Ah, there's nothing like the relief of having to choose between a number of decent possibilities, rather than grasping at straws...

The Jane Austen Book Club
Like any dramatic comedy that focuses on romance -- especially one that does so under the mighty pen of Jane Austen -- this film is sentimental and romantic, but it's also got a heck of a cast giving great performances and characters that aren't the normal flighty heroines. The Jane Austen Book Club follows five women and one man who come together to discuss Jane's classic works and discover that the old texts speak to each of their lives, whether they're hetero or straight, male or female. Sure, it could easily slip into saccharine, but as James Rocchi says: "The Jane Austen Book Club's light, slight and clever entertainment is occasionally too-clever, but the cast's performances and Swicord's sense of tone give it just enough charm to work." Anyway, too-clever is chic these days -- look at Diablo Cody.

As far as the disc goes, there's a decent number of featurettes, and not all of them are your typical fare. You get: deleted scenes, commentary with cast and crew, a peek behind the scenes, "The Life of Jane Austen," "The Book Club: Deconstructed," and for you red carpet fans out there -- the Los Angeles premiere.

Read James' Review | Buy the DVD


The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
On the more somber side of things, there's the uberly, superly, completely, totally long-awaited The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. After such a long wait, and flipping long title, the film seemed destined for the trash bin or dusty shelf. However, it ended up not only living up to expectation, but also impressing audiences as well. Sure, I have a soft spot for the movie since I used to know a girl who nabbed a role in it, but it's nice when friendly support is not only nice, but totally worth the effort. If you need more reasons, there's Brad Pitt and the increasingly impressive Casey Affleck.

Not surprisingly, this DVD is far from a special feature feast. In fact, there's nothing if you don't count the basic sound/scene perks and a few previews. Luckily, the film makes up for it.

Read James' Review | Buy the DVD

Other New DVD Releases (February 5)

Across the Universe
Elizabeth -- The Golden Age
The Aristocats (Special Edition)
The Brave One
Snow Buddies

There are not just Razzies and Oscars to read about this week. Yesterday, GLAAD -aka- Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, announced their nominees and honorees for the 19th Annual GLAAD Media Awards. (Which they did from the depths of Sundance at the Queer Lounge in Park City.) The awards honor everything from print journalism to cinema, and celebrate "fair, accurate, and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation."

As Stephen Fry would probably respond: there's still a long way to go, but here are the cinematic achievements and progress that GLAAD recognizes this year. There's singing, breasts, and even gay pirates:

Film -- Wide Release
Across the Universe
The Jane Austen Book Club
Stardust

Film -- Limited Release
The Bubble
Dirty Laundry
Itty Bitty Titty Committee
Nina's Heavenly Delights
Whole New Thing

Documentary
Camp Out
Cruel and Unusual: Transgender Women in Prison
For the Bible Tells Me So
Freddie Mercury: Magic Remixed
Small Town Gay Bar

[via indieWIRE]

They say life imitates art; what they never tell you is that you don't get to choose the art. So it is for a group of Sacramento residents in Robin Swicord's film The Jane Austen Book Club, adapted for the screen from Karen Joy Fowler's novel. The Jane Austen Book Club (both film and entity) begins as a group of friends try to distract themselves from various personal crises: Jocelyn (Maria Bello) is getting over the death of one of her prized show dogs; Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) has had her lengthy marriage implode on her unexpectedly. The older, oft-married Bernadette (Kathy Baker) comes up with the idea of a book club to get Jocelyn and Sylvia out of their funks. Sylvia's daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace) joins out of solidarity; Jocelyn recruits high-tech worker Grigg (Hugh Dancy) for the club in the hope that sparks will fly between him and Sylvia; Bernadette reaches out to the bookish, unhappy Prudie (Emily Blunt) as a fresh voice for the club's conversations.

At first, the club looks to Jane Austen because her bygone age of simplicity and civility seems like a nice break from the indignities of modern life; Swicord's title sequence shows nothing but traffic jams, mercurial vending machines, blaring stereos and more. But soon, the group finds that when you get past the petticoats and starched collars and period trappings, Austen's central concerns -- relations between men and women, within families, and within ourselves -- are all too relevant to their lives. Jocelyn, at one point realizing that the plot of the club's current novel might resonate too fiercely for the despondent Sylvia mutters offhand that "Reading Jane Austen is a freaking minefield. ..."

Our pals over at Sony Pictures Classics just sent us the first and only planned poster for The Jane Austen Book Club, a romantic dramedy hitting theaters on September 21. Based on the popular 2005 novel by Karen Joy Fowler, which the Washington Post described as something more than just "elegant chick-lit," the film revolves around a group of Californians who start what the title suggests -- a Jane Austen book club -- and then start to see parallels between the works of Austen and their own lives. The leads are Maria Bello as Jocelyn, rising star Emily Blunt as Prudie and Hugh Dancy as Grigg. There's also a supporting cast of well-known names, and the whole thing is being directed by Robin Swicord, who wrote the script for Memoirs of a Geisha and the Sandra Bullock romcom Practical Magic. Click on the image above to get the full-sized poster.

After penning film adaptations for years, Robin Swicord has finally taken the helm with the upcoming The Jane Austen Book Club. If you're at all familiar with Austen, then the movie is probably exactly what you'd imagine. A group of women, and one devilishly cute man, get together to discuss the works of the famous novelist while their lives reflect the stories they're reading -- Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, etc. Back in September, Christopher Campbell first brought word of the project, which had half of the cast pegged. (I must say, while I enjoy Kathy Baker, I'm a bit sad to see Ellen Burstyn off the roster.) In October, most of the remaining cast slid into place. Now we've got a trailer for the film, which will be released this September.

The trailer is pretty straight-forward, as the whole production seems to be. The varied women (and man) get together to chat about their chosen books whilst experiencing Austen's themes in their daily life. Assuming that Swicord kept to the book's basic character bios: there's Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) and Daniel (Jimmy Smits), whose marriage is failing, Allegra (Maggie Grace), their lesbian daughter, who is having relationship issues, Prudie (Emily Blunt), who is married (Marc Blucas), yet has a mean wandering eye, Jocelyn (Maria Bello), Sylvia's never-married best friend who finally finds romance, Bernadette, who is deciding to revel in wackiness in her advancing age and Grigg (Hugh Dancy), the male member of the group. (In the novel, Grigg is supposed to be middle-aged, but why have an aging man when you can have a young, British love interest?) It basically looks like the typical female-centric, dysfunctional relationship movie, with literary spice added to change things up, and some food similes to boot: "he looks at me like he's the spoon and I'm the dish of ice cream."

Screenwriter Robin Swicord loves to adapt books for the screen, and she has shown some great diversity in her choosing of source material (Little Women; Matilda; Practical Magic; Memoirs of a Geisha). Now, according to Production Weekly, she is working on bringing Jane Austen to the big screen. No, not the author, who has been adapted enough already, but the book, The Jane Austen Book Club. Written by Karen Joy Fowler, the novel follows the lives of six members of the title group and the relationships and affairs between them. The film version, which begins shooting in November, is set to star Maria Bello, Jimmy Smits, Emily Blunt, Josh Lucas and Ellen Burstyn. What this means for the status of Swicord's feature directorial debut, The Mermaids Singing, which is also an adaptation, is unknown -- it does have a poster, though, so that's good, I guess?

I haven't read the best selling novel, but I do know that it deals with characters discussing literature, which doesn't sound very cinematic to me. Certainly a book that celebrates reading is an ironically inappropriate source for a film. Even if they changed the name to The Jane Austen Film Club, it wouldn't change the fact, either.