Never heard of Charlotte Brontë

Daily Star shares the comments of some viewers when a Tipping Point contestant claimed not to know who Charlotte Brontë was.

It got even worse for Grace as she stumbled on a question about English novelist and poet Charlotte Brontë.

The player admitted that she'd "never heard" of the famous writer, leaving fans at home scratching their heads once again.

Taking to Twitter, one fan penned: "Never heard Charlotte Brontë?"

A second posted: "Grace hasn't heard of Charlotte Brontë."

While a third posted: "How have you not heard of Charlotte Brontë?"

"Never heard of Charlotte Brontë? which school did she go to?," a fourth confused viewer.

Another added: "Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Even the Ape creatures of the Indus would have got that." (Dan Laurie)

The Queen's University Journal discusses A Bite of the Apple, Lennie Goodings's memoir of her time working at Virago.

Before Virago, there had been some famous female publishers thought to be worthy of a place in the classical canon such as Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Virginia Woolf, but the literary scene was still largely dominated by men. Virago sought to change that. (Nathan Gallagher)

The Guardian reviews the new film adaptation of The Secret Garden.

Finally there is the saturnine, miserable and hunchbacked Uncle Archibald, who has something of Heathcliff and Mr Rochester in his DNA – and he is played with a gulped growl by Colin Firth. (Peter Bradshaw)

Beware of spoilers in this Daily Mail review of the new film adaptation of The Witches.

And I don't remember a terrible fire in the original story, ignited here as if screenwriter Jack Thorne had a sudden urge to pay homage to Jane Eyre. (Brian Viner)

The Sydney Morning Herald recommends streaming Wide Sargasso Sea.

Wide Sargasso Sea (98 minutes) M

A West Indian heiress (Karina Lombard) is wed to a callow Englishman (Nathaniel Parker) in John Duigan’s 1993 adaptation of Jean Rhys’ famous novel. The sexual directness is typical of the still underrated Duigan, as is the way each scene is built on gazes that may or may not meet. (Jake Wilson)

RebeccaBlog today. Cosmopolitan describes it as follows:

Cue the dark secrets, sexy beach makeouts, and real estate porn—think dark academia meets Wuthering Heights. (Annabelle Williams)

Vanyaland expected more.

It could have been great, after all: Wheatley is an incredibly talented filmmaker, and his instincts have often been right on the money, at least for my particular palette. What I was hoping for was the kind of ultra-modern-yet-period, revisionist-yet-faithful type of adaptation that we’d gotten a few years earlier from Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, which is about as successful as it gets as far as I’m concerned, but, alas, this Rebecca is a particularly dull two hours, one that will probably alienate classic viewers, familiar with du Maurier’s work or Hitchcock’s adaptation, while boring new ones to tears. (Nick Johnston)

Forward didn't have such great expectations.

Before it even debuted, the Netflix reboot of Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” was slated to go wrong in a lot of ways. A 1938 Gothic thriller with strong “Jane Eyre” vibes, the novel follows a naive 20-something narrator who marries moody widower Maxim de Winter and repairs to Manderley, his drool-worthy Tudor-era track mansion, only to find out that his first wife died in less-than-savory circumstances. It’s basically high-quality fanfiction for people who spent college writing essays about subtextual sexuality in Victorian literature, and it’s already been the subject of an unimpeachable 1940 Hitchcock adaptation starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Directed by Ben Wheatley, the 2020 remake brought color and a lot of cars to the table; but as soon as we saw the trailer, a Baz Luhrman-style perfume ad that paired nebulously midcentury interiors with a pop soundtrack, we knew it wouldn’t compete. (Irene Katz Connelly)

The Mary Sue is not a fan either.

Du Maurier saw Rebecca “as a study in jealousy” and not a love story, as it is sometimes interpreted. Taking the gothic elements of Jane Eyre, but this time actually killing off the cruel first wife, the book is meant to be a slow haunting burn as the narrator is basically reduced to the lowest parts of herself by a dead woman. There are no ghosts in Rebecca, just the phantom of an ex that everyone keeps saying was the “love of [Maxim’s] life.” (Princess Weekes)

Cineman (Switzerland) reviews it too:

Revisité à sa manière par l’œil fantasmagorique de Guillermo del Toro dans «Crimson Peak» et rappelant indéniablement l’œuvre romantique (en son sens philosophique et sentimental) de Charlotte Brontë, «Jane Eyre», avec son manoir éteint, hanté par des souvenirs fantomatiques qu’une gouvernante glaciale ne cesse de ramener à la vie, «Rebecca» pourrait ne faire que reprendre cette histoire si connue de l’amour triomphant des épreuves, des amants maudits par une histoire passée, par des passions d’antan dévorantes et destructrices. Il pourrait ne faire que citer l’œuvre littéraire dont il s’inspire et tenter de passer derrière Alfred Hitckcock, sans trop se casser la figure. (Camille Vignes) (Translation)

Finally, inspired by The Haunting of Bly Manor, Screen Rant explains what tuberculosis was, adding that it killed Emily Brontë. Brontë Babe Blog reviews The Mist on Brontë Moor by Aviva Orr. And on Twitter, the Brontë Parsonage has a podcast recommendation:

Have you listened to the @visitBradford podcasts yet? #Haworth features in episode 2. Tune in and listen to @laurenl_13 talk all things #Bronte! https://t.co/rSdQY3awNh

— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) October 22, 2020

Finally, an alert for tomorrow, October 24 in Paris at the Forum Des Images:

SAM 24 OCTOBRE 2020 À 11:00
Les Hauts de Hurlevent
de Andrea Arnold
(Wuthering Heights)
Avec Kaya Scodelario, James Howson
Fiction l Grande-Bretagne l vostf l 2012
128 min l Couleur l Cinéma Numérique 2K