Alert Janeite Amo discovered that James McAvoy won’t be attending the Dublin premiere of Becoming Jane on 7 March. The article doesn’t mention where the premiere will take place, so if anybody has more information, it would be appreciated.

A quick search failed to find the Dublin theater in question, but did turn up an 8 March preview of the film plus a conversation with director Julian Jarrold and co-writer Kevin Hood, hosted by The Script Factory at the Screen on the Hill in London. Tickets to this event are £10; see the Script Factory web site for the box office phone and directions. If you go, we’d love a report … and don’t forget your spork.

Alert Janeite Sylvia M. posted in comments that ITV now has an official Jane Austen season web site. For now, one can view the trailer (which we’ve been enjoying already), but as of 12 March, the site promises opportunities to “find your perfect match, send a Flirtmail, join in our Seduction Survey, and much more.”

Hmm. Jane knows we love our Flirtmail, and have worn out our cootie-catcher in pursuit of our Favorite Hero so that Seduction Survey will come in handy. But we’re hoping that a fresh, insightful approach to classic literature (and some great pictures and interviews!) just might be covered in the “much more” section.

The Northern Echo reports that “Janeites may get a touch of the vapours” when they see Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot kiss in Persuasion:

“Everyone is desperate for Anne and the captain to kiss,” [Sally Hawkins] says. “You wouldn’t have seen them kissing in public in Jane Austen’s book, but it’s great that it happens because you need that release.
“It’s good that we’re telling a classic story in a modern way. This adaptation is pretty much loyal to the book, but I think we’re allowed a few liberties.
“Perhaps we need the kiss as a generation. I know if I was watching this at home, I’d be shouting at the telly for them to kiss.”

Two different versions of the scene were filmed: one with a kiss, and one without. (Can you say “deleted scenes” on the DVD?)

What do you think, Janeites? Are the ITV bosses a little over-solicitous of our delicate sensibilities? Does a kissing scene really give you the vapours? Or do you think a modern adaptation can be enjoyable and successful without one? (For the record, I’m on the sofa with Miss Hawkins, shouting at the telly.)

An interesting techie tidbit concerns Mansfield Park: much of it was shot with a handheld camera for a more modern look. From Billie Piper:

“The director wanted it to feel very fresh and young. Sometimes period drama can be stuffy and quite boring, I find,” she says. “He did a lot with a handheld camera so it feels like you’re spying on this family, that’s what I love about it.”

I liked several of the handheld sequences from the 2005 P&P, but sometimes this technique can go horribly wrong, leaving us with COPS … in Mansfield. For this Janeite, a wobbly camera is more likely than a kiss to bring on the vapours. Dorothy may need to add some meclizine to the Austen Season rooibos.

The wonders of youtube now bring us ITV1’s trailer for their “Jane Austen Season.”

Update: Now with Tony A’s much preferred non-squishy version!

Heather L. has agreed to join the staff of AustenBlog. We could not be more delighted, as she is a knowledgeable Janeite, a talented writer, and very funny. Please welcome her!

The Editrix won’t be around much the next few days, as she is trying to get caught up on a few non-blogging writing projects, but the AustenBlog Cub Reporters will be around, and they have all been issued official Cluebats of their own, so keep your noses clean if you know what’s good for ya.

Alert Janeite Helen B sent us a review of Becoming Jane from Empire Online. The reviewer wants to like the film, but there’s that little voice that tells her something is not quite right in Romanceville.

The role of Austen — that most inscrutable of lady authors — is taken by Anne Hathaway, an unpopular choice with those who swooned at the thought of a Yankee assaying such an icon of English literature. Yet she proves more than adequate, playing Jane as a coquettish, spirited young woman intriguingly at odds with the wry, detached presence of her novels.

Gee, wonder why that is?

Owing much to the biography by Jon Spence, it’s a clever narrative device, this dichotomy echoing the question addressed in her most popular novels: is it better to follow your heart or your head?

Um? In S&S, yes, in Persuasion, perhaps…but in the others? We do not see that at all.

Far from simple literary debate, Becoming Jane offers this recurrent dilemma as the painful reality of Austen’s earlier life, and a struggle that had such a profound effect she could never quite leave it alone — in print, at least.

Oh, it would be unfortunate if that were true.

As such, the characters peopling the young Jane’s life are plainly recognisable as the prototypes for her most celebrated characters: Julie Walters’ anxious mother and James Cromwell’s strong, fair-minded Mr. Austen are clear relatives of Pride & Prejudice’s Mr. and Mrs. Bennet; Maggie Smith’s aloof, disdainful dowager exemplifies the snobbery and social climbing that provide context for Austen’s romances; McAvoy’s cocksure, worldly Lefroy is the epitome of the outwardly arrogant, inwardly sensitive hero of whom Mr. Darcy is the paradigm, while Jane herself shares the wit and passion of Austen’s most beloved heroine, Lizzie Bennet.

