Tom Hardy – Mr. Darcy Wannabe

British actor Tom Hardy, who recently portrayed the brutishly demented Heathcliff in the BBC/PBS production of Wuthering Heights, has aspirations of classic romantic icon grandeur. Despite his best known performances as bad boy thugs, gangsters and bullies he would actually prefer to play classic archetypes such as The Oresteia, Romulus and Remus, Iago and Othello, Tamburlaine the Great – and Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy. Yes, Mr. Darcy! In a recent interview for the Telegram.co.uk, he revealed his first failed attempt to convince movie producers that he had the Darcy noble mien.

In fact, Hardy says he very nearly won the part of Darcy in Joe Wright’s 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice, where Matthew MacFadyen in the end played opposite Keira Knightley. And he was gutted when the very powerful Stacey Snider, ex-head of Universal Pictures, now CEO of Steven Spielberg’s company Dreamworks, told him: “Babe, every woman in the world has an impression of who Darcy is and you’re just not it.”

“That hurt, that really hurt,” Hardy recalls now. “I’d worn a blue shirt and jeans and a blue blazer and been doing my best Hugh Grant impression. But now I was back to playing the wonky skewiff-teeth kid with the bow legs.”

Even though the “blue coat” worked for Mr. Bingley as an enticement to the Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice, don’t you know that you just can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear Mr. Hardy? We admire you in those nasty boy roles. Stick to what you do best and leave by your dreams of Darcy!

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

Seen On the Blogosphere: Heyer Better than Austen?

While doing background research for Georgette Heyer, I ran across this statement:

"I don’t quite remember when I started reading this book [Friday's Child], probably at the end of June or beginning of July and I only finished it tonight! I’m already not a fan of romance books but I thought I’d give this book a try as it was sent from Sourcebooks. This was my first Georgette Heyer book and at least, it’s better than Austen."

Let's hope this writer is absurdly naive and young and that she is just beginning to flex her critic's muscles. Heyer, as serious readers will agree, is most definitely not "better" than Austen. Had this young person written that Heyer's books are fun, breezier, and easier to comprehend, I would not have given her statement a second thought. For those who have difficulty reading Jane Austen's 19th century language or understanding Regency customs and etiquette, Georgette Heyer's books provide a rollicking introduction to understanding that bygone time. Sherwood Smith observes:

"If a person has read enough Heyer and others who emulate her, he or she ought not to find Austen's language impenetrable, and will probably be able to comprehend the wit. Anyone who loves, say, Friday's Child ought to laugh out loud at the absurdities of Mrs. Norris, or enjoy the sly selfishness of Isabella Thorpe--or recognize how John Dashwood, so continually worried about his position in society, becomes more servile than his servants."

While Georgette Heyer does not possess Jane Austen's immense literary stature, one can be assured that her novels are historically accurate. An Infamous Army is so true to life (every line uttered by Wellington in the novel is attributed to the real-life man), that it was rumoured to have been on the reading list for the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Sourcebooks has been reissuing Georgette Heyer's frothy regency romances, allowing me to fall in love with the author's works all over again. For my review of The Corinthian, go to Jane Austen's World.

Coming soon from Sourcebooks: The Grand Sophy. I consider this novel to be one of her best and have been Twittering about it at this link.

Seen on the Blogosphere

Scents of Sensibility, anyone? In this age of belt tightening, somebody actually has the chutzpah to charge $28.99 for a spray fragrance of "new book smells". I kid you not. Tired of your Kindle or Sony book reader emitting a whiff of ether? Then spray some attar of classic book smell over the screen. The price is a little steep for a gag gift, but then, as the saying goes, there's a sucker born every minute.

Over two years ago, noted Austen scholar Bruce Stovell died unexpectedly. In honor of his memory Bruce's family recently published book, and a companion CD, titled Jane Austen Sings the Blues. Stovel's widow Nora, also a professor at the University of Alberta where Bruce taught, was the editor of the book, while son Grant and longtime friend and fellow musician Graham Guest produced the 12-song disc. A book of Bruce's essays will be published some time in the near future.

Have you always wanted to own several BBC classics but your common sense stopped you from purchasing the high priced DVD's? Amazon is having a blow out sale of BBC DVDs. Hop on over to take advantage of savings ranging from 37% (odd figure, I know) to 45% on such classics as North and South, 2008 Sense and Sensibility, 1981 Pride and Prejudice, and Cranford.

Image from LA Times Blog; posted by Vic, Jane Austen's World.

Move over Zombies – Jane Austen is Going Paranormal

Yesterday I reported about more zombies. Today it will be vampires.

I’m glad Jane Austen had a great sense of humor! Janeites will have to expand theirs with all the Austen mash-ups, retellings and paranormal happenings going on in the book & movie world!

Last week, Vic reported on the announcement of a new Austen inspired paranormal series entitled The Immortal Jane by author Janet Mullany who has graciously shared all the details in her guest blog on Austenprose. Here’s an excerpt.

I'd been thinking for some time about why historical romance authors consider Jane Austen the granny of us all, and it's because she is a master of subtext. The only way she could express sexual tension, because of her time and place in history, was by inference and subtle clues. It seems now the explicitness of historical romance means we have to find our own subtexts. (I should put in a plug here, so to speak, for the workshop Pam Rosenthal and I give, Writing the Hot Historical, which we're giving at RWA Nationals, where we talk about this sort of stuff, and I urge everyone not to use the term pebbled nub and to read Mansfield Park.) So, I discovered another subtext throughout Austen – vampires.

Read the entire blog: Jane Austen Goes Paranormal and learn all about her upcoming Austen inspired vampire novels for 2010. Janet has also just revealed her newly re-designed website Janet Mullany: Where Wit and Passion Meet. In celebration, she is holding a contest for two lovely 1818 ca prints. The deadline to enter is August 1st.

You can find Janet Mullany on Twitter, every Thursday at Risky Regencies, and occasionally at History Hoydens.

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – The Deluxe Heirloom Edition?

Gentle Readers:

More zombies you ask? Yup!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into a bookstore, Quirk Books officially announced today a Deluxe Heirloom Edition of its New York Times bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, now with 30% more zombie action – yes – that’s 30% more bone crunching and brain eating zombies populating Jane Austen’s gently refined prose.

From our perspective, it appears that zombie fans felt slighted after the text of the first edition only included 15% gore and goo in comparison to 85% classic literature and demanded more gruesome zombie action. To compensate, co-author Seth Grahame-Smith has taken a second crack at it by expanding the story. Let’s hope that none of Austen’s text was whittled out to make room!

In addition to the expanded zombie mayhem, the Deluxe Heirloom edition includes:

• A rich faux leather hardcover with gold foil stamping and a ribbon marker

• All new stunning full-color illustrations—depicting 13 of the most memorable moments in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

• A special preface from living author Seth Grahame-Smith about his experience writing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

• And an essay afterword by Dr. Allen Grove, Professor of English Literature at Alfred University

Oh my! Just what you need to round out your classics section in your library, right?

The new edition is due out November 1st (just in time for Holiday shopping) and you can pre-order you copy today. Quirk has also invited readers to join its recently launched Quirk Classics Facebook page where on July 15, 2009 at midnight, it will be announcing the next monster lit mash-up in the Quirk Classics series. Oh dear! Who’s next? Charlotte Bronte? Shakespeare? Charles Dickens? We are all anticipation!


One of 13 illustrations in the new Deluxe Heirloom edition of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins. She would have to be a zombie to agree to that!

You can catch up on all the zombie bedlam by reading our reviews of P&P&Z. Vic & I thought it a great high concept parody, but purist Austen fans are forewarned!

Vic's review of P&P&Z at Jane Austen's World

Laurel Ann's review of P&P&Z at Austenprose

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

Gwynneth on Emma

Yes, this 1996 video is rather old, but it is of Gwynneth - Mrs. Chris Martin, mother of Apple and Moses, and editor of Goop! - who discusses Emma with Charlie Rose for41 minutes. She is joined by director Doug McGrath.

A new adaptation of Emma is being filmed just now with Romola Garai. Before you forget Gwynneth's performance, you can watch the film on YouTube or, for better and clearer viewing, rent the movie from Netflix.

Get ready for Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

17 days and counting until the release of Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, the highly anticipated parallel novel to Laurie Viera Rigler's bestselling Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. This time out we experience Jane Mansfield's story, a Regency Miss who takes a fall from her horse in 1813 England and wakes up in 2007 in the body of LA singleton Courtney Stone. Don't miss out on all the transitional hilarity as Jane must deal with iPods, TV and all sorts of modern contraptions! Pre-order your copy today to assure delivery on June 25th. Vic and Laurel Ann were honored with advance copies and can share that Rude Awakenings is fun and quirky and hilarious!

Publisher's description

Laurie Viera Rigler’s debut novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, was a hit with fans and critics, and a BookSense and Los Angeles Times bestseller. Its open-to-interpretation ending left readers begging for more—and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict delivers. While Confessions took twenty-first-century free spirit Courtney Stone into the social confines of Jane Austen’s era, Rude Awakenings tells the parallel story of Jane Mansfield, a gentleman’s daughter from Regency England who inexplicably awakens in Courtney’s overly wired and morally confused L.A. life.

Here is a clever preview video for your enjoyment!

Seen on the Blogosphere

• The Clever Pup features Hugh Laurie's sartorial splendor as Mr. Palmer in Sense & Sensibility. Click here for your Hugh fix of the day.

• Apparently the Brontë patriarch,Patrick, was a mean old gorgon of a man. His children feared him and historians did not view him kindly, to put it mildly. A photograph of Patrick Brontë resurfaced recently in an antiques fair. Click here to read an interesting account of the journey that Patrick's image has taken over the years. Curiously, it is still in quest of a suitable home.

• Juliet Stevenson is wowing the audiences and critics onstage in Duet for One. Known as the mistress of the audio book and for her comedic portrayal of Mrs. Elton in Emma, Juliet continues to entertain us with her immense acting talent.

• Have you seen Jonny Lee Miller as Lord Byron in 2003's Byron? He's made a convert out of me, convincing me that he has the acting chops to play Mr. Knightley in the 2009 BBC adaptation of Emma. Watch his performance on Netflix On Demand. It's a 2-part BBC series also starring Vanessa Redgrave.

• Moving from compelling to cute, look at these Darcy and Lizzy die-cuts. Oh my.

• Lizzy Bennet, er Jennifer Ehle, gave birth to a daughter in March. She named her Tallulah Ryan. How cool.

• Finally, here's a polyvore image inspired by images from Jane Austen's World. Blush.

Posted by Vic, Jane Austen's World

Jane Austen Movie Throwdown

Don't you love the way Jane Austen's novels still inspire our modern perceptions of romance? Don't you just love Sandra Bullock and pre-botox Meg Ryan? I think our Jane would have approved of these two modern feisty, independent heroines. And the heroes are nothing to sneeze at either. Of the two choices this week, which film is the most romantically inspired by Jane Austen? Lake House or You've Got Mail? You decide. You tell us.

Most Romantic Jane Austen Inspired Film

The Lake House, loosely based on Persuasion

Caution: Hanky alert. This time travel movie is about second chances. As in Persuasion, the two characters yearn and long for someone who is out of reach. It is 2004 and Alex, played by Keanu Reeves, arrives at his new lake house. He begins to communicate with Kate (Sandra Bullock), who lived in the house in 2006. Through an unexplained alchemy, Kate and Alex discover that the Lake House's mailbox acts as a time travel communication channel through which they can correspond. As they exchange letters they fall hard for each other. Kate recalls the exact day and time she lost Persuasion on a commuter train. Using this information, she tries to meet Alex in real time. He finds the book but they miss each other by seconds. The final scene of this film is reminiscent of the pivotal scene in Persuasion, where Captain Wentworth informs Anne by letter that she pierces his soul. The passage that Alex marks for Kate in Persuasion is one of my favorites: “…there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved." The film suffers from a lapse in logic, as most time travel tales do, but the pairing of Bullock and Reeves is irresistible and wholly romantic.

You've Got Mail, loosely based on Pride and Prejudice

I'll watch any film with Tom Hanks in it, even Turner and Hooch. In You've Got Mail he reteamed with Meg Ryan, playing the wily Mr. Fox to her feisty Kathleen. He is the owner/manager of a Barnes & Noble type chain store that opens just around the corner from a small book shop owned by Kathleen. She dislikes him on principle, knowing that these huge chain conglomerates put local book stores out of business. Joe in turn regards her as a shrill, royal pain in the arse. Though this engaging cinematic couple spar verbally whenever they meet, they unknowingly become email pals, where they express their true feelings and allow their personalities to shine. Kathleen has read Pride and Prejudice about a hundred times and each time worries that Elizabeth and Darcy are not going to get together. In the end, all is right with the world and Elizabeth and Darcy once again get together, as do Joe and Kathleen. This movie is a remake of that wonderful 1940 classic, The Shop Around the Corner. It also brought Ryan and Hanks together in multiple scenes, which Sleepless in Seattle failed to do.

Update: I forgot to add the poll! Here it is:

pollcode.com free polls

Most romantic jane austen inspired movie

The Lake House You've Got Mail

The Grand Sophy

The Grand Sophy will be reissued by SourceBooks in July. Look for our reviews and special promotions to celebrate this event. The novel is one of Heyer's best and the plot is full of fun twists and witty dialogue. When Lady Ombersley agrees to take in her young niece, she expects to meet a meek and well-mannered young girl, not the lively, well-traveled sophisticate who lands on her doorstep with a dog, birdcage, and monkey in tow. Sophy, who takes the ton by storm, quickly discovers that the Ombersley family is dysfunctional at best. Her cousin Cecelia is in love with a talentless poet, her other cousin Charles is a tyrannical stuffed shirt, and her younger cousins are in desperate need of some fun and freedom. By the end of the novel, Sophy has set everyone on the right path (well, sort of), including Charles, whose heart she has stolen.

This excerpt on Georgette Heyer.com offers a typical exchange between Sophy and Miss Wraxton, Charles's uptight fiancee. As we await the novel's publication, I will be writing about The Grand Sophy on Twitter with submissions like these: Tilly, her governess, died in Vienna. "A devilishly inconvenient thing to do, but I daresay she didn't mean it," Sophy's pa explained. C-1

To follow Sophy's adventures, you can find my twitter updates on the sidebar of Jane Austen's World or you can click on this link .

Posted by Vic, Jane Austen's World

Zombies mixed in with Jane Austen's prose equal a thriller bestseller

Zombie infestations have reached our friends down under. The NZ Herald interviewed Seth Graham-Smith (at left), Jane's co-author of the recent bestseller, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Here are a few quotes from the newspaper's interview with the author. (Drat, we wish he'd answered our questions when we sent them in several months ago. He actually gives good interviews.)

"Zombies are a sign of the apocalypse. So says writer Seth Grahame-Smith. Well, more or less. More precisely, he says zombies tend to start appearing in popular culture when times get tough. "They are a walking metaphor for the ills we find ourselves up against. They've been used to represent everything from the threat of communism to the Aids epidemic and crass commercialism."

Why did he write the darned novel? "Grahame-Smith was so excited at the idea of writing "gratuitous, violent, gory sequences in the imitated style of Jane Austen" that he rushed right out and bought the original to reread. He'd read the book just once before, at high school as a 14-year-old, and was not a fan. When he reread it though, things changed. "I suddenly got it."

How does he feel about writing a best seller? "Grahame-Smith is unrepentant. "I do feel like I did her a favour because becoming a zombie was probably not as poor a fate as being married to Mr Collins."

What's next for Mr. Grahame-Smith? - Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Hah! "It will have that same comic spin and it's a very different thing to write a biography and have it read funny - that's my goal, to have it a mix of fiction, humour and factual accuracy."

Read our reviews of the novel in the links below:

• Vic on Jane Austen's World wonders how Jane's other novels can be converted into cold hard cash. Willoughby's Tell-Tale Heart, anyone?

• Laurel Ann wonders which audience the book is actually targeting.
  

Cranford Christmas Special (2009) Update

Enchanted Serenity of Period Films has an extensive update for readers interested in news on the upcoming BBC/WGBH production, the Cranford Christmas Special, to air in December 2009 in the UK. Dame Judi Dench returns as Miss Matty and is joined by many other prominent British actors. Let's hope it hits PBS also this year.

Seen on the Blogosphere

J. D. Salinger is fighting back, according to this article in the Celebrity Cafe: "Unlike Jane Austen, who can’t be around to fight off the droves of copycat authors who mooch off her story to write spin-offs and sequels, J.D. Salinger is still around to fight for his book’s good name."

Salinger is taking author John David to court to put a stop to a sequel that will "pay tribute" to Holden 60 years after Catcher in the Rye is set.

Rubbish, says Salinger, who states through his lawyer, “The sequel is not a parody and it does not comment upon or criticize the original. It is a rip-off pure and simple.”

Mr. Darcy and Buttercup

In another development, dashing Mr. Darcy and sweet Buttercup from Princess Bride, er, Colin Firth and Robin Wright Penn, were in Cannes promoting A Christmas Carol, a CGI film that stars Jim Carrey. Colin plays the role of Fred and Robin plays (I imagine) the fiancee Scrooge gave up for love of money.

Posted by Vic, Jane Austen's World

For the Love of Austen! Why do you read Jane?

You can read an excerpt from the new biography/cultural history Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World online at theage.com. The new book written by award-winning biograper and Oxford and Columbia University Professor Claire Harman traces the growth of Jane Austen’s fame starting with her first experiences as an author to her rise in world wide popularity in the 1990’s. The article entitled, For the Love Austen, focuses how “the acknowledged mother of the genre” influenced the modern romance novel.

The main reason, however, for Austen's mass popularity is the one from which critics tend to avert their eyes: the love stories. The Mills & Boon formula of girl meets boy, both meet obstacles but come together triumphantly in the end, owes its neatness and directness to Austen and her streamlining of the romance plot she inherited.

We all enjoy Austen for different reasons, but romance is a big one. When men claim they read Playboy for the articles, women can counter and say they read Austen for the historical references to the Napoleonic wars! ;-)

Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World is a must read for Janeites and available for purchase online at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

Daily Lit's Sense and Sensibility

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