Gameplanet is listing a release for The Jane Austen Book Club on June 25, and TVNZ is giving away a prize pack that includes the DVD, a copy of the book, and a DVD of S&S–it’s unclear which version, but since the giveaway is sponsored by Sony we’re guessing S&S95. The competition ends July 9, so get your entries in!
Alert Janeite Aad, who keeps us up to date on releases of Jane Austen DVDs in the Netherlands, let us know that a Just Entertainment will release a Jane Austen Collection, including Persuasion 2007, Northanger Abbey 1986, Pride and Prejudice 1980, and Sense and Sensibility 1971, on April 24. This set is, of course, Region 2 and we believe contains Dutch subtitles.
Aad also let let us know that Sony Benelux will release the Dutch edition of The Jane Austen Book Club on April 24. Mark your calendars in the Netherlands!
Ooooh, lookee what we found! Remember ages ago when we asked for submissions for questions to the cast of The Jane Austen Book Club? For one reason or another, we forgot to follow up on the article, but found ourself on the Redbook website for various reasons tonight, decided to do a little search, and there it is! Just in time to enjoy with your brand-new DVDs. (You did get your DVD, didn’t you?) Question 7, by the bye, was submitted by the Editrix. 
We really love Hugh Dancy’s comment about this being the “meta” movie for Janeites. How true!
The Jane Austen Book Club DVD came out Tuesday on DVD. For those new to the blog, here’s our review from when we saw it in the theater. Now all of you who complained about the movie never reaching your town, or being open for five minutes there, have a chance to see it. Let’s support this, fellow Janeites; let’s give this one a long tail and show Hollywood that Jane Austen fans will support quality Jane Austen Brand™ products. Even renting it will help; and if you like it, why not buy it? It’s also available in Blu-Ray!
Cinematical has a nice writeup:
Like any dramatic comedy that focuses on romance — especially one that does so under the mighty pen of Jane Austen — this film is sentimental and romantic, but it’s also got a heck of a cast giving great performances and characters that aren’t the normal flighty heroines.
Yay for real Jane Austen heroines! And there’s even some info about the extras:
As far as the disc goes, there’s a decent number of featurettes, and not all of them are your typical fare. You get: deleted scenes, commentary with cast and crew, a peek behind the scenes, “The Life of Jane Austen,” “The Book Club: Deconstructed,” and for you red carpet fans out there — the Los Angeles premiere.
Speaking of extras, JASNA has an exclusive clip, with Joan Ray, Claire Bellanti, and director Robin Swicord talking about Harris Bigg-Wither, which we believe is from the DVD extras.
Oh, and for those who have said that the not-so-good new films have at least interested viewers in reading Jane Austen, here’s an argument that well-made and funny films will do the same.
Speaking as a Jane Austen virgin, an expression borrowed from “The Jane Austen Book Club,” I am more intrigued by the author after having seen the film — but not enough to read one of her 18th-century sagas, despite urgings from female friends to do so to better understand their affinity for the novels.
Well, almost.
The Philadelphia Daily News (represent!) chats with Kathy Baker about Jane Austen and other things.
As for Austen, I’m assuming you read some of her work before shooting the film?
“I have read some Austen,” Baker said. “I’d always liked ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ but I think I like ‘Sense and Sensibility’ better. But there’s only six, you know, and I don’t know the others. I’m not like my sister, who reads every one of them over every year.
“There are people out there who are just so enamored of her they read her books over and over again. I am not like that. I was playing a character who did that. I was, however, the only cast member who was actually in a book club.”
Was there any type of informal book club on the set of the “Book Club” movie?
“Absolutely,” Baker said. “In fact, we all gave each other books for cast gifts. And we all read the Austen books we needed to read for our characters. And our youngest cast member, Maggie Grace, is one of those Austen-ites.”
Speaking of Kathy Baker, here’s a report of the DVD signing from the other night. Kathy and Maggie both look fabulous!
And good news for our European readers–the movie will be out on Region 2 DVD on March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day!), so drag yourself away from the pub and get a copy! Looks like you’re getting the full complement of extras:
The film has just opened Down Under, and the Brisbane Times has a review.
