It’s like Wuthering Heights in Pasadena

San Francisco Chronicle is looking forward to the Mostly British Film Festival (February 9 - February 16 at San Francisco’s Vogue Theatre).

The Mostly British Film Festival will open with what seems like a traditional choice: the costume drama “Emily,” which stars Emma Mackey (Netflix’s “Sex Education”) as “Wuthering Heights” author Emily Brontë. But actor turned first-time director and screenwriter Frances O’Connor has reinvented Brontë’s life story, so that it approaches the passion and wildness she packed into her famous and only novel.

“Emily” sticks less to history than to O’Connor’s vision of “the kind of woman who would have written ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ” Stein said. This Emily gets tattooed, lusts for a clergyman and romps the Yorkshire moors with her libertine brother. Stein spoke to O’Connor by Zoom about the movie, and a recording of their conversation will play before the film. [...]

‘Emily’

How Emily Brontë, the unmarried clergyman’s daughter who died at 30, came up with the swooningly romantic and dark novel “Wuthering Heights” has always been a mystery. Here, writer/director Frances O’Connor, who imagines Brontë as a lustful town outcast, and actor Emma Mackey, who plays her as shy, watchful, playful and wonderfully weird, help fill in the blanks.

This Emily prefers exploring the rolling Yorkshire hills (where she later would have Heathcliff pine for Cathy) over sitting at a writing desk. But this visually sweeping film plays less like another gloomy “Heights” screen adaptation than “My Summer of Love,” the Yorkshire-set 2004 film in which Emily Blunt, whom Mackey resembles, found sexual freedom and artistic inspiration amid the tall grass. This is mostly sunlit, daytime Brontë, although the weather sometimes intervenes with perfect timing, like when rain forces Emily and a handsome clergyman she pretends to loathe (a smoldering Oliver Jackson Cohen) to seek shelter together. The film is set for wide release in theaters Feb. 24.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9. (Carla Meyer)

Evening Standard features Emma Mackey:

Last year saw Emma Mackey captivate audiences as Emily Bronte in the period epic Emily (Lisa McLoughlin)

The York Press looks back on the history of York's famous George Hotel on Coney Street.

The inn's most famous residents, however, were authors Charlotte Brontë and her sister Anne who stayed at The George on the night of May 24/25, 1849.

Although long gone, there is still a trace of the George in York. Walk along Coney Street to where Next is and you will see the opening to its yard is still there. You will also see one of its columns at the edge of that entrance. There’s also a Civic Trust plaque about the George on the building that now occupies the site. (Maxine Gordon)

The Annapurna Express has published an obituary of writer Greta Rana.

Greta Rana, a celebrated poet, novelist and translator, died on Jan 25 at the age of 80. Born in Yorkshire, UK, Rana lived most of her life in Nepal with her late husband Madhukar Shamsher Rana, a prominent economist and former finance minister.

Rana was a writer of the highest class, who produced several works of fiction, poetry and other literary works. ‘Les Misérables’ by Victor Hugo, ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë, and ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens were some of her all-time favorite books. (Pratik Ghimire)

Santa Fe New Mexican features Opera Southwest.

The Metropolitan Opera has been around 92 years longer than Opera Southwest and its budget is 350 times larger, but on Sunday, Feb. 5, the Albuquerque company will surpass it, in at least one area, when it will have staged more operas by Gioachino Rossini than any other American company. [...]

Credit for the Rossini record breaking goes to Artistic Director Anthony Barrese. He saw his first opera, Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights, as a teenager, and it didn’t impress him, but a week later, a Barber of Seville at the New England Conservatory of Music “just hit me like a bolt of lightning.” (Mark Tiarks)

Clarín (Argentina) interviews Laura Citarella about her latest film, Trenque Lauquen.

–Nadie puede imaginar todo lo que habrá de suceder en Trenque Lauquen. De una situación tensa y prometedora de la vida amorosa se precipita una cantidad de historias inesperadas. La impresión es que lo que sucede con el personaje es lo que sucede detrás de cámara. ¿Fue así el proceso creativo?

–El proceso de la invención de este film fue largo. Pero hubo un momento clave –más allá de todas las reestructuraciones que vinieron después con la edición y muchas reescrituras que sufrió la película– que tuvo que ver con lo que para mí sucede con la experiencia literaria. Algo que sucede cuando una lee de manera expansiva y de repente se ve pasando de un libro a otro. Una línea de lecturas que va conformando una especie de mapa que en este caso podía ir de Tom Sawyer a Kafka; de Kafka a Mary Shelley; de Mary Shelley a las hermanas Brontë; de las Brontë a Virginia Woolf, de Virginia Woolf a Bioy, y así. Eso que se produce cuando una está en un proceso de investigación –una forma del peritaje– es algo similar a lo que se produce dentro del relato de Trenque Lauquen. No solo a nivel de las investigaciones que cada uno de los personajes emprende, sino también a un nivel estructural, donde una cosa va llevando a la otra y otra cosa va llevando a la otra. En el medio de esa experiencia es donde supongo que se produce el juego más misterioso, ese lugar a donde solo puede llegar la literatura y en este caso el cine. Un espacio que no se puede nombrar ni definir, y que por eso se vuelve tan misterioso. Pero, además, esos encuentros, o esa posibilidad de inventar un relato, constituyen una forma de relacionarse que tienen los personajes. Se enamoran, se hacen amigos, se juntan, se separan, mientras se cuentan cosas, mientras tienen aventuras, mientras conversan. (Roger Koza) (Translation)

Financial Times features the Pasadena home of antiques dealer Cameron Smith and apparently,

 “In the mornings, it’s fantastic. It’s like Wuthering Heights. The weather is completely different here, despite the close proximity,” says Smith (Jacoba Urist)