Before we Bronte devotees could really whine and cry about the casting (there's still Ellen Page in Jane Eyre for that), it ceases to be. According to Variety, Natalie Portman has dropped out of the upcoming Wuthering Heights, leaving the film rather lost without a Cathy Earnshaw. According to Portman's publicist, the actress had a scheduling conflict with another project, which has not yet been announced.

So now, Ecross executives and director John Maybury are on the hunt for a new Cathy. As of yet, there are no contenders to the role, so now is our chance! Speak up, Cinematical readers, and let us flood the Internet with suggestions. Personally, I want to go back in time and import teenage Kate Winslet, Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Beckinsale or Lena Headey. As I cannot, I'm at a bit of a loss. Keira Knightley merits exclusion because of having played Elizabeth Bennett, and I think there's a rule that you can only play one standard of English Literature. I'm being rather stuffy in looking only to the UK, but nothing could ruin this movie faster than a wonky accent.

Interestingly, we finally have a name for Heathcliff. According to the Variety article, Michael Fassbender is in advanced talks to play the famous heinous, yet oh-so-sexy hero. I have only seen him as Stelios in 300, but he's getting good buzz for Hunger. Count me in the "intrigued, and not opposed" category, I guess, until further notice. His casting will mean my sister will be first in line for a ticket, that's for sure.

We can still whine and cry about the casting, though. It is our right as Internet film geeks, and ones with Gothic tastes. Oh heck, let's just gush about the book! We'll have our own Bronte Day here.

The timing of some stories is just creepy. I was just selling the virtues of Wuthering Heights to my cousin, and what do I find on The Hollywood Reporter the same day? A new version is underway -- and Natalie Portman is set to tackle the famous character of Catherine Earnshaw.

Despite my medieval specialty, Wuthering Heights is my favorite book. I love it more than anything. It has everything -- ghosts, a Byronic hero (who you aren't supposed to love -- but I do anyway), a twisted love affair, sadistic revenge, even a dose of necrophilia. (Not that I roll with that sort of thing, but it's noteworthy in a Victorian novel.) I have never seen a film version, not even Lawrence Olivier's, because I never wanted my vision spoiled.

So, I confess I am immediately biased. But I cannot see Portman as Cathy. Look, I like her -- and I think she is very talented. Her youth works in her favor. But Cathy is psychotic and deeply unlikeable, something I have never seen in Portman. (Not even in Closer or The Other Boleyn Girl.) Ideal casting would have been Angelina Jolie in her Girl, Interrupted days, or Kate Winslet fresh off Heavenly Creatures. That's Cathy Earnshaw.

Variety reports that John Maybury has signed to direct a new feature film version of Emily Brontë's, Wuthering Heights. Maybury is currently working on the Dylan Thomas film, The Edge of Love (every time I hear that title it just gets worse; sounds like a bad Harlequin novel, but I digress). Olivia Hetreed (Girl with a Pearl Earring) has already written a script, but there is no word on whether she has any changes for the story in mind. Heights was the story of Cathy and Heathcliff. Heathcliff is a rough and low-born hellion and Cathy was a slightly stuck up rich girl. During their time growing up together they find a kind of obsessive love that in the end basically ruins both of them (of course, like most classics, most of the 'good' stuff is clouded in innuendo and metaphor). There is plenty more to it, but if you know the story, then you know that's pretty much the gist of it.

At least three feature film versions have already been made from the book, including a surrealist take from Luis Buñuel in 1954. The most famous is the 1939 version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Other attempts starred the 'much maligned Bond' Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall. Another version in 1992 starred Ralph Fiennes and Heathcliff and Juliette Binoche in dual roles as Cathy and her daughter. Heights was published way back in 1847, so you have to admire a girl who has the nerve to write such a 'saucy' book in those days. It's not often you come across implications of incest and necrophilia in your classic literature. Production is set to begin this fall and casting has already gotten underway. So stay tuned to Cinematical to find out who our next Cathy and Heathcliff are going to be.

Forget the Oscars, the new list is up of the 25 films inducted into the Library of Congress's National Film Board for 2007. Since 1992, the Library has been taking up 25 worthwhile films a year for preservation. Early reports focus on the more well-known, deserving films: Back to the Future (above), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Oklahoma!, and Grand Hotel. Also on the list is 12 Angry Men, an early one by Before the Devil Knows Your Dead's Sidney Lumet, and the George Stevens/Laurence Olivier Wuthering Heights. Dances With Wolves and Days of Heaven, two American-as-all-get-out films, will now be safe in the vaults down in Culpeper, Virginia.

Let's have a look at some of the more obscure names on the list, though. One of my all time favorites is going in: the ultra-low-budget noir In A Lonely Place, with Humphrey Bogart in his best performance -- and yes, I saw Casablanca --- as the rageball screenwriter Dixon Steele, whose drinking problem may have led to murder. Peege (1972) is Randall Kleiser's thesis film at USC film school. John Waters' favorite director (according to the book Shock Value) is better known for The Blue Lagoon, Grease and Big Top Pee Wee. His short about a blind grandmother taken to the old folk's home, is supposed to be in a different class from his subsequent work.

From Lebanon, Kentucky, Our Day is only 12 minutes long; it's amateur filmmaker Wallace Kelly's account of his family between the 1930s and the 1950s. The 1926 Harry Langdon/Frank Capra The Strong Man is terrific. The once popular Langdon is a very odd moon-man comedian who anticipates everyone from Bill Murray to Bugs Bunny. And there's two experimental films being honored: 1969's Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son by Ken Jacobs. "An autopsy of the cinematic experience," raves Scott MacDonald in his new book Canyon Cinema); here, the avant-garde filmmaker revises a primitive 1905 film. He does to a movie what later samplers and rappers would do to old ballads. Glimpse of the Garden (1957) by Marie Menken is just that: a view of her garden and of the bird life therein. It's a fleeting moment preserved for 50 years..and now, we hope, for much longer than that.

Are Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp preparing to star in a new remake of Wuthering Heights? Only if you believe the British press (whom we always assume are innocent of spreading false rumor, until the relevant flacks  name them guilty). A paper in Yorkshire, England recently reported that the area has been overrun with location scouts associated with the picture, which would would "start filming next year and could be in Yorkshire for six months, along with a huge crew and cast." To say that the potential pouty pairing has the fans all worked up would be an understatement; gossip blog I Don't Like You in That Way alerts us to the erotic possibilities of casting Angie and Johnny as two of corset literature's greatest lovers: "I haven't stopped swooning and soaking up the fluids leaking from my body long enough to really absorb this delicious piece of news. The whole movie could be an Earth shattering blockbuster filled with genius and magic, and I won't notice because I'll be rocking in my chair, biting my nails and tapping my feet while impatiently waiting for the Depp/Jolie love scenes."


[via The Post Chronicle]