Love Story - a celebration of Jane Austen Couples

Enjoy this great montage of Jane Austen couples from the recent adaptations of Mansfield Park 2007, Persuasion 2007, Northanger Abbey 2007 and Sense and Sensibility 2008 included in "The Complete Jane Austen" on Masterpiece Classic in 2008, by PBouvma at YouTube.

Fanny Price a Tart?

Well, I don’t think so … not in the wildest stretch of the imagination could Jane Austen’s most prim and proprietous heroine be considered a woman of loose morals, yet Billie Piper the actress who portrayed Fanny in the 2007 adaptation of Mansfield Park is being tagged a tart by her elderly country neighbors in Midhurst, West Sussex where she lives with her husband, actor Laurence Fox (Mr. Wisley in Becoming Jane) and their young son Winston.

Mail Online is reporting that in an interview for the February issue of Marie Claire magazine, the 27-year old actress revealed that "A few of the older locals actually believe I'm a whore," because of her role in ITV’s and Showtime’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl based on the exploits of a real-life call girl Belle de Jour.

"They love Laurence because he's in Lewis (Inspector Lewis in the US), and his fan club are basically in their mid-sixties and upwards. (Ouch – that made his fans who are not senior citizens feel rather ancient). They love him. It's sickening. They follow him around, they want to mother him. I mean, there are places he can't go - like Mecca Bingo or the bowling green - but he loves it. Then they look at me and are like, "That slag! How could you dirty yourself with her? She's corrupted you.""

I guess Billie needs to send her neighbors the DVD of Mansfield Park to redeem her reputation. Fanny Price has been accused of being a prig, but never a tart!

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

Mini Austenpalooza Headed Down Under

Janeites in Australia will soon enjoy the delights of four of Jane Austen’s cannon adapted for the screen. According to this advance interview of Actress Sally Hawkins who portrayed Anne Elliot in the ITV production of Persuasion (2007), it looks like the month of June has been dedicated as a mini Austenpalooza down under. Starting with Emma (Kate Beckinsale version 1996), the weekly Sunday evening airings will also include the new (2007) versions of Persuasion on June 8, Northanger Abbey on June 15, and Mansfield Park on June 22.

What no Pride and Prejudice (1995), Sense and Sensibility (2008) and Miss Austen Regrets (2008) to ‘complete’ the ensemble that North American audiences enjoyed this past winter with The Complete Jane Austen on PBS? Let’s hope that they head that way soon, for what else do Janeites live for but total emersion, right?



Actress Sally Hawkins has some interesting comments to add about her take on Austen and her motives for writing.

"I think Jane is echoed in all her heroines, in all her novels," Hawkins says. "If you look at them as a set of complete works, you can see a real woman growing up. Her wit is there, apparent through all her heroines, and that is very much at the core."

Australian audiences have the double advantage of previous airing of these adaptations in the UK and North America, and many reviews are about. To prep yourself for each production (spoilers afoot), here are some reviews of the high and low points of each production.


Emma

• JANE AUSTEN MOVIE CLUB: Emma (1996/TV)
• The Complete Jane Austen "Emma" by Jessica Emerson
• Emma Review: By the Vacuous and Vulgar Mrs. Elton
• Fun Friday–Emma, by Kaye Dacus

Persuasion

• Review: Madcap PBS 'Persuasion' sacrifices nuance
• Persuasion Review: “almost too good for me”?
• The Complete Jane Austen "Persuasion" by Victoire Sanborn

Northanger Abbey

• Northanger Abbey: A Review
• 'Northanger Abbey' is lighthearted Austen
• Northanger Abbey Review: An Austen Adventure

Mansfield Park

• Mansfield Park Review: No Hope of a Cure
• The Dummification of Mansfield Park
• The Complete Jane Austen "Mansfield Park" by Lori Smith
• Mansfield Park–My Reaction, Kaye Ducas

Posted by Laurel Ann, Austenprose

What Do You Think of Mansfield Park?

Did you like the movie or not? These Mansfield Park reviews were written by bloggers associated with PBS Remotely Connected. Do you agree or disagree with their assessment? Lori liked the film; Dianne thought it was fine, and neither Laurel Ann nor Ms. Place thought it all that good.

