PRIDE AND PREJUDICE tops U.K. box office
The title says it all.
Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” has once again been successfully adapted to film, with Keira Knightley’s new movie entering the UK charts in first place, Screen International said on Tuesday.
The film, based on the 1813 novel, stars Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew MacFadyen as Mr Darcey (sic) and has received strong reviews since it opened in cinemas across the country.
The Hampstead and Highgate Express has an article about Deborah Moggach, the screenwriter.
She loves Austen, but not excessively, which allowed her a coolness and distance which seems to have stopped her work being too reverential, unlike some.
“Those Jane Austen people are so nerdy” she said, describing some critics’ trainspotting obsession with period detail. “But just because they were a Regency family didn’t mean everything was exactly of its time - they were very old-fashioned, like me,” she said, waving a hand round her sitting room.
Well, the Editrix is one “Jane Austen person” who is proud of her nerdiness, and waves it like a flag. And is it just us or is there a whiff of Mary Sueishness in the article author’s comparisons between Ms. Moggach’s house and Longbourn?
Alert Janeite Erandika wrote to tell us that there are some new clips up on the U.K. P&P3 site. We’re unclear exactly where they are (she said they are the ones formerly marked “coming soon”) but will post that information when we find out.
Meanwhile, the Bridget Droopy Drawers late reviews are still straggling in. Wakefield Express likes the film even though it’s “one for the ladies.”
Pride and Prejudice has been adapted so many times, from the 1940s film starring Lawrence Olivier, to Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood version, I didn’t believe anything new could be brought to the film, but director Joe Wright has picked up on his audience’s need for gossip and fashion and thrust these elements with force.
The film is like a copy of a Georgian Heat magazine brought to the big screen – the audience are treated to a sneaky peek into the class, gossip and scandal of the period, and also get an insight into who’s wearing what this season. For these reasons I was hooked.
“My Kinda Place” reviews the film favorably! With lots of exclamation points! Lots!
Period dramas are always a bit iffy! It’s all corsets, flowing skirts and what sounds to us like a whole load of people talking in funny code. But somehow, by taking a classic story and adding the hottest Brit actress around, its magic has simply been magnified. Packed with talent and nostalgia, it’s an absolute must-see! We dare you to not to blub!
We TRIPLE DOG DARE YA not to blub!
The Edinburgh Student Newspaper is unclear if it likes it or not.
Ultimately, Wright’s Pride and Prejudice is a rather sobering experience – some would say entirely contrary to the spirit of Austen’s original. But its beautiful filmic exterior is often overwhelming, and more than compensates for its shallow interior substance.
Huh?
Lastly, USA Today says that, despite many hints dropped, nay, hurled at the media with the velocity of a Billy Wagner fastball, that P&P3 would be raking in the Oscar gold, there were no obvious Oscar contenders among the offerings at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The Toronto Film Festival closes Saturday with no Oscar film coup in the works like American Beauty achieved in 1999.
The overall tone of the festival is that the disappointing movie year will not be salvaged by the fare found here.
“While there’s a lot of good stuff here if you look for it — not so much in the gala section (films that get the red-carpet treatment) -it’s carrying over what’s been sort of a rotten year in general,” says Liam Lacey, film critic for the Toronto Globe and Mail. “And right now I don’t think that the overall feeling from critics was that Toronto is going to be the year’s savior.”
