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Friday, May 10, 2013

Friday, May 10, 2013 9:12 am by Cristina in , , , ,    No comments
Keighley News reports that
A seasonal bus service known as the Brontë Scenic Tour has returned to the Worth Valley.
The 812 resumed on Sunday and will run every Sunday and bank holiday until August 26.
The service has connected Keighley Bus Station to Haworth Railway Station, the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Stanbury for many years.
It has now been extended westwards past Ponden Reservoir to Scar Top Pine Ltd at Moor Lodge.
The service will connect with the new Keighley & Haworth Grand Heritage Tour bus at Haworth Railway Station on Sundays during August.
The 812 bus is sponsored by the Worth Valley Joint Transport Committee (JTC), with additional funds from Metro, Keighley Town Council’s watch and transport committee, Haworth Cross Roads and Stanbury Parish Council, Scar Top Pine Ltd, Oxenhope Parish Council and Worth Valley district councillors.
A JTC spokesman said: “The 812 bus has been called ‘the invisible service’ in Haworth because some residents seem unaware of it.
“Yet it is a busy little service, which performs an extremely valuable function for residents and visitors alike. Certainly, the town and parish councils see it as a valuable part of the local public transport network.”
HollywoodChicago reviews the Wuthering Heights 2011 DVD/Blu-ray.
After seeing Andrea Arnold’s quietly mesmerizing adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic “Wuthering Heights,” I’m now hungering to see her take on other literary landmarks, particularly “The Great Gatsby.” [...]
For the first hour of “Wuthering Heights,” there is so little dialogue that it nearly resembles a silent film, though unlike the meandering eye of Terrence Malick in “To the Wonder,” Arnold keeps her gaze focused on the budding love between the orphaned Heathcliffe (Solomon Glave) and the rebellious Catherine (Shannon Beer). [...]
Alas, the second half of Arnold’s film is more problematic, relying too heavily on expository dialogue while recasting the central roles with adult actors so far removed from their young counterparts that they hardly seem like the same characters. Perhaps that’s why editor Nicolas Chaudeurge felt compelled to include so many flashbacks in order to evoke the magic of the film’s earlier passages. Regardless of its flaws, Arnold’s film still serves as an exhilarating model of how to truly revitalize a time-worn book for the big screen. Brontë’s language is scarcely uttered, but it haunts every frame. (Matt Fagerholm)
The Virginian-Pilot has an article on The Great Gatsby and Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
Mrs. Taylor, one of the three Norfolk cousins, reasoned that "Scott could not write about anything he didn't know. He wasn't like the Brontës, who could live in a little village and write about the big world. He had, to some extent, to experience, either himself or vicariously, what he wrote about." (Mal Vincent)
Junkee mentions quite a different take on The Great Gatsby and the classics:
Just in time for Baz Luhrmann’s box office version of The Great Gatsby comes The Great Gatsby Unbound. This charmless volume takes advantage of the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s musings on the American dream are now out of copyright in order to insert some random sex scenes between Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker, penned by sub-Mills & Boon hack, Karena Rose. Oh, and Gatsby’s legendary bashes are basically swinger parties. As Rose says, “Whatever happens at Gatsby’s stays at Gatsby’s.”
Rose had already similarly ruined Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre to create the horrible, Jane Eyrotica. Interviewed last year, she hoped readers would consider it “a respectful adaptation that withholds all of the delicacy of the original, whilst spicing things up with additional sizzling scenes. The chemistry with Jane and Mr. R was already there, I just took it a step further.”
She knows that “withholds” means “suppresses or denies”, right? If so, she’s perfectly right. There’s precious little delicacy here.
But Rose is not alone in yielding to the temptation of fucking up Brontë’s novel. Adult e-publisher Total-E-Bound Publishing has released a selection of “Clandestine Classics“, one of which injects ham-fisted raunch into the pellucid prose of Jane Eyre.
“I’ve often wondered whether the Brontë sisters, if they were alive today, would have gone down the erotic romance route,” Total-E-Bound founder Claire Siemaszkiewicz told The Independent. “There’s a lot of underlying sexual tension in their stories.”
Yes, it wasn’t nearly overlying enough! “His lips would be relentless and ruthless; and the taste of him — the smokiness of his cigar combined with his uncivilised power — would render me helpless,” gasps Jane in the revised ebook, leaving me wondering what ‘uncivilised power’ tastes like (it’s the sort of eternal puzzle that could drive a woman mad in the attic). (Mel Campbell)
Film Journal reviews Wang Bing's Three Sisters.
Many documentaries give the viewer a chance to “visit” places otherwise unfamiliar and practically inaccessible, but Three Sisters also offers a kind of time-travel, as little appears to have changed in this area for decades or even centuries. The farmstead with its muddy yard and rudimentary stone constructions looks like something out of Wuthering Heights—ironic, given that the seminal Anton Chekhov play from which Wang cheekily borrows his title was itself part-inspired by the plight of the Brontës in their provincial parsonage. (Neil Young)
A few sites comment on UK Education Secretary Michael Gove's opinion of Twilight. From The Daily Mail:
Mr Gove also criticised the debasement of English lessons, saying some schools were telling pupils to read ‘transient vampire books’ like the Twilight series instead of ‘transcendent Victorian novels’ such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. (Andrew Levy)
The Boar replies that,
 it doesn’t matter what a child is reading, so long as they’re doing it. The stuffy, backward view is that if children aren’t reading classics, their brains will rot is rubbish. I remember, at the age of about thirteen, being presented by a well-meaning English teacher with a copy of Dickens’ intimidating Our Mutual Friend. I did persevere with it for a while but eventually pushed it aside with frustration at the archaic phrasing and glacial pace. Similarly with Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, so often recommended to teenage girls. I just couldn’t get into it. (Kirsten Rose Brooks)
And this columnist from The Huffington Post would seem to disagree with that.
In third grade, on a family vacation, I read Jane Eyre into the early hours of the morning with a book-light, trying to turn the pages quietly in the shared hotel room. (Remy M. Maisel)
A columnist from The Daily Northwestern writes about 'Coping with obsessive-compulsive disorder'.
I tend to get obsessed with certain ideas. For example, when I was reading “Jane Eyre,” I was obsessed with why Jane decides to go back to Mr. Rochester. As a result, I repeated sentences in my head with the same meaning but different syntax: Jane left because she realized she needed Mr. Rochester. Realizing Jane needed Mr. Rochester, she went back to him. Jane realized she needed morality and love. Jane realized she needed both morality and love. Realizing she needed morality and love, she left her cousin John and went back to Mr. Rochester. (Blair Dunbar)
The Huffington Post recommends the book Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist.
For you serious drink-slingers out there, we’re serving up your favorite recipes with a smart new twist. You’ve gotta have something to talk about behind the bar—why not raise the level of banter by brushing up on your Brontë?
The Brontës Sisters shows some creations inspired by Charlotte Brontë. Por la calle de Alcalá writes in Spanish about Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre.

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