The Telegraph is reporting that ITV has confirmed the casting of Billie Piper as Fanny Price in what the article calls a “multi-million pound adaptation” of Mansfield Park. No news about when filming will begin or when the film will be broadcast.

The image at left is of Miss Piper as Rose in the BBC’s latest series of Doctor Who.

We are delighted to report that Heather Laurence’s screenplay NORTHANGER RANCH is a finalist in the Gloria Film Festival! NORTHANGER RANCH is, as one might guess, a modern-set adaptation of Northanger Abbey. We had the opportunity to “beta read” the script and enjoyed it very much, even if Henry Tilney IS a tax lawyer. (Sorry, private joke. Nothing against tax lawyers, really.) Heather has posted an excerpt from the script. Oh, what a Henry!

A young man rejoicing in the net handle “ominousoat” posted the following on his blog:

Or take Jane Austen for example. I love Jane Austen (are boys allowed to do that?) but it’s not high art. It’s the romantic comedies of the time. Our humorous chick flicks? Same thing. Yet Jane Austen is treated as something above everyone’s head, therefore intelligent.

1. Yes, boys are allowed to do that.

2. Jane Austen’s novels certainly are higher art than your average romcom or chick lit.

3. “Over one’s head” and “intelligent” are not synonymous unless one is very stupid.

It’s lovely that you love Jane, ominousoat, but we recommend a closer study. Jane Austen was not the only woman writing love stories in the early 19th century, yet how many of the others are still widely read? English majors might dip their toes into Burney and Edgeworth and even Radcliffe, but they don’t have the wide popularity of Austen. That’s because there is something different and better about her books. Go back and read again, younker, and then let’s chat.

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE will be released in Pakistan, which normally does not allow Indian movies, according to the Calcutta Telegraph.

Posters of Aishwarya Rai “will be put up all over Pakistan” because the censors have allowed distributors to buy Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice, it was announced in Cannes today.

[. . .]

The mechanics of promoting Aishwarya and the film are being worked out ahead of the June 2 release.

“There are only 270 screens in Pakistan and no multiplexes of the kind you get in Britain or India,” he went on. “We will have 11 to 12 prints, but these will travel from cinema to cinema. Most of the prints will be in Hindi and the film called Balle Balle, rather than Balle Balle: From Amritsar to LA.”

We enjoyed this film and hope everyone else does as well!

Jane Smiley’s new (nonfiction) book, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel: What to Read and How to Write, mentions Jane Austen, according to Scotsman.com.

Jane Austen, she observes, “knew her own capacities, she knew she wasn’t able to solve the moral ambiguities of the Napoleonic wars, it wasn’t her responsibility to take on something that she couldn’t resolve, even in the plot of a book. Jane Austen was revolutionary in many ways, but I don’t blame her for not taking on the wars or the larger social changes that were going on in England at the time.”

It just wasn’t what she wanted to write about. If she had, we wonder if her books would have been so universal? If they would have stood up so well for 200 years? Compare them, for example, to George Eliot’s books, or Elizabeth Gaskell’s (other than Cranford), or even Dickens. As excellent as all of these writers’ books are, they are very much period pieces. One wonders if they could be as easily transferred to modern-day stories as Jane Austen’s.