Wait for It

We read in Deadline how the casting director Kharmel Cochrane describes as shocking the set design of the upcoming Wuthering Heights 2026:

Casting director Kharmel Cochrane explained this afternoon during a Q&A session at Scotland’s Sands Film Festival. (...)

The casting vet said she is currently catching a lot of heat for her work on Fennell’s fortA hcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation. Aussie-natives Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have been cast in the film’s central roles. 

“There was one Instagram comment that said the casting director should be shot,” Cochrane said. “But just wait till you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don’t need to be accurate. It’s just a book. That is not based on real life. It’s all art.”

Further teasing Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, Cochrane said, “there’s definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy” in reference to the film’s artistic interpretation of the source material. 

“Wait until you see the set design because that is even more shocking,” Cochrane said. “And there may or may not be a dog collar in it.” (Zac Ntim)

A letter in the Boston Globe reminds us of the terrible cultural abyss where the Trump dystopian reshaping of America is creating:

I experienced a dizzying case of déjà vu when I read the words of a letter from the National Endowment for the Humanities revoking its support for Deborah Lutz’s biography of 19th-century English novelist Emily Brontë in order to “safeguard the interests of the federal government” (“Who’s afraid of Emily Brontë?” Ideas, April 20). (...)

Paternalistic white supremacy is on the move. Emily Brontë, Deborah Lutz, and I are just three of its early targets. (Melissa Ludtke, Cambridge)

Vulture recaps the fifth season of You:

 Just as I suspected, Joe has also had his sense of what constitutes romance shaped by the deranged influence that is Jane Eyre, a tale of a horrible man and the clueless young woman he dupes into marrying him while he is still hitched to his attic-wife. Hilarious supercut here of every woman Joe has ever dated telling him that he is the problem. Joe’s conclusion: He has been afraid to show his girlfriends his true self! That’s why he’s never found true love. Yeah! That’s it, babe, for sure. (Jessica M. Goldstein)

Here is more information about the documentary  Anita Rani: Sisters of Disruption. According to an interview with Executive Producer Mark Robinson and Development Executive and Series Producer James Knight from Wise Owl Films on the This is MediaCity podcast, the presenter Anita Rani was specifically chosen because of her connection to Bradford, where she grew up near the Brontë Parsonage at Haworth. During the interview, it is revealed that the Brontë sisters were Rani's "feminist heroes" in her youth, even as she was enjoying contemporary music like Goldie and The Smiths. While many documentaries about the Brontës have been produced over the years, the team at Wise Owl Films suggested this one would offer "something a bit different" through Rani's personal connection to the area and the sisters' literary legacy.

The Daily Illini shares one of the ironies of the modern age of information:

It’s incredibly disheartening to see that university students have some of the greatest masterpieces of all time like “Jane Eyre,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Moby-Dick” at their fingertips, yet they have no interest in giving them a chance. Students in the 1900s who never had access to today’s technology would die for the opportunity to have all these classics available to them. (William Hawrylak)

Librotea (Spain) and Libreriamo (Italy) recommend Wuthering Heights for World Book Day:

Toda una tempestad literaria que desafía las convenciones de su época es Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. Más que una historia de amor, es un estudio psicológico sobre el odio, la obsesión y la imposibilidad de escapar del propio destino. Heathcliff y Catherine son personajes tan fascinantes como destructivos, y su relación refleja las sombras del alma humana. En la actualidad, la novela sigue impactando por su audacia narrativa (con una estructura laberíntica y múltiples voces) y por su exploración de temas como la venganza, la desigualdad social y la identidad. Brontë nos confronta con preguntas incómodas: ¿hasta dónde puede llegar la pasión? ¿Es el amor una fuerza salvaje que nos redime o nos condena? (Nina Schleich) (Translation)

Culturplaza (Spain) describes the latest novel of Aixa De La Cruz, Todo Empieza con la Sangre:

Aixa de la Cruz explora en su nueva novela, Todo empieza con la sangre (Alfaguara, 2025), la tercera vía: la de la espiritualidad para llenar ese vacío existencial que nos deja la soledad y la búsqueda del amor. Una búsqueda que hace suya, incorporando textos de la tradición católica y mezclándolos con Cumbres Borrascosas y sin olvidar su estilo visceral y preciso. (Álvaro Devis) (Translation)

Nuclear Blast and other metal resources announce the new album of the Dutch symphonic metal band Blackbriar, A Thousand Little Deaths:

Together with this exciting news the band shares their new single 'The Fossilized Widow'. The single channels the eerie spirit of the Victorian era, blending the mysticism of Ouija boards with the brooding passion of Wuthering Heights.

The numbers game in the Crossword Puzzle of today's New York Times is quite a challenge:

The hardest clue for me to parse and solve was [7738.51773+51.345] at 84A. Something, something Billie Eilish, right? My brain got a little scrambled until I looked at the numbers the other way around: SHE.IS+ELLIS.BELL. Still tough, but Ellis Bell was the pseudonym used by EMILY BRONTE when she wrote “Wuthering Heights.” (Caitlin Lovinger)