So in other words, we’re getting warmed over P&P05. Well, we’ll be camping out at the theatre.

And how does this fit in with the head-vs-heart theme? Surely they’re not suggesting that Elizabeth Bennet ever considered her choice of Mr. Darcy as a head vs. heart decision? Or even that she should have considered marrying Mr. Collins, a prudent move if not romantic? Jane Austen states very clearly that it would be a mistake for Elizabeth to marry a man whom she could not respect. She could not respect Mr. Collins, and before she came to know him, she could not respect Mr. Darcy, either. In accepting Darcy at the end of the novel, when she knew and loved him, Elizabeth was following her heart AND her head. No angsty decision-making necessary. Oh, and Jane never really had a decision to make anyway–it’s highly doubtful that Tom Lefroy ever proposed to her, or had any intention of doing so.

This really is McAvoy and Hathaway’s movie, the pair boasting a chemistry that fizzes from their first encounter, as trainee solicitor Lefroy — exiled to his country relatives after disgracing himself in the city — snores his way through Jane’s recital of her latest writings, much to her distress.

A….recital? A woman who used to hide her manuscripts when visitors came and asked that a squeaky door hinge not be repaired so that she could have warning of approaching visitors when she was writing and published freaking anonymously doing a recital? For strangers? We really shall retire to Bedlam.

It’s a twist that adds a powerful new dimension to Austen’s story, underlining the film’s central thesis as to the role of writing in her later life: offering her the happy endings that reality, perhaps, could not. That theory is a little too neat to be entirely convincing, much less revealing

No! Really? Go figure!

Alert Janeite Julia sent us an article from The Telegraph on the film, interestingly in the newspaper’s Fashion section.

McAvoy, meanwhile, plays Tom as a rakish charmer, a young man impatient with the codes of conduct laid down by his stuffier superiors. When, in the film, Jane and Tom decide to elope to London, it is impossible not to think of Lydia Bennet making a dash for it with her charming, ever-so-slightly-caddish Wickham.

Elope?

DOROTHY! THE BOTTLE! BRING THE WHOLE DEMMED BOTTLE! FORGET THE TEA, WOMAN!

And it was these constraints that, in the end, not only determined that Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy could not marry, but also provided Austen with the subject that would become her life’s work.

Oh, we don’t know. We think the Austens would have been perfectly happy for their daughter to marry an up-and-coming young lawyer. Tom may have been poor, but he could go on to make a success of himself (rather like Captain Wentworth–oh wait, we’re remaking P&P here, sorry), and the Austens would not have objected to a long engagement until he could support her.

Mrs Lefroy seems to have decided to throw a party herself in order to bring the blossoming romance between her nephew and her neighbour to a delightful fruition.

Actually Madam Lefroy sent Tom away so that Jane wouldn’t fall any more deeply in love with him. She knew he wouldn’t–or couldn’t–marry Jane, and didn’t want her to be hurt, or at least hurt more.

Over the next few months, buoyed up by her feelings for Tom Lefroy, she would begin to write perhaps her greatest novel, Pride and Prejudice. In it she uses many details from Tom’s own life. His parents, for instance, had produced five sisters before a son arrived, a situation that bears some similarity to that of the Bennets. The name ‘Bennet’ is itself borrowed from the novel Tom Jones, which Jane knew to be Tom Lefroy’s favourite.

There also is a Miss Bennet mentioned in Fanny Burney’s novel Cecilia, the novel from which Jane took the title Pride and Prejudice. The Editrix’s book club is reading Cecilia this month, and it is easy to see how it influenced Jane’s writing. A Mrs. Elton also is mentioned in the novel and, of course, there is “the inimitable Miss Larolles,” to whom Anne Elliot laughingly compares herself when she is angling for a spot closer to Captain Wentworth at the concert. Isabella Thorpe, Nancy Steele, and Lydia Bennet all owe a debt to Miss Larolles, much more so than Anne Elliot! We wonder if any of the literary influences on Jane Austen, besides Fielding, are explored in this film? Richardson, Burney, Radcliffe? No, of course not, because we’re making a warmed-over version of P&P05, and everyone knows that Elizabeth Bennet is not a great reader and has pleasure in many things. Silly Editrix.

As far as Jane Austen was concerned, she had been engaged to Tom Lefroy, and believed that he felt himself similarly committed. It was this conundrum - just why do men and women love so differently? - that was to fire her imagination creatively over the next 20 years.

