We have our first Emma promo video!

And a promo for Garrow’s Law:

Little Dorrit was only broadcasted on PBS, but it garnered 11 Emmy nominations this year: Outstanding  Art Direction, Outstanding Cast, Outstanding Cinematography, Outstanding Costumes, Outstanding Directing, Outstanding Hairstyles, Outstanding Miniseries, Outstanding Music Composition, Outstanding Supporting Actor (Tom Courtenay and Andy Serkis), Outstanding Writer (go Andrew Davies!); all “For a Miniseries or Movie.” The Tudors, costume drama porn, received 5 nods.

The Independent has a lengthy article on bringing the Pre-Raphaelites to screen in the BBC’s new drama Desperate Romantics. There are spoilers at the end, but the first few paragraphs detail how the series came to life. “Entourage with easels” became the “tagline” when pitching the project, for both the writer of the original novel, Franny Moyle, and Peter Bowker, the screen writer, wanted to give the production a modern feel and attract viewers who might otherwise be scared away by “stuffy, old dramas.” Apparently, Desperate Romantics has been taking hints from The Tudors. Oh, and here’s a new interview with Aiden Turner, who plays Dante Gabriel Rossetti, about life on set. The show starts tonight across the pond.

Russell Crowe, whom we will be seeing sometime in May of 2010 as Robin Hood, says that talks are underway for a follow-up to his 2003 naval film, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Oh happy days! The movie was based on Patrick O’Brian’s novel series about Captain Jack Aubrey (Crowe) during the Napoleonic Wars.

Crowe told The Associated Press on Friday that a script based mostly on the eleventh novel of Patrick O’Brian’s 20-novel series, The Reverse of the Medal, had been written, but that discussions were at a very early stage.

“There’s still a long way to go,” the New Zealand-born actor told AP at a cricket match between England and Australia in London. He said talks had been taking place with the owner of the rights to the novels.

Master and Commander is not the most exciting movie by naval war movie standards, but I think the film conveys brilliantly the emotion of life aboard a British vessel during the heyday of naval warfare. And the acting is superb. I certainly hope this sequel gets the green light.

A new two-part documentary, The Scandalous Adventures of Lord Byron, starring Rupert Everett, is set to air at 9 pm on July 27 on Channel 4. Everett, moving forward with his new “career” as a history presenter after his last documetnary on Richard Burton, will retrace Byron’s travels, and I believe dress up like the anti-hero a number of times. This should prove interesting, if it shows up on YouTube.

What a bummer. Tonight is the finale of the 2009 Masterpiece Classic season, with The Old Curiosity Shop. Another great season coming to an end, and it was terrific—no production thus far has been a disappointment, in my opinion. There’s little else in the works at the moment, as far as period films go; the BBC’s new Emma is well underway, but goodness knows when it will come to America. That leaves us with waiting for the interesting new rendition of Sherlock Holmes and the 2010 season of Masterpiece.

Again, don’t forget to watch The Old Curiosity Shop tonight on PBS at 9 pm Eastern—yet another Dickens work with which I am completely unfamiliar.

 Sunday saw the conclusion ofLittle Dorrit on PBS Masterpiece—and what a conclusion it was. Four lengthy episodes’ worth of questions were suddenly answered, followed by a blissfully satisfying marriage between Arthur and Amy (finally!). Reading through the fascinating Barnes & Noble discussion board with Andrew Davies, I was relieved to learn that I was not the only one who found the final episode difficult to follow. Rigaud is difficult to understand at best, but his revelation of Mrs. Clennam’s misdeeds proved impossible for me to comprehend. Apparently, there is a good deal of confusion relating to the relationship between Mrs. Clennam, Arthur, Amy, and the Dorrits. I googled for an hour after Little Dorrit ended, disturbed that after 5 episodes the puzzle still wasn’t complete, but found nothing. The impression was that Arthur and Amy shared the same mother—the poor dancer, who first gave birth to Arthur, whom Mrs. Clennam took away, by Mrs. Clennam’s husband, and then Amy while she was in the Marshalsea. Such a relationship would obviously make the marriage between Arthur and Amy incestuous, so that could not be the case, but the lack of clear names (even in the novel) seemed to offer no other explanation. Why else would Gilbert Clennam change his will than to bestow money upon the poor woman whose first child was stolen from her? Well, one knowledgeable contributor to the B & N board provides an good explanation.