This is just a partial list of the dramatis personae and their preoccupations but you can already see that the screenplay - based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler - is doing its best to duplicate the basic recipe laid down by Austen herself. Take one village, sift through its social circles until you’ve found the characters most likely to provide incident and diversion then spice up their dramatic and romantic prospects with the addition of a few provocative newcomers - which is where Prudie (Emily Blunt wearing a Louise Brooks bob) comes in.
Sadly, we forgot to include Emily Blunt’s wonderful performance in our own review, so we will point to the others that did. (Guess we were too busy fangirling Hugh Dancy.) But both the film and the book come with the highest AustenBlog recommendation possible, for whatever that is worth.
Our inaugural edition of Getting Local With Jane was a big hit–so much so that we received news of a couple of events that will be taking place so soon as to not bear waiting for next week’s edition!
This is a very exciting event:
Meet the cast and director of The Jane Austen Book Club on Tuesday, February 5, at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, The Grove at Farmers Market, Los Angeles (3rd Street and Grove Drive). Maggie Grace, Amy Brenneman, Kathy Baker, and Robin Swicord (screenwriter/director) will greet fans and sign DVDs.
Also, check out the link — jasna.org has an exclusive video clip in which Joan Klingel Ray, Claire Bellanti, and Robin Swicord discuss Jane Austen and her men, including Harris Bigg-Wither.
For those in the Seattle area, Laurel Ann of Austenprose and co-blogging duties at Jane Austen Today will host “An Evening With Jane” in conjunction with KCTS 9 at the Alderwood Barnes & Noble on Thursday, February 7 at 7 p.m.
The night will begin with a short introduction to Jane Austen, the inspiration for our series, The Complete Jane Austen, as well as other “prequels, sequels and Austen-inspired publications,” says Laurel Ann. And we will not shy away from the Janeite’s favorite activity: Discussing the history of Jane Austen adaptations, including interpretations of her novels, casting and highlights–and the history of her original book publications.
Questions and discussion by the attendees will be encouraged. Laurel Ann and hosts will be serving complimentary tea and scones, sending guests home with gift packs, and offering a drawing for books and posters.
RSVPs are encouraged–see the link for details.
Tunkhannock (PA) Public Library will host a discussion on “What Makes Pride and Prejudice an Enduring Novel?” on Wednesday, February 6 at 7 p.m. in conjunction with the Wyoming County Reads program.
Don’t forget to send us your local Jane Austen events for Getting Local With Jane!
Janeites in Australia and New Zealand are finally getting to see the film adaptation of The Jane Austen Book Club. The Sydney Morning Herald has an interview with director Robin Swicord.
Now is an especially demanding time for Australian FOJs and the younger, mostly female, related species known as “Jane-ites”. This is the year for premium British TV redos of Persuasion, Sense And Sensibility and Mansfield Park.
As the American screenwriter, director and admitted FOJ Robin Swicord puts it: “They got some really excellent writers to do these versions. I’ve been keeping tabs on all this recently. And there’s quite a buzz about it in the Austen cosmos.”
You can say that again!!! When our Gentle Antipodean Readers get to see the film, let us know what you thought of it.
With the Complete Jane Austen gearing up on PBS, everyone seems to have Jane Austen films on their minds, and there are several events coming up dedicated to Austen film adaptations old and new.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is having a special event, “Jane Austen Goes to the Movies,” on Wednesday, January 30th at 7 p.m.
Jane Austen has become one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters, with both feature films and television mini-series to her credit. Independent scholar and lecturer, Virginia Newmyer, examines the dramatization of the novels, and whether 20th-century scenarios have improved on the renowned author. The discussion, illustrated with images, interprets the ways in which Jane Austen wove the enduring questions of power, money, and social class into her romantic comedies, and how the themes have been transferred to the screen. Several films and videos are considered, including: Sense and Sensibility (1995 feature film), Pride and Prejudice (1980 BBC mini-series, 1995 BBC/A&E mini-series), Mansfield Park (1993 feature film), Emma (1996 feature film), Clueless (1995 feature film), and Persuasion (1995 feature film). In addition, both Becoming Jane, the 2007 feature film as fictional as the novels, and The Jane Austen Book Club, very different from the book, are included.
