The Writer's Poke

Certain actors seem to pop up in movies together. Anyway, Tara Fitzgerald and Sam Neill have worked with Grant in other films, and I just wonder how the casting works, and how often actors ask for, request, or suggest other actors to appear with them in different films.  In this one, Antony (Hugh Grant) is a clergyman who is going to visit Australian artist, Norman Lindsay (Sam Neill), with the purpose of maybe convincing him to tone down the obscenity in his paintings? Antony acknowledges that nudity can be completely fine, but there's a difference between nudity and obscenity. He brings Estella (Tara Fitzgerald), his wife, along.  The Sirens are Norman's models. Norman's compound and studio is somewhere inconveniently located in the Australian outback, and as it turns out, Estella and Antony get stuck there for a few days. Sheela (Elle Macpherson) and Pru (Tziporah Malkah) are the main two Sirens, but maybe they're not the only ones to count as "sirens." Nev...

This is the 4th movie version of Jane Eyre that I've watched this month. Zeffirelli does what most of the other screenwriters adapting this novel tend to do... skip quickly through the early chapters, get to the meat of the story, and then at the end, end quickly.  I don't mind that the film skips most of Jane Eyre's childhood. Perhaps Charlotte Bronte should have skipped that part as well. Maybe she should have started the novel with Jane entering Rochester's life as governance.  The romance. That's what people are paying to see.  William Hurt. I liked his performance as Rochester. Some reviewers suggested that he and Charlotte Gainsbourg didn't have any chemistry. I disagree. First, Rochester and Jane Eyre: Are they really supposed to have oodles of "real chemistry"? They from different social classes, and let's face it, they really have nothing in common. But when she saves him from the first fire, and he professes his debt to her, the camera cl...