Sorry, we’re not buying it. It’s just not that simple. The creativity of a real artist comes from so many places–yes, from life, and there is no doubt that Jane loved Tom and that she used the memory of it while writing her books, but there is so much else too–what she read, as we already said, and the people she knew, and her family and friends and neighbors, and the places she lived and the things she experienced, and her own imagination–and if you don’t think that Jane Austen had an imagination, go read the Juvenilia!–and her own fierce intelligence. We hate to see that genius reduced to a two-week romance, and Jane Austen turned into some sort of literary Miss Havisham.

Some of you have found this already, but we held off posting due to a problem with delivery of the JA Centre newsletter.

Chapter Two of the novella There Must Be Murder, “An Unexpected Meeting,” has been posted at the JA Centre Online Magazine.

For those who missed it, Chapter One can be found here. The novella is a sequel to Northanger Abbey by the Editrix and illustrated by Cassandra Chouinard.

Don’t miss the magazine’s other new articles, on Regency men’s footwear (booooots!), a recipe for broth for the poor, a trip to the dentist (ouch!), letters related to the publication of Emma, an article about James Stanier Clarke, and a fun word game.

We heard from a journalist who is interested in speaking to any Janeites who have taken Jane into Second Life. E-mail the Editrix and we will put you in contact.

If you don’t know what that means, it doesn’t apply to you, so don’t worry about it.

This article (thanks Heather L. for sending the link) had us falling off our chair. Fortunately we didn’t drop our spork.

Now, ten years on, he is back in Edinburgh to promote his biopic about the life of Jane Austen, Becoming Jane.

The film, which stars James McAvoy - currently hot property after his star turn in The Last King of Scotland - and the equally sought-after Anne Hathaway, who received praise for her role in The Devil Wears Prada, is being hailed as another masterpiece.

So it’s surprising to learn that the producer had never read a single book by Austen until he was approached with the screenplay.

Not really surprising at all, actually. Not one bit.

“Of course, since she’s so popular we had to be very careful to get everything right, to avoid being hounded by the fans.

Too late for that, bubba!

Casting an American in the role was a brave choice, but Anne is actually a Jane Austen scholar, and she was perfect for the role.”

An Austen scholar? We can hardly type for laughing! Clueless much?

In a more sober vein–if this man, who must be a little bright, can be taken in by the Made Up Story, what’s the defenseless Great Unwashed going to think?

The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Northern California Region will have their next regional meeting on Saturday, 17 March 2007, from 1-4 p.m. at Seven Hills Conference Center at San Francisco State University. The speakers will be Elizabeth Aston, the author of several Jane Austen sequels, and Jessica Young on “Jane Austen’s Legacy in America.” High tea will be served. The cost of the program is $15 and pre-registration is required. For more information, please visit the JASNA Northern California region Web site.

Alert Janeite Alessia let us know that The Guardian’s Organgrinder blog has updated their post of the other day with a preview of the Austen Season trailer, which you can download and obsess over. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Alert Janeite Karenlee sent us a link to a thoughtful and thought-provoking review of Becoming Jane from someone who must have been in an early screening. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to link directly to this review, written by IMDB user Chris_Docker, but at present it is the only user review for the film at the IMDB. Some excerpts:

The 22 yr old Austen is played by the very pretty Anne Hathaway, who you’ll know from Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada. We meet her family when her older sister is happily married.

Hmm. This is the second time we’ve seen a claim that Cassandra is married in this movie. Could he be confused with some kind of formal betrothal shown in the film? Or could the filmmakers really have gone there? Though ultimately it’s not that important, as we will address later in the post.

Firstly be warned. If you are expecting a nice feel-good movie, don’t bother. This made me thoroughly miserable. Not just because a poignant lonely destiny is too much to bear, but because it’s a wasted opportunity to bring a great life to the screen.

Yes.

Our ultimate theme Austen’s writing, yet we see little to convince that this bland and photogenic girl has much between the ears.

Ouch!

In Devil Wears Prada, an outstanding script enabled Hathaway to suggest hidden brainpower. In Becoming Jane, the occasionally erudite lines sound leaden and false. Her body language, meant to portray a rebel, seems a bit anachronistic.

What were we saying the other day about glumping and slumping? Have these young actresses no other way to present Rebellion Against The Patriarchy than going about round-shouldered, slack-jawed, and heavy-footed? (Because grace and elegance are such Jane Austen Movie Clichés™, you know, like bonnets and historical correctness.)

Maggie Smith and other strong actors are reduced to ciphers and little more than icing on a badly made cake.

