It’s a big news day for P&P3 today. Thanks to all the Alert Janeites who have sent in news and links today.

Firstly, Alert Janeite Julia sent in this link, which claims that the U.S. release date of P&P3 has been moved back to November 11. Julia speculates that the date change, if true, is intended to position the film for Academy Awards consideration, and we tend to agree. We have an e-mail in to our contact at Focus Features and will post the news as soon as we hear anything.

ETA: No official word yet on the release date. However, we received a note from Paul from KeiraWeb.com saying that today’s Variety reported that the date for the film DOMINO, also starring Keira Knightley, is being moved up from November to August so as not to compete with a November P&P release (and also possibly to grab the tails of the news of the untimely death of the real-life Domino Harvey earlier this week. Gotta love Hollywood). We will, of course, report any official information as soon as we receive it.

Paul also reported that an Observer reporter who has seen P&P3 wrote on June 19:

“…Could Keira Knightley be on the way to her first Oscar nomination? Watching a sneak preview of the new film version of Pride and Prejudice, I was bowled over by Knightley’s performance as Lizzie Bennet. She’s beautiful, fragile and funny in the role and handles the period dialogue with ease and modern attitude. It’s just the sort of thing to impress Oscar voters, as Kate Winslet did in Sense and Sensiblity.”

The Oscar buzz, she is starting.

Speaking of Focus Features, they have the beginning of the P&P3 Web site up and running. We hear that the full site most likely won’t be available for a few weeks yet.

In other P&P3 news, Alert Janeite Cordelia sent in this link to some behind-the-scenes photos from the filming, and Alert Janeite Lynn sent this link, which includes some shots of the various filming locations. Many thanks for the links!

An article in Greater Milwaukee Today about Jane Austen fans features several members of JASNA’s Wisconsin region, which will be hosting this year’s Annual General Meeting in Milwaukee.

“Janeites,” a group of Austen fans that spans the globe, are members of an organization that celebrates Austen’s works — the Jane Austen Society of North America

Well, we suspect there are some Janeites “spanning the globe” who are NOT members of JASNA, but we know what she meant to say.

Bowen encourages all Austen fans to explore JASNA and wants to squelch the stereotype — there is nothing “stuffy” about the group. “The life of the mind is important to this group and that’s refreshing in today’s society.”

Indeed! The Editrix is a member of JASNA and recommends it highly.

No, really! Would we kid you?

Playwright Andrea Mock is having a cup of tea Saturday with Jane Austen — sort of.

Mock’s one-woman show “Jane Austen in Berkeley” holds a free performance at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at A Cuppa Tea, 3200 College Ave., Berkeley.

The playwright exposes the pride and prejudice of Berkeley mothers as the show follows the travails of single mom Jane Smith and her imaginary alter-ego, novelist Jane Austen.

Austen berates Smith and pushes her to write something more cultured and rarefied than her characterless, plotless novel, “Toxique Shock Syndrome.”

As she has done in the past, Mock writes her plays, records them with sound effects and music and then performs them live on stage along with the CD. It’s sort of a solo show in stereo, half live, half recorded.

Call (510) 841-9441.

As always, if any AustenBlog readers go to this performance, we’d love to publish your review.

Heh. We suspect that the headline writer at Stuff is a Janeite.

According to the New York Daily News, the first sentence of Jane Stanton Hitchcock’s new thriller might sound familiar to Janeites.

If Jane Stanton Hitchcock may say so herself, she’s “meaner than Jane Austen.”

Okay, the opening salvo of her new murder mystery, “One Dangerous Lady,” is a tender takeoff on the opening lines of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” And, “like Austen, I love observing social life, its interactions and minutiae,” says Hitchcock, a socialite with a thriller instinct who first introduced “Dangerous Lady’s” sleuthy heroine, Jo Slater, in her previous novel, “Social Crimes.”

But Hitchcock is more violent, deadly and has far greater savvy about the ways and devious means of Manhattan’s highest society than that other Jane.