Tickets for this event are $20, but if you call and mention that you are an AustenBlog reader, you can get them for the member price of $15! La!
Alert Janeite Jen K. sent us some information about upcoming events sponsored by JASNA’s Greater New York region, kicking off this week. First is a pre-broadcast screening of the new adaptation of Persuasion, this Tuesday, January 8, at 6:30 p.m. at Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union. The event is co-sponsored by Penguin Books.
JASNA New York also is co-sponsoring (with Borders) post-broadcast discussions for each of the six novel adaptations on the Mondays after broadcast at several locations in New York and Connecticut.
Another very exciting New York area event (though it’s not listed on JASNA New York’s website, but Jen posted details at The Republic of Pemberley) is a screening of the 1995 adaptation of Persuasion with a discussion featuring Ciarán Hinds, who of course played Captain Wentworth in the film, and possibly Corin Redgrave, who played Sir Walter Elliot, discussing the film with Foster Hirsch of the Brooklyn College Film Department and Rachel Brownstein of the CUNY English Department. The event will be at Brooklyn College on Monday, February 4, 2008 at 3:30 p.m. at the Gershwin Theater, Brooklyn College Campus.
All of these events are free and open to the public.
We previously mentioned “Jane-uary” at the Kansas City Public Library, and as part of that endeavor the library will have a film series called “The Reel Jane Austen” featuring some of the big-screen adaptations, nicely balancing the small-screen versions on PBS. The series will include P&P 1940 and 2005, S&S 1995, and Emma 1996. (No Persuasion 95? Quel dommage!)
In conjunction with Rocky Mountain Public Radio, Audrey Sprenger of the Denver Central Library will present a film and lecture series, Jane Austen, Literature’s Posthumous It Girl.
Created to supplement Masterpiece Theatre’s winter telecast of The Complete Jane Austen, this short cinematic and academic course will chronicle Austen’s slow but steady rise in popularity since the late 1800s, compare her to other It Girls like aviator Amelia Earhart and actresses Jean Seberg and Brigitte Bardot, critique Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, a Hollywood Teen Re-Make of Austen’s Emma and finally, explore Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club, a fictional take on why Austen’s work and persona still endures.
The Denver Central Library will have a free screening of the new adaptation of Persuasion on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 2 p.m. to kick off the series.
A week before The Alleged Biopic appears in North America, we will have both regular and Blu-Ray DVDs of The Jane Austen Book Club, both with added features including an audio commentary with cast and crew, four featurettes (”Behind-the-Scenes of The Jane Austen Book Club,” “The Life of Jane Austen,” “Walking the Red Carpet: Los Angeles Premiere,” “The Book Club: Deconstructed”) and deleted scenes.
All of us who enjoyed seeing a Jane Austen film for grownups–let’s support this. Maybe we’ll get some more. Stranger things have happened.
The Jane Austen Book Club will be out in the UK this week, and the Daily Mail has a contest to win a break at the Bath Spa Hotel (oooh!) or 100 copies of the novel.
There also is an offer for a discount on the novel and other Jane Austen titles from Penguin. (The link on the page doesn’t work–the one in this post does.)
The Telegraph has an interview with Emily Blunt, who plays Prudie in the film.
Has Blunt read Austen? Is that why she did the film? ‘Of course I’ve read Austen,’ she says. ‘I’m English; I thought it was a prerequisite. Actually, I did this film because, for a start, there’s a great cast involved, and I was interested in my character. Prudie’s so messed-up, really. Her mother’s a hippy and she has reacted by being uptight and immature in many ways. She has never grown up, but she has to during the course of the film. I thought she had layers, and I like layered people.’
Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the link.
Alert Janeite Karen sent us a link to the UK website for The Jane Austen Book Club film, which includes a quiz to “reveal your inner Jane Austen heroine.” The film opens in the UK on November 16.
How lovely and refreshing to read a mature and intelligent take on Jane Austen’s work from a columnist at Washington State University’s Daily Evergreen. And she’s not even a Janeite!
