The Jane Austen Book Club

We’re coming to the end of another summer, and tonight marks the second-last Harbourfront Free Flicks screening, and the last one I programmed myself. I think we’ve got a good one to go out on: Ang Lee’s 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility.

This is the film for which Emma Thompson won an Academy Award for screenwriting — and a well-deserved one, at that; it’s a very good adaptation of a rather thick book — but the script is not her greatest accomplishment: She also gives a lovely performance as Elinor Dashwood, the hero of the story. Kate Winslet, at the time utterly unknown to anyone who hadn’t seen Heavenly Creatures, was just as great as her younger sister Marianne.

Ah, the whole cast is great, really, There’s Tom Wilkinson, and Hugh Grant, and Harriet Walter, and Gemma Jones — and ah, there’s Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon, and I guess we’re about to find out if we’re ready to watch him be so dashing with his death still so freshly felt.

It’s a longish movie, so we’re starting a little early. Join me tonight around 8:30 pm, will you? And be the first to find out what we’re screening next week!

One thought on “The Jane Austen Book Club”

  1. Given the Britishness of this movie selection, I thought I’d pass this on. Don’t know if you and Kate are fans of The Great British Bake Off, but season 7 has started (first episode available on YouTube) and their first technical challenge was Jaffa cakes, for which you have mentioned a fondness. If you’ve never watched this series in the past, it’s excellent British food porn.

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