Musings of a Designer on Jewelry, Crochet, Crochet Patterns, Knitting, Running a Crafty Business, Movie Costumes, Books, Art, Design, Steampunk & the Geek Girl Life

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Becoming Jane

Today I watched Becoming Jane. A film about the young Jane Austin before she wrote Pride & Prejudice and became the iconic Jane everyone knows.Becoming Jane - Ballroom Dancing Scene PictureIt's an excellent watch if you are a Jane Austin fan, peppered with lots of little allusions to her novels for those who look for them. It's also very bittersweet. It leaves you with the impression that she wrote incandescently happy endings for her characters in her fiction because in the real world, good people like herself didn't get the happy endings they deserved.

The costumes are gorgeous and the cast is first rate. I had grave doubts about Anne Hathaway at first, that she might be "too American", but she does a good job giving youthful energy and independent spirit to Jane. If you are a hopeless romantic, the ballroom scene, from the beginning when the music swells and the guests arrive through the forest by horse and carriage to the very end with their first kiss by the fountain, is not to be missed. Here's the official trailer if you want to see more:


While searching online for more info about the film, I ran across the Becoming Jane Fansite. This is the best, most well-put together, well-maintained fansite I have ever seen for a movie and I recommend it highly if you loved this movie or are a Jane Austin fan.

Truly Moving Pictures AwardThe fansite mentioned that Becoming Jane was a Truly Moving Picture Award Winner. Hmmm.... never heard of that award but I was interested enough to research further. And had another wonderful surprise. Heartland Truly Moving Pictures is a non-profit organization that "honors filmmakers whose work explores the human journey by expressing hope and respect for the positive values of life." While a good action-packed blockbuster has its merits, CGI without story is not very rewarding to watch and any film that is generic enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator worldwide probably won't speak to you as personally or fiercely as some of the gems on their list. Some relatively unknown films on that list I've enjoyed: Shall We Dance (Japanese original), Whale Rider, Smoke Signals and Kundun.

10 comments:

AscenderRisesAbove said...

what a cool fact about the movies/novels - writing positive endings to them. and what a great award!
I wanted to drop you a note about a change that I am making on my blog.
I am changing the format soon to create a quicker download and I plan am taking my recprical links to it's own page. But I wanted to make the recprical page special - rather then just listing people I thought I would put a little thumb photo or the logo of the site and a brief description. I appreciate your listing of my link on your site so I wanted to see if you were interested in this. If you are interested please send the image you would like to use and a short description to this address. I plan to create that page before I update my main page template. Right now the bare bones link page is at:
http://ascenderrisesabove.com/wordpress/?page_id=4330.
It will be a slow process as I will only be able to work on it a little bit a day.
Let me know if you are interested.
Jacquelyn

Lola Enchanted said...

Hello there!

Hmmmm, I've been putting that movie off for some time now, maybe I'll give it a whirl!!!


Hope all is well!~

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't say I'm a mega Jane Austen fan but I really enjoyed the film and really like Anne Hathaway.

I was so sad for how it was going for her, but in the end where her 'past lover' had named his daughter after her, that was so lovely, I think I had a teardrop fall out of my eye!

Gracie said...

I really enjoyed this movie a lot! I watched it while making some vintage style post cards.

I quite like Anne Hathaway as Jane and I love James McAvoy. Every movie I see him in I love (Narnia, Atonement, Penelope, Becoming Jane...)

I loved the costumes as well. Maybe you should make some Becoming Jane inspired paper dresses =)

Jen said...

Thank you for the review, I'd forgotten entirely about this film and remember wanting to see it, being such a Jane fan (in fact, I'm presently reading through her canon, and am about 1/3 of the way through Mansfield Park). We'll have to add that to our Netflix.

Any Halloween/autumnal projects from you, or have I missed them?

the fabled needle (jen) said...

i think i put this in my netflix queue. love james mcavoy!

Monica said...

Ooh! I really want to see that movie. I'll have to twist my hubby's arm to get him to rent it for me. Hope you are feeling better now and that the market yielded lots of sales.
xo- Monica

Gracie said...

Another comment to say I tagged you! Though not sure if you're actually blogging =)

Oh and I'm hoping to open my shop on the 17th of Oct. Eeee!!

Saucy said...

I just loved this movie too and also the website... it was so well-executed. I love the scene at the beginning where she wakes her family at the piano forte!

shelbi said...

this movie was just 'captivating'. omg. i can watch it over and over!