With Masterpiece Theatre hanging its hat rather desperately on The Complete Jane Austen to introduce its new brand to the world, the media coverage is, as expected, rather overwhelming.

First we must point out PBS’ Remotely Connected blog, which will feature guest reviews of each film from the online Austen and blogging communities. First up is Ms. Place of the Jane Austen’s World blog on Persuasion. Laurel Ann has the lineup of future guest reviewers–some familiar names in that group.

The LA Times discusses the Masterpiece rebranding.

The only way to alter such an iconic series is “very carefully,” said John Boland, chief content officer for the Public Broadcasting Service.

It had been obvious that “Masterpiece Theatre” needed to rethink its image in light of revolutionary changes in television and media, said Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of “Masterpiece Theatre” for the last 22 years. Studies had shown that viewers identified the series with PBS, admired its high quality and consistently drew a respectable 1.8 to 2 average household Nielsen rating. The series was beloved by an ardent fan base — as evidenced by numerous parodies, including “Mouseterpiece Theater,” “Rastapiece Theater” and “Master P’s Theater.” It was the most cited reason why people became members of their local public television stations and, most significant, the reason they stayed. But lately some viewers have become confused by shifting time slots and mixed expectations.

“What we wanted to know was why aren’t more people watching it and what would it take to attract a younger audience?” said Bob Knapp, president of Neubrand, a marketing and brand consultant. Viewers had told researchers they perceived the series as a “dusty jewel that was hard to find in the PBS crown,” Eaton said. They wanted to know whether to expect “Jane Eyre” or Jane Tennison, “Bleak House” or “White Teeth”?

The result was a compromise between changing everything or changing nothing, Knapp said, the literary equivalent of “brand new look, same great taste.”

It should be noted that a point is cleared up that troubled a few of us: (more…)

Just a quickie this week, since unfortunately it’s all about the films at the moment, but we would like to draw our Gentle Readers’ attention back at least momentarily to the fact that all these new films are based upon novels, and indeed very good ones.

ETA: We nearly forgot! The discussion of The Midnight Bell by Francis Lathom will begin Sunday (that’s tomorrow) at Molland’s. Jump right in to the discussion.

Laurie Viera Rigler, author of The Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, has written a really lovely article about Persuasion for about.com.

If you’ve ever felt like your family didn’t treat you the way they should; if you’ve ever been misunderstood, misled, or misguided in any way, then Persuasion will speak your language. If you’ve ever yielded to the opinions of others over what your heart told you to do, if you’ve ever given up someone because you were told you had to, if you’ve ever wasted even a tiny bit of this short life holding onto resentment instead of opening up to forgiveness and love; then you will get your second chance to make things right with Persuasion.

We especially agree with this part:

And as an added bonus, the book has the best love letter of any novel you’ll ever read.

YES! Thanks to Alert Janeite Laura S. for the link!

The Telegraph has an interesting article about reading among the younger generation, which touches a bit on Jane Austen.

But does it matter? Isn’t an obsession with books just an out-of-date, middle-class hang-up?

Ministers don’t lament the fact that people don’t paint watercolours any more. Posh and Becks admit they never open a book and they haven’t done too badly.

Depends upon the value one places on not doing too badly.

It is unfair to blame children’s disenchantment with books on computers and DVDs when most adults prefer slumping in front of a screen to curling up on the sofa with a book.

You can’t expect your child to read - rather than watch - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when you have just sat through Sense and Sensibility without any intention of picking up a Jane Austen. If you spend evenings on eBay and never get round to finishing the latest Robert Harris, you’re not an ideal role model.

Yes! Perhaps that’s the answer for children who are too young to handle Jane Austen’s work–read it to them, or better yet, with them.

That’s all for Weekend Bookblogging this week, Gentle Readers, and always remember: Books Are Nice!

There, we knew that would get your attention.

The Allmusic Blog has a nice little entry about Jane Austen and period music.

Austen was known to be a music lover, perhaps more than anyone else in her family. Her life coincides with the time when structured musical education was available to a much wider audience than ever before and pianos began to be sold to anyone and everyone. Music-making was one of the required accomplishments of a proper young lady of marriageable age, and many of her most odious characters show no taste or talent for music.

This article at MyWestTexas.com has a nice little event for those in the area–a preview of NA07 with tea (sigh. Afternoon tea. Not high tea. Sigh) today from 4 to 6 p.m. at “Barnes and Noble,” because there’s only one of those. (D’OH!) A search of the Barnes & Noble website brought up this store in Midland, TX. You might want to call ahead.

Alert Janeite Cinthia asked us to pass along that the third episode of S&S, to be broadcast tomorrow on BBC One, will start twenty minutes earlier than the first two episodes, at 20:40 GMT rather than 21:00. It also looks like you can catch up with the first two episodes if you missed them or want to see them again.

We suspect that Dominic Cooper will wish this interview back one day. He comes off rather like, well, Marianne Dashwood: sensitive and emotional and unwilling to put on a false public face. This is not necessarily a bad thing, we hasten to add, but we are astonished that someone would bare so much of his inner life in the public press. Also, he’s friends with Colin Firth, which should recommend him in many quarters.

The evening before we meet, Dominic Cooper was having supper with Colin Firth.

The actors recently worked together in Greece on the movie Mamma Mia!, where they struck up a friendship of sorts.

Cooper says Firth is “someone I’d like to be like - a funny, charismatic person…”

He continues to list Firth’s qualities, but I have to confess I don’t quite catch all he says.

Instead, I’m imagining that supper between damp, magnificent Mr Darcy and Byronic Mr Willoughby. The shirts, the trousers, the smouldering silences - oh, to have been a fly in the soup…

“All we share in common is our big, fat, feral hair,” continues Cooper.

Heh.

“Whenever I mentioned it to people, they said: ‘Oh Willoughby - nasty piece of work.’

But but but…we thought everyone LOVED Willoughby because he was sexy! Andrew Davies said so! (more…)

The Editrix was profiled at Normblog. We particularly recommend clicking through to the YouTube clip of Aerosmith.

An exhibition of the works of the artist Jennifer Dudley will open at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, on February 5. The works include The Analyst:

The Analyst couples a double portrait painting and a psychoanalyst’s couch. The painting, Portrait of the Artist and Jane Austen, depicts a scene taken from director Ang Lee’s film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility.

The exhibit is representative of Dudley’s varied working process. The starkness of the painting and the psychoanalyst’s couch has the impact of the viewer making a deeply intimate connection to the painting.

In Portrait of the Artist and Jane Austen, the film’s two starring characters have been replaced. In their stead is a portrait of the artist fully absorbed in anguish and directing the emotion to a fictional representation of Austen, whose gaze is turned outward toward the viewer. The painting faces an analyst’s couch, which invites the viewer to inhabit the space of the psychoanalyzed patient and to view the painting from this position.

Dudley’s reincarnation of Austen’s fiction prods ideas about character identification and emotional authenticity, and questions our culture’s complicated relationship with history and authorship. The viewer of The Analyst is invited to participate in a similarly generative act by occupying the space of the psychoanalyzed patient on the analyst’s couch.

Tell Auntie Jane all your problems…

Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the link.