I relistened to the Rigaud and Mrs Clennam confrontation scene and I still do not see any indication regarding Amy as being Arthur’s real mother’s child.   What Rigaud says as he is telling the story to Mrs. Clennam is that the poor dancer wrote to Gilbert Clennamabout what happened to her (her baby was taken away from her after birth) and he felt so grieved by her letter that he amended his will to leave a legacy to a child born as poor as she (the dancer) and on the same day that she (the dancer) died.  This new born child happened to be born in the Marshalsea prison (Amy).  Now what isn’t clear is whether Gilbert Clennam knew if the dancer’s baby was, in fact, his grandson Arthur.  Since the baby was taken away from its mother, I didn’t think that he knew that the baby was given to his son’s wife (Mrs. Clennam).  Otherwise, he might have intervened to force Mrs. Clennam to give the baby back to the dancer.  Mrs. Clennam had to block the contents of the amended will in order to protect the secret that Arthur was not her biological son.  Rigaudgave Amy two letters (one addressed to Amy and Arthur) that told both of them the entire situation regarding the will information and Arthur’s family history.  The timeline is like this – Arthur’s real mother had her child taken away from her.  When she died, approximately 20 years after Arthur was born, another child born from poor parents (the Dorrits) on the day of the dancer’s death who was designated as a legacy recipient of Gilbert Clennam.  So, Arthur never knew that his real mother was in poverty for 20 years after he was born.  The age difference between Amy and Arthur is the actual period of how long the dancer lived after giving birthto Arthur.  Arthur’s real mother did not die giving birtha new baby, but there was a baby born on the same day as the dancer’s death that was as poor as she (Amy).  So, Gilbert used his money to sort of help another poor soul when he couldn’t help the dancer directly. (Source)

So, Amy was merely the random recipient of Gilbert Clennam’s charity and benevolence; she is therefore wholly unrelated to the Clennam’ssave through her status as the beneficiary of Gilbert’s will. To be quite honest, I was expecting a more sinister revelation—the removal of a child from his birth mother is tragic, yes, but not deserving of five episodes of tension, ominous music, and foreshadowing. I greatly enjoyed Little Dorrit, but the ending felt anticlimactic. Am I missing something?

Andrew Davies mentioned that it might have been beneficial for viewers to have read the novel beforehand, and I am determined to read the book before I watch the film again. Little Dorrit’s incredible complexity (Dickensian—is that a good adjective?) ensures that one will find something new every time one watches it.

Fanny Dorrit was an absolute delight in episodes 4 and 5. I was thrilled that she received more screen time that simultaneously exposed more of her humanity as well as more of her cunning. She’s diabolical, yet not despicable, and her character is simply too bewitching not to like at least a little bit. Emma Pierson did a marvelous job—I find myself imitating her catchy, dainty exclamations of “Sparkler!” when frustrated with my dog. She says of her character, “Fanny’s a tough little cookie. . . She’s a bit of a madam and is absolutely her father’s daughter. He has taught her that whatever her circumstances, she is still a lady. She believes that with all her heart, despite the evidence to the contrary.”

Only Andy Serkis’s Rigaud is a more entertaining character. It was like watching Gollumin a suit with a French accent, and I mean that with the greatest praise I am glad Andrew Davies decided to write in more of Rigaud into the screenplay, though his very existence in the story still seems out of place. Perhaps if anyone else had played him, I might have wished him off the screen after episode 2, but Serkis makes him the single most diverting character in the film—superfluous, but side-splittingly amusing.

Mr. Pancks is another of Little Dorrit’s charms, albeit an unconventional one. Eddie Marsan portrays the seemingly acrimonious, but sympathetic debt collector whom Dickens imbues with a chronic snort; Marsan has appeared in a number of Hollywood films, such as Mission Impossible III and The Illusionist, and we will see him this fall in Sherlock Holmes.

While his creativity is unparalleled and his imagination impressive, I wonder if Dickens consciously or unconsciously threw in as many characters into his stories as possible, despite their relevance or lack thereof. Miss Wade and Tattycoram operate on the fringe in the story, and, with minor tweaking, could have been wholly cut out and all would have been well—or, if they are of more importance in the novel, small adjustments could have made them more central to the film. In a nutshell, my complaint would be this: too many characters and too little substance. Despite the 8 hour length, I still felt that some characters were not adequately fleshed out to deserve an appearance in the film at all. But I guess that’s why we run to Dickens, isn’t it? To become lost in another world? To be completely immersed in a place decades away from our own lives (though the economic themes bring Little Dorrit considerably closer to home)? For all the headaches it has brought, transporting myself into Dickens’s England five Sunday nights in a row made me look forward to the end of the weekend

That said, Little Dorrit was my favorite of the 2009 Masterpiece films. Great costumes, top notch acting, beautiful sets, and an intriguing story all make for another awesome Dickens adaptation and Davies film.

