvin Wilson)

The New York Times reviews a peformance by the comedian and singer Sandra Bernhard at Joe's Pub:

In one of my favorite bits Ms. Bernhard imagined Twitter posts exchanged by Jane Eyre with Nicki Minaj, and Joan of Arc with Snooki. The satire spoke for itself and didn’t need the kind of scornful editorial elaboration she might have added in earlier times. (Stephen Holden)

BBC News talks about anonymous writers:

Literature mavens tease out real lives from the mischievous games authors have used to hide themselves. While we are well acquainted with the Brontë sisters today, they originally published under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. (Brooke Magnanti)

Süddeutsche (Germany) reviews the film The Lost Moment (1947), the only film directed by Martin Gabel:

'The Lost Moment', 1947, schließt die Reihe phantomhafter Frauenmelos der Vierziger, 'Wuthering Heights', 'Jane Eyre', Hitchcocks 'Rebecca'. Frei nach Henry James, die 'Aspern Papers', und ein Shelley-Porträt figuriert als das des toten Dichters.

The Border Mail talks about film adaptations of books:

Like Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen and the Brontës, Tolstoy can bear any number of fresh interpretations, and we've seen a few.  (Sandra Hall)

The Itinerant Medievalist interviews the writer Julia Klassen:

Most Christian Historical novels that I know of are set in America, what made you choose to set ‘The Tutor’s Daughter’ and some of your other novels in Britain or England?
Yes, all of my novels have been set in England so far, with The Tutor’s Daughter being set specifically in Cornwall. I have been fascinated with England ever since I read The Secret Gardenand Jane Eyre as a girl.

Mardecortésbaja, A Complicated Woman (in Spanish) and Sweet Fall (in Spanish, she also reviews Wuthering Heights 2011) review Jane Eyre 2011; The Frugal Chariot reviews Wide Sargasso Sea; Nessa News (in Portuguese) posts about Being Emily by Anne Donovan; Czasu coraz mniej, a książek coraz więcej (in Polish) reviews Agnes Grey; Ex/Elle has visited Yorkshire including Haworth; Oxford Erin reviews Black Spring by Alison Croggon.