Alert Janeite Amo went to the cinema and sent AustenBlog a report about the preparations for the upcoming release of BECOMING JANE.

Huh, so went to the cinema today and they have new banners up for BJ (bigger than the posters they had, made of shiny plastic, some of the pics had been slightly cropped on the poster, and were bigger here).

Unfortunately it didn’t list an official website, just filmfactory.co.uk. Here is their microsite: http://www.thefilmfactory.co.uk/cinema/becomingjane.html

*laughs (in a good way) at Dame Maggie’s hair*

“Venus” used to have a crappy little page like that, and it’s recently become this: http://www.thefilmfactory.co.uk/venus/ (I love this site - worth waiting for the intro to finish.) Let’s hope the BJ site has such an indepth interview with the writer - I for one want to know what he’s go to say for himself!

Don’t we all!

There was a quote on the poster, from Baz Bamigboye, calling the film “Gloriously enchanting”.

We’ve read that before.

The rating was PG “contains mild sex references and scenes of boxing” - so perhaps the lake scene has been cut?

Hmm, interesting!

Might be a good idea as I now realise that the woman standing behind Jane in that scene (and running down the hill with her and Lefroy) is almost certainly Lucy Lefroy.

Lucy Lefroy, by the bye, was four years younger than Jane, which makes her sixteen at the time of this film. In a letter written in 1805, Jane described Lucy Lefroy, by that time married, as “my old acquaintance.” Considering that Lucy’s mother was Jane’s mentor and close friend, draw your own conclusions on the relative chumminess there.

The close up shot of Hathaway and McAvoy moonily holding hands doesn’t do them any favours. Although it’s cropped in the poster, you can see his decidedly un-romantic nails bitten right down to the quick (oops), and her ear piercings seem to have been dodgily edited out. Weird - people have been piercing for millennia!

True!

The tagline is:

“Between sense and sensibility
and pride and prejudice
was a life worth
writing about”

that is actually how it is written, weird paragraphing, and no caps for the book titles.

Let’s parse! The year 1795 as the setting of the story places it between the writing of S&S and that of P&P. So there is that “literal” translation. But then to parse out that the time “between” those books was the only thing in Jane’s life worth writing about is really obnoxious. We’ll take the metaphorical translation, and roll our eyes at the clichés.

Oh well, at least I got my first clear look at Anna Maxwell Martin in the trailer this time, and the official site has a nice close up pic of her.
Hoorah.

And she looks great!

*laughs again at Dame Maggie’s hair* (It’s funny!)

Alert Janeite Kendra sent us a link to a YouTube version of the behind-the-scenes stuff from the film that we saw previously, but we thought new arrivals or those who could not download the clip previously might like to see it again.

We got hit with a major comment spam attack a few hours ago. The spam filter caught them all (huzzah!) but if any legitimate comments got caught in the spam filter, we apologize and invite you to repost.

Alert Janeite Franka found these, and we found some more at the source. Just in time for one of the Editrix’s Jane Austen Book Clubs (she is a member of two!), which will be reading and discussing the novel in a couple of weeks.

It’s a slow night, so let’s parse, shall we?

We are a little freaked out by some of the casting. Lynn Redgrave, who we assumed was playing Bernadette, apparently is not, as Kathy Baker is playing Bernadette (and we don’t think she is just rounding the corner of sixty-seven, either). From this photo, we think Lynn Redgrave must be playing Prudie’s mom (Marc Blucas, the handsome fellow in the photo, is playing Dean, Prudie’s long-suffering husband).

Hey, the gang’s all here! From left: Kathy Baker as Bernadette, Emily Blunt (who was fab in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA) as Prudie, Amy Brenneman as Sylvia, a brunette Maggie Grace as Allegra, presumably one of Jocelyn’s dogs, Maria Bello as Jocelyn, and Hugh Dancy as Grigg.

<editorial aside>
Grigg’s character sort of reminds us of the lone Ken doll the Editrix and her Girlhood Best Friend had between them, who served all purposes in our continuing Barbie-doll epic, The Young and the Plastic. Ken was all the dolls’ father, brother, and boyfriend. We were young, of course, and did not understand the inherent creepiness of this, and after Girlhood Best Friend’s bratty brother took back his GI Joe, we were left with no alternative. Similarly, Grigg gets to be several Austen heroes and even one of the heroines, so unless the book has been completely eviscerated, all of you who have dreamed of Hugh Dancy playing Darcy/Knightley/Tilney place your hormones in an upright and locked position. We suspect it will not be nearly as creepy as The Ubiquitous Ken Doll, though we wouldn’t have minded watching him snog Helen Mirren again.
</editorial aside>

The never-fails pickup line: “You read Ursula K. Le Guin, don’t you?”

“I am way too cute to be treated like crap by an immature self-absorbed Slayer my immature self-absorbed wife.”

Well well well! Who’s the blonde stranger? (We don’t remember any beach scenes. Hmm.)

Amy Brenneman and one of the Editrix’s boyfriends, Jimmy Smits, as Sylvia and The President of the United States, Matthew Santos Daniel. They’re trying to woo us with insanely hot men. It might be working. No, no, no, no we are ALL ABOUT THE TEXT dangit! Can you read us Captain Wentworth’s letter again, Mr. Smits? Thanks a bunch.

Now, this beach scene we remember.

A murder of crows! (Hey, who’s playing Mo? No one listed on the IMDB…aw, too bad to lose that subplot, it was hilarious.)

Aw. Is he reading her Jane Austen?

Señor Obanda! (His Costa Rican farm is superior to every other farm in Costa Rica for bird-watching. The water is brackish in Brinshore, and one can’t get a decent dish of tea within five miles of the place.)

Piece of advice: Don’t read the IMDB forum associated with the film unless you want your head to explode messily. Even if you haven’t read TJABC, even if you didn’t like TJABC. Seriously. We warned you.