• Ms. Place on Jane Austen's World: The Dummification of Mansfield Park
  

• Laurel Ann's on Austenprose: Mansfield Park Review: No Hope for a Cure
  

• Lori Smith's on Remotely Connected: Mansfield Park
  

• Dianne Danielson on Remotely Connected: Mansfield Park

Here's an interesting and informative reaction to the film from KayDaycus: Write Place, Write Time. Click here to read it.

Mansfield Park's Blake Ritson

Try as I might, I am having a hard time finding solid information on Blake Ritson. This leads me to the conclusion that this young actor's turn as the staid Edmund Bertram was highly successful, and that people are mistaking him for Edmund.

Since the movie was shown in England and Canada, no fan clubs for him have sprouted up; no websites devoted to everything that Blake did, ate, or breathed exist. He is still, well, largely unknown.

• Tara Fleur does offer a number of Blake Ritson icons.

• Find Blake as Edmund Bertram icons here.
  

• And here is a Blake Ritson ITV interview for A Touch of Frost

• A little while back I found a link to Blake as a voice over actor.

• And this feeder site collects information on all things Blake Ritson.

• Blake Ritson as Justin Smart in The League of Gentlemen

• Scandal and Schooling at the Old Vic
  

As we wait or tonight's viewing of Mansfield Park with Blake Ritson and Billie Piper, I would like to direct you to these links:

An excellent review and discussion about the movie on Palimpsest. I can't quibble with any of Colynbourne's observations. In the review, she quotes Blake as saying about Edmund:

He doesn't wear well by modern standards...we've made him more playful, he's sillier, he drinks more - he's a lot less priggish and self-righteous than the original. All of us were keen not to be corseted by the decorum of the time.

Erm, isn't the novel supposed to be set in the "decorum of the time?"

Here's a recent opinion about the movie offered by Matthew Gilbert of Boston.com

Most of the reviews for Mansfield Park are negative, and yet the movie as a stand alone, without a connection to Jane Austen, is light and engaging. I think we will see a huge division of opinion about this adaptation between those who know Mansfield Park backwards and forwards, and those who are introduced to the novel for the first time via this production.

Below is a scene from a short 12-minute film that Blake and his brother Dylan directed, Out of Time. The film's plot is: "Charlie is in trouble -- he has woken up to discover that his mouth is moving out of sync with his words. We follow his race to find a cure, attend a meeting, and patch up things with his girlfriend - all whilst trying to hide the bizzare affliction. A surreal, modern allegory about love, lies, and the dangers of false advertising.

Posted by Ms. Place

Seen on the Blogosphere: Billie Piper as Fanny Price

To prepare Jane Austen Masterpiece Classic fans for the critiques and reviews that will shortly arrive after Mansfield Park has aired tomorrow night on PBS, Ive collected a few quotes about Billie Piper as Fanny Price, including a few pithy comments from Billie herself.


Billie on Playing Fanny Price:

One of the things she says she has learnt playing Fanny Price, the redoubtable heroine of Austen's Mansfield Park, is that life in the early 19th-century wouldn't have suited her one bit. "You realise the pace of life was so slow - everything takes so much longer. Our natural pace these days is so quick. If you wanted to travel anywhere it would take you two days. If you wanted to write to people, the same. Everyone would walk slower, just simple things like that."

Billie says that as a result, she finds period dramas can often be a little plodding. "I've always had an issue with period dramas. I love the language but sometimes it's just a bit too slow or stuffy and sometimes, frankly, it's a bit boring. That's my experience." This adaptation of Mansfield Park, she says, will offer just a little more pizzazz. Clicking her fingers to give an idea of what she means, she says, "This one moves like that and it feels very real. It's a real family with real dynamics." One of the things that Billie has learnt is that life wasn't just slower: it was harder too.

"It would have been a nightmare to have been a young woman then. They must have had stomach ulcers from having their internal organs squished up inside them, and women didn't really get to say anything - they just had to get on with it and shut the f**k up." As, indeed, did Billie, when it came to wearing period dress. "I had 12-hour days in this thing," she says. "Sometimes they'd loosen you off for lunch, but basically you were tied in to it at the beginning of the day and then you'd have to negotiate everything - when you pee'd, what you consumed. I started drinking isotonic drinks - they rehydrate you but you don't have to go to the loo." And, though it pains us to ask, what happens when you do? "I've got a technique. I straddle the loo, I sit facing the wall and let my dresses fall behind me." - Radio Times


More Billie on Fanny

Billie Piper was all nerves filming a new costume drama for ITV1 in case her boobs fell out of her corset. Curvy Billie, 24, Fanny Price in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, said: “When you bend over you worry they’ll pop out.” She has now vowed to take a break from corsets for the time being.- The Sun


Ginnia Belafante on Billie as Fanny Price:

Fanny Price of “Mansfield Park” is an innocent of a less giddy and more melancholy kind, and the actress Billie Piper plays her looking wrecked. Her hair is a mess, blond and unkempt, and her eyebrows entirely a different color, which seems to suggest that even in the English countryside of the very early 19th century, a good dye job wasn’t an easy get. - Ginnia Belafante, The New York Times


A Blogger on Billie as Fanny Price:

Immediately, she jarred my eye. She looked all wrong. She looked too present day. I sat pondering for a minute or two as to why that was; she was of course in full costume along with everyone else, so why did she look so out of place? I quickly realised I was entirely distracted from the storyline, and indeed the entire programme, by her appearance. It took me some moments to realise that it was her eyebrows that were causing my dismay; they were as incongruous as two monstrous futuristic cyber-caterpillars in the early 19th century setting. They were a completely different colour to her hair. That, of course, was because her hair was very obviously bleached, in a very 21st century manner. This train of thought then prodded me to notice that she actually had dark roots creeping ominously through. - Tales from the Canal Side
Historical Romance UK on Billie as Fanny Price:

Billie Piper's acting and casting have come in for a variety of opinions, with some people thinking she was excellent and some thinking she was miscast, but overall, here on the blog, we liked her. "I think it is one of JA's better books and enjoyed the tv adaptation," says Wendy. "It's very easy to criticise the costumes and such but shouldn't we stop worrying about details and simply enjoy being entertained? When all's said and done, isn't that what every tv programme and books strives to do? Having said all that, I did think that anyone unfamiliar with the book would wonder what Mrs Norris was all about. The adverse effect she had on Fanny's upbringing wasn't apparent from tv. I hated Fanny's hair and agree that she ran around too much - she was supposed to be the ultimate poor relation, after all - but I still sat spellbound for two hours" - Historical Romance UK

• Click here for a recent Boston.com review by Matthew Gilbert

Posted by Ms. Place
Technorati Tags: Mansfield Park 2007, Billie Piper, Masterpiece Classic, Jane Austen

Mansfield Park E-Sightings

Persuasions, the online Jane Austen Journal, offers many articles about Mansfield Park. Click here to find them. Of particular interest is Crawfords on the couch: a psychoanalytical exploration of the effects of the "bad school" on Henry and Mary Crawford, January, 2006. Here's the description of why Mr. C and Miss C were referred to the doctor:

Miss C was referred to my practice by her half-sister because of symptoms of depression, described as "low spirits," "refusing dinner invitations," and "playing plaintive airs upon the harp." Mr. C was referred to my practice by Dr. G, also because of symptoms suggestive of depression, described as "reading Shakespeare by the hour," "leaving half his dinner untouched," and "refusing even my best claret." These symptoms, according to the Gs, increased "most alarmingly" with an announcement in the London papers last fall of a marriage between Miss Frances Price and Mr. Edmund Bertram, with whom Mr. and Miss C respectively were, according to the Gs, deeply in love.

• Find a multitude of links to Mansfield Park, the novel, in this link.
• Pre-Review: Fanny Not Sent to Portsmouth in New Mansfield Park Adaptation
• Newby Hall: Setting for Mansfield Park
• Cast of Mansfield Park
  

Spotlight on Billie Piper

Although Billie Piper is not a household name in America, we Yanks might be interested to know that she's a popular, well-known celebrity in England - a singer turned actress turned author. At fifteen, she became the youngest singer with a number one hit record. She's appeared in popular British television series, and was given the choice to play one of Jane Austen's three heroines. Billie chose Fanny Price. Are Billie and Fanny a good fit? You'll soon find out this Sunday night.


Something Deep Inside, Billie Piper

• Interview with Billie Piper

• Billie Piper Biography

• Billie Piper Book, Growing Pains

• J.J.Feild and Billie Piper in Ruby in the Smoke