Now, that’s unfortunate. The marvelous supporting cast was pretty much the best thing this film had going for it.

On the other hand, James McAvoy (fresh from The Last King of Scotland) is a revelation. In what seems like a flash of brilliance in the generally myopic casting, he shines in every scene. A talented actor, he also brings his skills in boxing and sport to imbue Lefroy with vibrancy and charisma. It is when he works his seductive charms on Jane that he also brings out the best in his co-star.

*sigh* We imagine that Mr. McAvoy is a very talented actor indeed. This is also unfortunate, not for him of course, but he’s also very cute, so the fangirls will be all *squeeee* and various screenshots with pithy sayings overlaid in curly fonts will be all over teh Intarwebs and there will be mushy music videos on YouTube and the Editrix will be forced to set her hair on fire, get a picture of Edmund Bertram tattooed on her arse, and move in with Britney at the rehab center.

There are many that will love Becoming Jane in spite of its imperfections. The rest of us might wish it had been told better.

Which, for the benefit of all those who have tut-tutted (or outright whined) that we haven’t “given the film a chance,” is pretty much what we’ve been saying all along.

Really, we can nitpick the details that the filmmakers got wrong–the costumes, Cassandra Austen’s marital status, all the Made Up Story details that we have catalogued over the past couple of years–but we fear that if we concentrate on such details, the bigger picture will be lost: that this film misrepresents Jane Austen’s genius. That would be the worst mistake of all.

Yes, this is old news, but we keep getting e-mails about it so we thought it worth repeating, with bullet points to assist the dull elves with their reading comprehension.

ETA: Masterpiece Theatre films now will be broadcast beginning in January 2008.

• Masterpiece Theatre on PBS will broadcast a “Jane Austen Festival” beginning in November 2007.
• The Festival will include three NEW adaptations: Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park and Persuasion.
• The same three adaptations PLUS the 1997 television adaptation of Emma starring Kate Beckinsale in the title role will be broadcast in the UK on ITV’s “Jane Austen Season” starting next month.
• Each of these films will be ninety minutes to two hours long.
• In a completely separate endeavor, a new four-hour miniseries of Sense and Sensibility currently is in pre-production. It will be broadcast in the UK by the BBC, presumably in the autumn of 2007 but we really don’t know for sure.
• The Jane Austen Festival on PBS also will include the miniseries of S&S.
• The three films broadcast by ITV will be available on Region 2 DVD in March or April 2007.
• These DVDs cannot be played on most DVD players sold in North America without modification. Read Tony A.’s comment for information about these modifications.
• We do not know if or when the S&S DVD will go on sale anywhere.
• We do not yet know if or when Region 1 (North America) DVDs of any of these films will be available. Logic directs us to presume sometime after the Masterpiece Theatre presentation but we have no information on this point.
• We have no idea if or when any of the films/miniseries will be broadcast anywhere else in the world, nor if or when the DVDs will be available in any other regions.

In summary, possess your soul in patience. You will not have to wait longer than Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney had to wait to be married to see the bally movies. In the meantime, try reading the books again.

Alert Janeite Sylvia M. mentioned it in comments, and then Google Alerts sent us confirmation that a cross-media advertising campaign for ITV’s “Jane Austen Season” will be launched on February 26.

The M&C Saatchi-created outdoor ads will be unveiled on February 26 across London to promote the three ITV adaptations. Press ads will appear in The Observer Magazine, Independent on Sunday, the Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine and Sunday Times Culture.

Keep an eye out and send your cellphone photos and scannage to AustenBlog! Also check out the link for a new NA photo–hard to tell as we are moblogging on a tiny screen, but it looks like the siblings Morland and Thorpe.

ETA: Teeny tiny infinitesimal Fanny and His Lordship.

Alert Janeite Marion Fraley sent us a link to an article on The Guardian’s book blog by John Sutherland (whom some of our Gentle Readers may recognize as the author of various literary puzzle books, including several featuring Jane Austen). Mr. Sutherland wonders why the world needs this new set of Jane Austen adaptations, because he thinks they won’t have anything new or surprising. It’s kind of cute, really, this confidence that these new films will be made with care and attention to the original novels. We hardened, cynical Austen whores (middle-aged and otherwise) know better, of course.

The massed ranks of Janeites, the classic reprint publishers and those specialist suppliers of horse-drawn carriages can all rejoice. ITV is taking four of the big six, and has abducted Andrew Davies from the BBC to do Northanger Abbey. The Beeb is hitting back with their own Sense and Sensibility, which makes near enough a full house.

