Even if one has never played charades, the game of mime and acting skill is familiar. We can all envision a person standing silent before his/her fellow players as the mystery word or phrase is conveyed with dramatic performance. Not an easy game to be sure and the biggest challenge is to remain close-lipped. Speaking… Read the full blog post …
If ever there’s a way to distract me from the business of writing, I will indeed discover it. My latest diversion is TikTok. Since it launched in 2016 and it reportedly had more than 689 million monthly active users worldwide by early 2021, yet again, I am rather late to the game. In truth, I… Read the full blog post …
Let’s talk about talking. Not just any kind of talking but talking in Jane Austen’s novels to be precise. There are numerous ways authors use dialogue. The most obvious way is to drive the plot forward. Darcy’s overheard insult to Elizabeth at the Assembly Ball in Pride and Prejudice is an easy example of this.… Read the full blog post …
In reviewing Pride & Prejudice, one thing stands out to me. Why wasn’t Elizabeth Bennet referred to, or thought of, as a bluestocking? She was, after all, an educated woman, although her education was a result of her own thirst for knowledge, and not because of any schooling, which would have been, in accordance with… Read the full blog post …
While watching a video clip from The Devil Wears Prada the other day, I was struck with how powerfully the clothing of the characters provides visual insights into both the nature of the people and the internal arc of the protagonist, Andy. Having studied so many Austen adaptations over the past few years, I began… Read the full blog post …
Spring has sprung here in Kentucky, even with the rain intermittently falling, so between the inevitable yard work and need to be active in the fresh, warming air, I have been busy and therefore find myself in a frivolous mood. Hence today’s blog being a series of trifles with nothing heavy or earth-shattering. And sorry… Read the full blog post …
If you’re a regular reader of the Austen Authors blog, you know that for the past couple of years my posts have been primarily dedicated to Austen adaptations. I create a matched set for each title. I start with a “goofs” post, and four weeks later, the “trivia challenge” post on the same production. A… Read the full blog post …
Some might say that the topic for this post is too soon. It hasn’t even been a year since Emma temporarily made it to the big screen. Its theatrical debut was cut short in the United States after seven days when theaters closed in the wake of the COVID-19 national emergency. It opened in February… Read the full blog post …
Jane Austen celebrated Christmas, but much of what I say in this post could apply to other faith traditions, so if that applies to you, please interpret through the lens that suits you. 2020 has, by all accounts, been a strange year on a global scale. Here we are at the end of it, in… Read the full blog post …
Austen’s pen was a fountain of wisdom full of insights on behavior told in her particular brand of satirical wit. Each tale includes cautionary revelations on character flaws and features the types of mistakes we humans make in the course of navigating life, love, and relationships. Today we’re going to extract twelve rules – a… Read the full blog post …
If you can get past the oddities of this adaptation, there are plenty of fun and fascinating scenes and facts to enjoy. Jane Austen clearly enjoyed satirizing, nay, skewering, the Gothic fads of her day in Northanger Abbey, so perhaps it’s understandable that the screenwriter, Maggie Wadey, took the liberty of upping the Gothic ante… Read the full blog post …
If you were alive in 1983, you probably recognize that other than being filmed on video, it seems that there is no trace of 1983 in this Austen Adaptation, something that can’t be said of many other adaptations of similar vintage. Reviews of Mansfield Park (1983) take note of both it’s historical accuracy and faithfulness… Read the full blog post …
Mansfield Park is easily the most challenging of Austen’s novels to adapt to the screen. The character arc of the quiet and reserved protagonist, Fanny Price, is nuanced and internal. She already owns an “infallible moral compass,” and it is the revelatory arcs of the people around her that give the plot its momentum. It… Read the full blog post …