After the final credits rolled past and the theater was once again lit well enough to find the exit, my mom, my sister and I were gushing about how we loved the movie and laughing at certain quotes and claiming our favorite characters as we typically do after a chick movie. Once we got home, I went to my room to get ready for bed and despite my best efforts to fall asleep, I started thinking about how much the themes of Jane Austen’s six novels are still so relevant today, 200 years later.
Should love be unbound and wild, or constrained and orderly?
Can marriages really stay happy and fulfilling for “as long as we both shall live”?
These timeless questions and several other themes including friendship, romance and social manners are still the issues perplexing us today.
Nicely said. We hope Ms. Miley goes on to read some of Jane Austen’s novels now, or at least learns to appreciate them! We know that there are smart and mature teenagers and college students out there, and some of them even read this blog. Always good to have proof of it.
Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a rather amusing summary of The Jane Austen Book Club:
The Jane Austen Book Club’: A flick for the erudite chick. “Pride & Prejudice,” infidelity, amazing jewelry, lesbian skydiving, bottles and bottles of wine, and dogs. What’s not to like?
Pretty much sums it up, yeah.
TheHype* is concerned that just by mentioning the name *whispers* Jane Austen he might start leaking testosterone out of his ears.
Well, we’ve got two words for you, plebe:
We believe the proper term to be used at the present juncture would be “pwn3d.”
*Ungentlemanlike language warning.
One of the events we attended at the JASNA AGM in Vancouver was a screening of The Jane Austen Book Club, attended by Karen Joy Fowler, author of the novel from which the film was adapted, and Robin Swicord, the director. (And it IS pronounced Swy-cord, after all.) Robin gave away some props and stuff from the film, and we scored, from our neighbor who was more proactive about getting swag than we were, one of Grigg’s business cards! La! (and no, we are NOT giving it away. It’s ours, precious!)
So, on to the news!
There’s a new interview with Karen Joy Fowler at Amazon, in which she talks about the process of having one of your novels adapted.
I didn’t really see how it could be made into a movie so I didn’t expect anyone else would either. I’ve had options on other books so I wasn’t surprised by that part, but the way options seemed to work was that the option period ran out and you never heard another word about it. That’s what I expected.
Robin Swicord discusses the film and Jane Austen with the Montreal Mirror.
Infidelity and other romantic complications were an Austen specialty, and Swicord saw the author’s ruminations on codes of human behaviour as even more invigorating when applied to contemporary characters. “Her father was an Anglican pastor. The Anglican values were really upheld in her family. This was an underpinning of all of her novels. She was very much concerned with moral and ethical behaviour. She believed in the rational mind over the impulsive.”
The Orlando Sentinel also has an article about the film in which they talk to the directors and to Hugh Dancy.
“I was looking for somebody who was Darcy-like (the snob who melts in Pride & Prejudice), somebody whose appearance could be deceptive, ” Swicord says. “He’s too good-looking, too smart to be funny. But you start to re-evaluate him. Just like so many of Austen’s young gentlemen, like Mr. Darcy.”
And while Dancy relished the chance to play “the sort of Austen character women swoon over,” he acknowledges that there’s still that label “chick picture” on any film concerning the late Ms. Jane.
“She’s been marketed as ‘chick lit,’ I think,” Dancy says. “She’s very unsentimental, very dry and very funny. I think that’s why she’s still around, not that she’s a nice way to kill a rainy afternoon.”
Did we mention we have Grigg’s business card? 
And lastly, Alert Janeite Amy sent us news of a possible sequel to the film.
The San Jose Mercury News has a great article about Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, including her initial reaction to watching the film adaptation of her novel.
Swicord made many changes to Fowler’s book, including reassigning specific Austen novels to different members of the book club. That made for a somewhat disorienting experience for Fowler when she saw an early print of the film.
“I just sort of sat there the whole time thinking, well, I didn’t write that,” she said.
As someone who really loved the book, even though we enjoyed the film very much, there were a few of those moments for us, too. But actually the “assignments” sort of shift–both Sylvia and Prudie are a little bit Mansfield Park, and everyone gets in on the Persuasion action. That’s in keeping with Ms. Fowler’s own writing style, which had the Austen allusions shifting and coming at you in unexpected ways. (We were sad to lose the lone Sanditon reference in the novel, though.)