Of course all the Austens have already been done recently for screens large and small. Some, like Ang Lee’s S&S, so well that it seems presumptuous not to leave a decent interval. But Jane Austen is the nearest thing to a church that the British have nowadays. And, going out as they will on Sunday evenings, these serials will attract four times as many as the 2 million or so Britons who attend C-of-E evensong.

This is very amusing, but we begin to suspect that Mr. Sutherland, despite the link in his post to this very blog, is laboring under several misapprehensions. He seems to think that all four ITV films will be new. Of course, we know that the Emma that ITV will show is the one from 1997 with Kate Beckinsale.

Judging by the excitement in the blogosphere it may even generate a “mania”, like the Forsyte Saga or the 1994 Middlemarch. Since ITV promises that the “take” will be “traditional” there are no great surprises in prospect - no nakedness, wet benippled shirts, or rolling in the hay.

Mr. Sutherland, during your visit to AustenBlog (and ta for the shout-out), did you not see the post about the naked Anglican priest? Geez, that was some of our best stuff. Shame you missed it.

The heart does rather sink at the prospect of some 40 hours of viewing.

Um…what? Does he think all these are six-hour miniseries or something? Oh, if only!

For the dull elves in the back: Four films on ITV, ninety minutes to two hours each. Three new, one old. That’s eight hours, rounding up. S&S07 will be four hours. That’s 12 hours total.

There would be more risk, but a lot of fun, if the TV-adaptation industry turned its attention to the fan-fiction, knock-offs and sequels which Jane has inspired. Some of it’s awful, some of it’s crazy, but some is extraordinarily fresh and interesting.

There’s not enough Tullamore Dew in the world. Really.

A little unfaithfulness, then, Mr Davies.

Not to worry.

Alert Janeite Amo let us know that a Billie Piper fan site has listed MP07’s UK air date as March 18. No source for that, so we have no way of confirming it, but hey, it’s as good a guess as any.

Review by MJ Ryan

When reading fan fiction, I’m a stickler for characterization. I can go with the flow regarding plot as long as the characters bear a passing resemblance to what the author created. Maybe a little deviation from the original characterization is to be expected when trying to explain the pairing of two ill-suited temperaments like Mr and Mrs Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. But a strong plot is necessary to gloss over the inconsistencies, or at least make you not care about them. Unfortunately, The Bennets has neither a strong plot nor good characterizations. The author tries to answer not only the question of how these two fell in love, but also explain the rift between the Collinses and Bennets and the genesis of Mrs Bennet’s infamous nerves. An admirable goal, to be sure. But, the plot is melodramatic and unbelievable and there is a bit of dialogue that is suspiciously similar to lines in Pride and Prejudice. Instead of expanding on the world that Austen created and infusing it with her own imagination, the author makes the characters of Fanny Gardiner and John Bennet one-dimensional and recasts the original characterizations into earlier generations, the most obvious of which is Fanny’s mother, a matriarch who is determined to marry her daughter off to the most eligible bachelor in the neighborhood. Yes, you’ve read it before and you’ll read it again. That’s the nature of fan fiction. Whether or not you’ll enjoy it will depend on the writer’s ability to transcend a trite plot with imagination and creative characterization. I’m sorry to say that those are two qualities that this story is lacking.

Killer robots!

What if they were to hold an Oscars purely for achievements in big-screen gadgetry? Instead of relegating all things techy to a single special effects award, put the gizmos centre stage!

[. . .]

7. Most In Need Of A Mid-Film Invasion of Killer Robots. An award category specifically for unfunny romcoms, drawn-out documentaries, or bum-numbingly dull meditations on life, which could only benefit from large doses of cyborg-dealt death and destruction. Automatically awarded to any new Jane Austen adaptation.

Or any Made Up Stories. Thanks to Alert Janeite Heather L. for the link.

We have updated to the latest version of WordPress and are subsequently extremely cranky. We like some of the upgrades (posting autosave! huzzah!) but whose bright idea was it to combine categories for blog posts and sidebar? We have just spent an hour uploading a new plugin to manage and sort our blogroll the same way we always did. This is not progress, nor has it been explained to us satisfactorily as a logical upgrade.

Anyway, if you run into any problems, post here to let us know.

We are such a bunch of spoilsports! These lovely people who are making Becoming Jane just want to give poor, plain, spinsterly Jane Austen some pretty lipstick and a little snogging and romping with prostitutes and we sit here all full of our historical rectitude and ruin everyone’s fun! We are such a bunch of meanies.

Alert Janeite Vanessa told us about a long article in the Telegraph Magazine about Becoming Jane, which she described as “scary.” Oh, yes. Bring out the sporks, Gentle Readers. (more…)