Strong Sense of Place

The Lancashire Telegraph recommends some local Christmas walks:

The Brontë’s Trail, Pendle

If you love walking and you’re a bit of a bookworm, why not head to the Brontë’s Trail in Pendle.

The Brontë sisters spent a lot of their time exploring Lancashire and the South Pennine Moors.

This walking route begins in the heart of the Trawden Forest and allows walkers to see historic farmhouses and woodland.

It will take around five hours to complete and walkers will even encounter the remains of Wycoller Hall on the route. (Chloe Wilson)

Yorkshire's cultural highlights of the year in The Yorkshire Post:

Over in Haworth, visitors were learning about the Brontë family’s connection to the outdoors.

The Brontës and the Wild exhibition started in February at the Brontë Parsonage (and is on until January 1), bringing together artworks and manuscripts all associated with the landscape.

An acquisition to the Parsonage’s collection takes pride of place in the exhibition: the Brontë family’s annotated copy of Thomas Bewick’s A History of British Birds, which was obtained from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library.

The best soundtracks of the year according to Écran Large (France) include Abel Korzeniowski's Emily OST:

Cette année, l’actrice Frances O’Connor (vue dans Mansfield Park ou Conjuring 2) est passée pour la première fois derrière la caméra afin de réaliser Emily, un film librement inspiré de la vie de l’écrivaine Emily Brontë. L’exercice fut une réussite, et la bande-originale y a grandement participé. Celle-ci est composée par Abel Korzeniowski, qui a également signé les partitions de A Single Man, Nocturnal Animals ou La Nonne. Un catalogue éclectique pour un musicien qui fait montre, avec Emily, de toute l’étendue et de toute la sensibilité de son art.

Comme c’est souvent le cas avec les films historiques, l’instrumentation évite ici les anachronismes en autorisant que des instruments classiques. Beaucoup de violons, pas mal de piano et même un peu d’orgue, Korzeniowski privilégie les sons qui peuvent aussi bien traduire la passion explosive que la mélancolie abyssale, chose importante quand on parle de la vie de celle qui écrivit Les Hauts de Hurlevent. La porosité entre la réalité et la fiction est évidemment une thématique cruciale du film, qui montre comment les événements d’une vie pourront plus tard donner un chef-d'œuvre de littérature.

Un aspect qui ressort dans la bande-originale, parfois émouvante et parfois inquiétante, en tout cas riche et lunatique comme les sentiments d’une jeune femme singulière qui se retrouve confrontée à sa première passion amoureuse. Rappelant parfois le travail de James Newton Howard sur Le Village ou celui d’Alexandre Desplat sur Tree of Life, la partition d’Emily agit parfois comme un rayon de soleil aveuglant et parfois comme une bourrasque nocturne sur le cœur du spectateur, qui en est chaviré. (Translation)

Far Out Magazine asks the film director Chloe Zhao about her favourite films:

Wuthering Heights – Andrea Arnold, 2011

Making the fold is British filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights, the gothic romance adapted from the novel by Emily Brontë. “She has a very strong sense of place. When you watch Wuthering Heights, you know this filmmaker isn’t just staring at her actors,” said Zhao about the film.

Wuthering Heights beautifully captures the barren and foggy moors of England with stunning photography shot by Robbie Ryan, and it’s clearly this use of the landscape that Zhao is drawn to as almost another character. “She’s constantly looking. ‘What else around us can we capture?’ And the way the characters are interacting with this place says so much about their innocence and love for each other.” (Gareth Bowen) 

School Library Journal lists the best 2023 biographies for children:

 The Little Books of the Little Brontës by Sara O’Leary, ill. Briony May Smith

A biography written for children does not have to follow a set path. This is not to say that there aren’t rules. A good picture book biographer ideally does not rely on fake dialogue or start making up scenes that did not occur, just because it gives the story a little more oomph. An author is more than allowed to do this, but if they do then the book becomes “informational fiction” and shouldn’t really be considered nonfiction at all. At the end of this book, author Sara O’Leary states that, “There is much material of their [the Brontës ] later lives, but we can only imagine what their early years were really like. I choose to believe that theirs was a childhood not so much marked by poverty and deprivation but one that was rich in both stories and love. They had each other. They had their books.” Those little books that the Brontës made for one another are the catalyst for the storytelling taking place here today. Now I once sat in on a panel where a fine author of children’s nonfiction stated that while the writing of a book for children may adhere close to the facts, the art never can. We can never truly know if this person stood in this particular way at this particular time at that particular place. Maybe a photograph indicates that they did, but you could never get every detail completely correct. With that in mind, all illustration in nonfiction is, after a sense, an untruth. So it is that some may see the kids in this book having a good time with one another and disapprove, but I think that O’Leary has plenty of evidence on her side to back up the theory that they had a bit of fun in their lives. Besides, it’s rather nice to see four siblings enjoying one another’s company, against a backdrop of gloomy moors and skies. And if you learn a thing or two about them along the way, and get a sense of how writing for fun may lead to being a real author someday? All to the good! (Betsy Bird)

The Independent reviews the film Priscilla by Sofia Coppola: 

Upon returning to the US with her family, Priscilla assumes Elvis has forgotten about her, until she is summoned to Memphis to join him at his home. At times, as she lives alone and neglected in Elvis’s mansion, Priscilla seems more like a heroine in a chilly Gothic novel by the Brontë sisters than someone in a movie about a rock ‘n’ roll star. (Geoffrey Macnab)

The Every Mom recommends two-syllable baby names:

Heathcliff

Often remembered as the masculine hero in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, this classic name has a literal meaning of “cliff near a heath”—but we like the connotation better, too! (Brett Nicole Hayden)

CBR explores tragic movie couples. And, of course, you can't be more tragic than:

Heathcliff Was Cathy's True Match in Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is about the doomed love story between two very flawed characters. Cathy is selfish and mercurial, but if she could have indulged in her wildness more, perhaps she wouldn't be so angry and impetuous. Heathcliff was an orphan, taken in by Cathy's father, and tortured by her jealous older brother.

Heathcliff and Cathy grow up together on the wild Yorkshire Moors, developing a complex relationship with each other. They understand each other in practical, poetic, and philosophical ways, which few others can comprehend. Their lives would have been very, very different if society didn't impose such stringent rules on them, and if Cathy's brother wasn't such a wretched villain. (Vera)

Accursed authors in The Conversation (France):

Manifestement inspiré du manifeste de George Bataille, La littérature et le mal (1957), qui convoquait notamment Sade, Emily Brontë, Baudelaire et Jean Genet, Henric croit à la culpabilité agissante des peintres, à leur connaissance intime des ressorts qui font que la Création tourne mal, à la concurrence qu’ils livrent au Créateur. (Marc Porée) (Translation)

Anne Brontë's Music on Christmas Morning is quoted on AnneBrontë.org Christmas post. EyreBuds's latest episode is a character study of Rochester.