The Complete Jane Austen News Roundup: In The Doldrums Edition

So, three down, four to go, counting Miss Austen Regrets. We’re actually rather excited about this one. We just have a gut feeling that it’s not going to completely stink. But then we’re a glass-half-full kind of blog, if you haven’t noticed.

Mopping up the post-mortem for MP08, Alert Janeites Christiane and Lisa sent us this review from the Boston Globe.

Tomorrow night, Piper takes on Fanny Price, the shy, morally sound heroine of Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park.” And Piper wins, big-time, as she pulls poor, pious Fanny over onto the Billie Piper side of life. In this third adaptation in PBS’s Austen “Masterpiece” season, our pre-Victorian introvert is a ravishing wild child who recalls Madonna in a Herb Ritts video, or a stoned hippie chick in “Woodstock,” more than a polite teen in a bonnet and frock. In “Mansfield Park,” tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 2, Fanny’s rather rockin’.

Now, there’s an interesting take–Fanny as the rock-n-roll wild child. Not sure about it, but there you go.

Ultimately, this “Mansfield Park” makes Patricia Rozema’s excellent 1999 version (in which Fanny is made into an Austen-like writer) seem stubbornly loyal to the author.

As Christiane said, he had us up to the “excellent 1999 version.” Huh?

AP, via the San Francisco Chronicle, has an article that combines local and international interest, along with some anecdotes from the set of S&S08.

Dominic Cooper recalled the hash he made initially of one of the novel’s most romantic moments — when his character, the “uncommonly handsome” Willoughby, rescues Marianne Dashwood after she slips and twists her ankle running down a hill.

The torrential rain “did make it quite difficult picking her up from a 90-degree angle on a wet, greasy, green hill and turning back to walk up the hill with a very long, wet coat on,” Cooper recalls. “When I kind of squatted down, the jacket got caught. I fell over immediately and put her head in a ditch.”

Ha!

We found a blogsite dedicated to Miss Austen Regrets. It seems a bit sploggy but we think it’s in earnest. (A hint to the proprietors: To make it seem LESS sploggy, try writing some original content.)

The Jane Austen’s House Museum has seen visitors rise from past productions, and is seeing a surge of interest due to That Made Up Film last year and S&S this year. Also, for our UK readers who are feeling a bit left out of the Complete Jane Austen excitement, there will be an exhibition of costumes from S&S08 at the museum starting in March. If you go, send us a report!