A Storm in the Stars Film Shoots

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Douglas Booth as Shelley

The Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley biopic “A Storm in the Stars” has begun production in Ireland, with Elle Fanning as Mary Wollstoncraft Shelley, Douglas Booth as Percy Byssche Shelley and Bel Powley as Claire Clairmont. The cast has been spotted about Dublin in costume, rather shivering in the cold weather, despite woolen coats and cravats, while the recent casting of Ben Hardy has been announced (it’s unclear whether he is playing Byron, Polidori or Hogg), and Ciara Charteris is playing Shelley’s first wife Harriet, who committed suicide before Percy and Mary could be married.

 

The film is being directed by Saudi-Arabian director Haifaa Al-Mansour following her acclaimed debut film “Wadjda”. The film’s story from a screenplay by Romance novelist Emma Jensen with co-writing credit by Irish writer Conor McPherson, follows the period in the saga when Claire moves in with the Shelleys for the writing of the novel of “Frankenstein”, and the young author’s tempestuous love affair with Percy Shelley, the infamous and familiar trip to Lake Geneva with Lord Byron, Claire’s illegitimate child with Bryon and all the drama surrounding the rocky road that turned Mary into a legend. Filming has been spotted around the Collins Barracks in Dublin. The film should be released late in 2016, at least to the festival circuit. No US theatrical distributor has been announced, while international sales are being handled by the UK’s HanWay

The period of this film takes place after the journey of Mary, Percy and Clairmont to France and their early relationship explored in The Frankenstein Diaries, The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley. Douglas Booth is currently appearing in another Regency era literary mashup “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”. Elle Fanning most recently appeared in “Trumbo”.

200th Shelley Anniversary Film Fest at Wellesley College

In the past few years, mashups—like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, currently gobbling theaters—have meant classic works have undergone radical pop transformations at the hands of Hollywood. Wellesley College in Massachusetts is taking a decidedly more unique approach in its celluloid celebration of the 200th anniversary of one classic text, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For the prestigious all-women’s college, Shelley embodies an artist who, despite a literary world hostile to women writers, produced one of our most enduring stories, one that continues to be re-interpreted by every generation.

The College’s popular movie series, Cinephile Sundays, is honoring Shelley herself, and by extension the iconic horror story of science gone awry, by screening several films on campus. Some films allude to Shelley’s life; others reflect on, in often invitingly oblique ways, her famous monster and the issues brought up by her novel. The films being screened are stitched together under a theme of “Exquisite Combinations,” bringing to life the ways Shelley and her work have gone on to inspire filmmakers. In this series of five very different films, Shelley’s Gothic 19th-century literary vision plays out in a 20th-century artform, creating new conversations and foregrounding the long shadow of her influence and life.

One of the most iconic offerings is a screening of the silent film Metropolis, on Sunday, Feb. 28th, accompanied by a rare live musical soundtrack. Not specifically taken from Frankenstein, but clearly inspired by it. This triumph of Weimar Germany filmmaking is about Maria, an artificial woman created in the lab in Metropolis, with music for the silent film performed by Alloy Orchestra.

The first film in the series is perhaps the most explicit in its connection to Shelley’s story. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) screens Sunday, Feb. 14. It is the sequel to the 1931 hit Frankenstein. It is widely seen as director James Whale’s masterpiece and is viewed as an icon in the genre of classic horror, delving closer to the themes of the actually novel than the original, with a cinematic appearance by Shelley herself, with Elsa Lancaster in dual roles.

The remaining films reflect widely different styles, take place around the globe, and have very different connections to Shelley and her work. The films include one on the persistent theme of man and machine (Paprika), another about the haunting effect the film Frankenstein has a little girl (El espiratu de la colmena), and lastly a film featuring another woman pioneer, Ada Lovelace, who calculated the first computer algorithm (Conceiving Ada). All films are screened in Wellesley’s Collins Cinema. Times and Dates.

The Mary Shelley Pub Bournemouth Dorset

the_mary_shelley_pubMary Wollstonecraft Shelley probably did not spend a lot of time in pubs, as in very few casual meetings or clandestine trysts of “meet me for a pint”, though in her travels she certainly stayed in many inns of one kind or another, as in a few scenes in “Frankenstein Diaries: The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley“, but 200 years after creating the classic of Frankenstein she finally has a pub named for her.

Mary Shelley is buried in the Shelley family vault in the graveyard of St Peter’s Churchyard in Bournemouth, where she was interred by her son Sir Percy Florence Shelley after her death in London in 1851. The family tomb, now primarily a large marker also holds some remains of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley (his heart, as family legend has it, brought back from Italy where his body was burned after he died of drowning). St Peter’s was the Shelley family parish church near Boscombe Manor, now part of Bournemouth and Poole College. Sir Percy Shelley bought Boscombe Manor, a modest estate in 1849 and renovated it with the intent of its being a home for his mother away from the industrial air of Victorian London, but she died before it was finished, so Sir Percy and his wife made it their home, and would have uncovered the Mary Shelley Secret Memoirs and private letters of the Frankenstein Diaries while assessing her belongings on the move from London.

mary_shelley_pub_diningWhile not the half-timber historic sort of pub from days past, but rather a new and modern restaurant and part of the Wetherspoon’s chain of pubs, The Mary Shelly is located directly across from the Parish Church of St Peter’s and the Churchyard. The menu of budget family dining and ales probably would have appealed to Mary as her tastes rather lent themselves to the frugal and functional, while her step-sister Claire might have found it rather more modest than her ambitions. Apparently the Sirloin beef is quite the specialty of Wetherspoons and Mary might have appreciated the story of the knighting of the beef by King James.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback