Letters to the Editor
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Beautiful People?
"Part of the pleasure of watching movies comes from looking at beautiful people."
This is about the dumbest thing I have read on the movies. Only dumb asses go to the movies to see these so-called beautiful people.
I see beautiful people everyday; many even better looking then in the movies.
Yeah beer bellied slobs with backward baseball caps buy the Swim Suit edition so perhaps they go for that reason. Lonely fantasizing romance novel readers may go for those sad reasons.
I go to the movies for many reasons and not one is to see beautiful people. And I ain't no highbrow.
I am sick of this superficial shit already. This ruined the rest of the review.
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quibble
Hi. It's actually "Red Hot Riding Hood." Or, possibly, "Little Rural Riding Hood." Yes, I watch way too many cartoons.
Love your work.
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Fielding
Given Austen's racy juvenilia, her wit, her wide reading, and the fact that you would be vastly uneducated if you didn't know Fielding, Smollett, Sterne in that period, it's just plain dumb that someone has to introduce her to Tom Jones, and that she's shocked. Reading that in two reviews has put me off the movie completely; it means that the screenwriter and director don't really care about more than surfaces (Empire waistlines, etc.). It's as false to the period as Kate Winslet giving someone the finger in "Titanic."
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Sorry clowngrass...
...but if there is one thing that the history of popular cinema has taught us, it is that audiences do love gazing at beautiful people on the big screen. Living a vicarious fantasy life where you can pretend to be (or be with!) Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie is a key component of cinema's allure and no toffee-nosed sniffles about the 'art' of the medium will change that.
I saw this film when it was released in England a couple of months ago and it does a pretty big disservice to Austen, especially after the triumph of Keira Knightley's Pride and Prejudice (which impressed me mightily despite previous misgivings about Knightley's ability to make a believable Elizabeth).
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read the book
The inspration for "Becoming Jne" is from a biography "Becoming Jane Austen" by Jon Spence. The book lays out a lot of family history and context to explore how and why Jane bacame a writer, and such a good writer. (He served as historical consultant on the movie as well, though he reminds readers in his new edition that the film's "plot and incidents" are fictional).
According to Spence, Jane Austen was made proposals at least twice (once when she was the ripe old age of 30). Since she had no income, no fame (yet), and no lofty connections, she must have been "attractive" enough for her admireres to oerlook her marriage-market deficiencies. Anne Hathaway? Whay not?
Spence also champions the Tom Lefroy romance (though he doesn't make the speculative leaps that the movie does), and discusses at length how "Tom Jones" (A book Austen and Lefroy enjoyed in common, and which, according to Spence, becomes Austen's shorthand symbol for Lefroy) references crept into Jane Austen's own novels.
I suspect that's why the movie Jane is introduced to a novel the real Jane had read and admired. The vast majority of the movie-going public, including many Austen-iphiles, has probably never read "Tom Jones" and we need to get that exposition in somewhere.
I still plan on seeing the movie. But I'm glad I read the book first. Anyone who is disappointed with the film will get a thoughtful, detailed and suported impression of Jane Austen's creative and personal life.
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"Shakespeare in Love" for Jane fans.
I saw this film at a sneak preview on Tuesday and I loved it. I'm a Jane fan, love the books - old (P&P,Persuasion,etc) and new (Bridget, Bar Sinister, etc).
I can tell historical fiction when I see it, and I know she never married and died kind of young, I knew how this was going to end. The fun in this movie is seeing how the writers offered up ideas on where she got her own story inspirations. The plot twists, the shady behavior of some characters, the silliness, the two sidedness of some people, - all probably completely made up, but they were all a complete nod to Jane's style. Plus, the story goes just a bit beyond the veil that Jane would not have allowed in her books.
This movie is for her fans. We know it's make believe. It's a salute to her, and I'm all for that.
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Sounds like what I expected
I really love Jane Austen. I completely feel in love with the BBC/A&E version of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Clueless’ is my absolute favorite version of Emma. I’ve got to imagine I’m the target for this bio-pic on Jane Austen (don’t you think Fitzwilliam is a nice name for a baby boy?).
But this movie leaves me cold. I’d rather re-read her work or watch see what else is out there in the fictional mini-series category then imagine what Austen must have been like based on her family history and a few letters – if you tried to define me (or anyone I know) based on so little you’d come up with whatever it is you wanted to see. It’s all very flimsy. I think had it veered out a little further into the land of speculation and fiction (a la ‘Shakespeare in Love’) rather then pretending to be a telling of actual events (as the ads for the film stress it is) I’d have been more interested.
I just went over to the BBC website to see what else was going on and they did a ‘Jane Eyre’ mini-series last year that looks like fun (obviously not Austen – but just as delicious). I think I’d rater rent that. Really there are so many fabulous stories that I love every bit as much as ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I’m surprised Hollywood is so slow to catch on.
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Beautiful people redux
If I recall my correctly from my college days, some superficial dumb-ass named Roland Barth was of the opinion that staring at beautiful people was one of the central pleasures of cinema. I'm sure we can name plenty of others who have written or said essentially the same thing, be they highbrow, lowbrow, or otherbrow.