As for the printed page, Fowler was a trendsetter; new books with Austen themes seem to crop up every month. August alone brought us “Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict,” in which a brokenhearted contemporary woman wakes up in 1813 England; as well as the paperback edition of “Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Austen Adventure,” which invites the reader to play games involving Austen plots. For a running list of Austen-related projects in the works, see http://www.Austenblog.com, which has the very aptly named feature: “She’s Everywhere.”
Yes, she is. 
Movieweb.com has some more videos with various cast members of The Jane Austen Book Club. They are kind of hilarious because the (male) reviewer is so astonished that he liked the movie, and keeps asking the cast members how to convince his audience to see it, other than the fact that Princess Leia’s stepfather is in it. (That would be Jimmy Smits, who played Senator Bail Organa in Star Wars Episodes II and III, which was pretty much the only thing that kept us from opening our jugular vein with a dull spork while watching those films; that, and a sick fascination with how many elaborate outfits Padme managed to extract from her tiny suitcase after she eloped with Anakin.) Really, is Jane Austen that scary?
Then this review, which is rather lukewarm anyway, has a strange misperception about Janeites.
There are some people who are so crazy about Jane Austen that they know everything about the English novelist’s life (like, how she only wrote six novels or that she never married).
These are not the people who should see “The Jane Austen Book Club,” a super oozy chick flick.
It’s the ones who like Austen-inspired movies including “Emma” or even “Clueless” who will enjoy this tale of Sacramento readers who create a book club in which they read only Austen.
Why in the world would they think those two groups are mutually exclusive? Janeites who really know Jane generally love Clueless, because it really gets Jane. Same with TJABC. It’s not intensive Jane Austen content for Janeite geeks, but it’s infused with her work nonetheless. Why wouldn’t the fanatics love that, as long as it’s done well? Which, of course, is the point: it must be done well. It’s not a matter of modern or period work, it’s a matter of quality.
The winners’ names have been drawn in our The Jane Austen Book Club movie poster contest.
Congratulations to April, who won the grand prize of a poster and a copy of the film tie-in edition of the novel and a signed copy of The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World, and also Liane, Robin, Maisy, Ann, Kate, Jenna, Rebecca, Patrizia, and Brenda, who won posters. Thanks to all who entered!
Ms. Place at Jane Austen’s World has an exclusive interview with Robin Swicord, screenwriter and director of The Jane Austen Book Club. Part I, Part II.
When John Calley asked me to read Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, I was at work on an original screenplay about a dysfunctional family of Jane Austen scholars, which I planned to direct for Sony Pictures. I had spent years immersed in Austenalia, not only reading Austen’s novels repeatedly, but also absorbing her letters and juvenilia, and making my way through various academic treatises which explored Austen’s life and work from every imaginable angle. I joked to my Sony executive that I was on the way to making the only light Hollywood comedy ever to need a bibliography appended to the credits. However, in reading The Jane Austen Book Club, I found myself no longer in the company of sparring intellectuals. Here were ordinary people more like me; readers, seeking shelter and companionship in books. That contemporary readers have found refuge in Jane Austen’s well-ordered novels isn’t surprising, given what we’re seeking shelter from—congested traffic, ringing cell phones, squealing security wands, waiting rooms with blaring televisions. Recently I noticed that four of Austen’s six novels were for sale at the newsstand at the Seattle airport. Spend a couple of hours trapped in a terminal waiting for a flight that’s been delayed, and you’ll be only too happy to withdraw into a semi-rural English village, two centuries in the past. When you begin to love Austen, her world doesn’t seem that antiquated. Her characters worry about money, deal with embarrassing family members, cringe at social slights, and spend more time than they should hoping to fall in love, even when the local prospects don’t seem that promising. In short, her people are just like us—but without the commute and the twelve-to-fourteen hour workday.
Also, there’s a video at Hollywood.com with several of the actors in the film: Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, and Hugh Dancy (if you’re interested in hearing his real accent).
We were a little surprised when we heard that filming was going forward on The Jane Austen Club. Not because we didn’t like the novel that inspired it; on the contrary, we loved the novel, but were at a loss as to how the plot, with its timeshifts and flashbacks, could be rendered on film without severe evisceration, which, if not done with due care (as we Janeites certainly know), can have some ugly results. We were further alarmed by the casting of actors who all were at least a decade younger than the characters in the book. Fortunately, we are delighted to report that The Jane Austen Book Club is a funny and smart film that keeps the spirit of the original even while it takes some severe departures from it.
For the benefit of those who have not read the book, the six members of the group are brought together by mutual acquaintances, each of them grieving or confused or lonely, to read Jane Austen as “the perfect antidote to life.” They read and discuss and argue and flirt and fall in and out of love, using Jane Austen’s novels as emotional touchstones as her stories pop up in their lives in the most surprising ways. It’s not a modern-set version of a Jane Austen novel, like Clueless or Bride and Prejudice; Jane’s work is present and informs the proceedings, but the touch is light, almost ghostly. You probably won’t be getting any new insights into the novels. It’s more like the audience is the seventh member of the book club, listening to the others approach the novels through their own experiences, and, well, prejudices.
For those who, like us, read and loved the novel, we were pleased how much of the original six stories were preserved. The flashback scenes were excised, but in some cases the characters were able to tell part of their backstories. Allegra’s story in particular is almost intact, and Maggie Grace has managed to repeat Kate Winslet’s astonishing feat of making Marianne Dashwood likable. The rest of the cast also is excellent, without a single weak link; no flavor of the month starlet casting, thank Jane. Kathy Baker renders Bernadette almost perfectly from the book as the warm-hearted, sweet-natured, ever so slightly ditzy Earth Mother of the group. We’ve already waxed gushy about Hugh Dancy’s hilarious turn as Grigg, a single geek in possession of a good fortune, who is enthusiastic about reading–especially about reading whatever Jocelyn tells him he should read. Jimmy Smits plays Daniel against type, dumping his wife cruelly and bringing his new love to “her” Whole Foods, and oh! How we detest him for his perfidy! Not unlike how we detest a certain sea captain when he is cruel to a certain Miss A— E—–; but like that other gentleman, he makes up for it. (And when he was sitting on the beach discussing Persuasion both of our ovaries pretty much exploded simultaneously. Ow.)
As in the novel, the Austen references shift and sneak up one. Some will likely go over the heads of non-Janeite audiences, and probably they will never miss them; they are little treats for Janeites. Yes! This film does not forget the Janeites! Shocking, we know, after suffering a series of directors and screenwriters and actors who said publicly that they did not care what Those Austen People thought. Robin Swicord, who wrote the screenplay and directed, is one of us, and we are not forgotten. Although not all members of her cast are Janeites, she gets them to buy into the Janeness, and yet manages to avoid major eggheadedness that would make the Great Unwashed run screaming for the exits. Non-Janeite friends, family, SOs, and spouses need not fear this film. Janeites, for that matter, need not fear this film, even if one has been disappointed by recent efforts in her name. We laughed a lot, we cried a little, and we enjoyed the way the ending wrapped up all the stories harmoniously–just like Jane.
Those who have not read the novel should have no problem following the film, and those who have read the novel will enjoy it, we think, whether or not you liked the book. It’s witty and clever, much like Jane herself, and celebrates her novels and the community of readers who have loved them for 200 years. You, Gentle Reader, are part of that community; go and celebrate.
Sony Pictures Classics will give posters from The Jane Austen Book Club to ten AustenBlog readers. If you would like to be added to the drawing, send your full name and mailing address to editor@austenblog.com by 10 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, September 27, 2007. If you like, tell us about “your private Austen.”
Nine winners will receive a copy of the poster; one grand prize winner will receive a poster, a copy of the movie tie-in edition of the novel, and a copy of The Jane Austen Handbook, A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World signed by the Editrix, which we are including because we are so happy to end our drought of Jane Austen-related films that we didn’t like! (If you would like to be in the drawing for the poster only, just let us know in your e-mail.)
To see a larger version of the poster, click on the smaller version at left.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
