This is an article snippet proclaiming Jane Austen one of the "Top 10 Entertainment Personalities of 1995", formerly on-line at the _Entertainment Weekly_ web site at URL: http://pathfinder.com/ew/960105/features/eoty/307-308-EOTY10.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- JANE AUSTEN She doesn't go to the see-and-be-seen parties. She's reticent with the press. There are nasty rumors that she engaged in an incestuous relationship with her sister, for God's sake. And frankly, she could use a makeover. But in this year alone, four of her novels have been adapted for the big and small screens. And with numerous World Wide Web sites devoted to her glory, she even holds her own with Internet pinup Brad Pitt (and they never caught her with her pants down, sunning herself on a Caribbean island). Not bad for a British broad who's been dead for 178 years. Jane Austen's musings on the manipulations of the 19th-century landed class may involve more talk than action, and they may be proper, but they're never prim; '90s sarcasm's got nothing on Austen's perfection of mean-it-with-a-sneer, say-it-with-a-smile dialogue. And yes, they're formulaic--the aging, clever, not too beautiful girl always gets the guy, eventually--but that only suits Hollywood all the more. When Amy Heckerling, the Clueless director, first said that Cher, Alicia Silverstone's sweet but mall-manic Valley Girl character, was based on Emma, the protagonist in Austen's 1816 novel of the same name, purists rolled their eyes. But look: There's Cher, in formal attire, presiding at the dinner table. There's Cher trying to fix all of her friends' lives while remaining blissfully ignorant of her own. There's Cher finally finding love right under her own nose. There's Emma. [Image formerly at http://pathfinder.com/ew/960105/features/eoty/CT161.jpg now see http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ausfotoj.jpg ] Photo: Theo Westenberg Should a more literal and literary adaptation be what you want, pouty and pale Gwyneth Paltrow plays Emma herself, opposite Jeremy Northam (The Net), in a film version of the novel due out next year. You should be able to wait that long for your next fix, assuming you caught this fall's acclaimed art-house hit Persuasion, in which poor little rich girl Anne Elliot--misunderstood by all but the reader (and author)--falls most indelicately for Captain Wentworth, whose charm is all he has to call his own when it comes to the standards of society. Austen will draw bigger crowds thanks to Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Kate Winslet in the Thompson-scripted, Ang Lee-directed Sense and Sensibility, a love story with just enough satire to give it bite. Finally, you can see Pride and Prejudice in January, when A&E and the BBC present a new TV version of this novel about the inner lives and outer trappings of five sisters. Does this onslaught mean Hollywood is swearing off bombs and going by the book? Not until mild manners make more money than sweating studs. But with no options to buy and no contentious author around to throw hissy fits, Austen may offer a substantial bang for the buck. And that, in Hollywood's eyes, is pretty damn sexy. --RAW ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to the Entertainment Weekly Feature Stories page Exit to PATHFINDER This document was last modified 22:32:19 EST Tue 26 Dec 95.