If you’ve missed any episodes, you have till the night of May 3 (eastern time) to view them all here.

The DVD is also now available from ShopPBS and Barnes & Noble—you’ll get a better price by $10 at the latter if you are a member.

I’ve compiled some reviews of Little Dorrit from various sources below.

LA Times: “Review ‘Little Dorrit’ on PBS”

Charles Dickens wrote big, long books, and when his books become movies it’s good to make them big and long as well. His many-tendriled, twisty plots can be pruned and compressed with some success—orphan meets Fagin, Fagin gets orphan, Fagin loses orphan—but plot isn’t what makes Dickens great. There are the huge cast of characters (not always engaged in moving the story forward), the splendid set pieces and the passages of social observation that all go into creating a world you can get lost in.

Washington Post: “Classic Dickens, Modern Lessons”

The fact that many people are unfamiliar with the novel or other adaptations was a big plus for those involved in the TV project, which airs as part of “The Tales of Charles Dickens” on PBS’s “Masterpiece Classic.”

“It was a pleasure to be introducing it to a wider audience,” Davies said, because fewer people will have expectations of how it should be done.

Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: “Dickens’ ‘Little Dorrit’ has a modern story to tell on PBS”

One of his most imaginative villains is not a human character at all, but a government agency called, with typical Dickensian [Ha! It is an adjective!] irony, the Office of Circumlocution. It is unclear what its original function was, but by the time we encounter it, the Office of Circumlocution has a grip over all of British industry to stultifying effect. Circumlocution is a sea of obfuscation that cannot be navigated; members of the Barnacle family, who run the office, force all visitors to file endless paper requests that go nowhere.

Philly.com, Arts & Entertainment: “Jonathan Storm: ‘Little Dorrit’: One dandy Dickens tale”

You pretty much know what to expect when Masterpiece visits the 19th century. But Little Dorrit stands at the high end of a very lofty list of period-piece achievement.

It’s big entertainment.

The intricate plot of Little Dorrit is becoming progressively more complicated with each episode, leaving the same—if not more—questions unanswered. Dickens continues to pull character after character out of his hat, which does nothing to ease the mass confusion about who knows who, who hates who, who loves who, or even who is who. Keeping the names straight is a mental workout in itself. (I have found Masterpiece’s character webvery handy.) What sort of information did the box reveal to Rigaud about Mrs. Clennam’s past? And why is he being such a creeper to Amy? How long will the Dorrit’s good fortune last (not long if they keep up this sort of extravagance)? What is the significance of the chance meeting between Pet and Amy? And for the love of Edward Cullen, will Arthur and Amy ever get together?!?

Though a lengthy production, Little Dorrit is highly watchable. The story demands rapt attention, which any slightly interested viewer would be unable to bestow after one episode; and the characters’ barely uncovered histories and irrevocably intertwined futures make the film all the more madly captivating (though I could do without seeing the ridiculous Flora for the remainder of the series).

While I was most looking forward to Wuthering Heights, Little Dorrit has so far been my favorite film of the 2009 Masterpiece Classic season. And the two remaining episodes have much explaining to do, which is why I believe they will be the best yet! The interim between this Sunday’s episode and the final installation on April 25 will likely be torture.

The first 3 parts are available for online viewing here until May.

And don’t forget to check out the Barnes & Noble Book Club discussion board featuring special guest Andrew Davies, the screenwriter for Little Dorrit.

Last Sunday saw the premier of Little Dorrit on Masterpiece, adapted by the god of BBC costume dramas, Andrew Davies. The five-part adaptation of Charles Dickens’s hefty novel published in monthly installments beginning in 1855 will continue this Sunday at 9 pm Eastern.

Maybe it was just me, but I had a terrible headache by the two-hour-episode’s end. My brain fought fiercely from being put to work so early in the week. Part of the joy of Dickens is the incredible complexity of his novels, and I am extremely curious to see, for example,  how the woman-murdering Frenchman (Rigaud, played by the brilliant Andy Serkis) fits into the rest of the story. (He was a creeper, and the fact that I could barely understand a word he said did not make his relevance to the plot any clearer.) My familiarity with Little Dorrit is nil, so I am terribly curious to see where Dickens’s story will take the army of seemingly unrelated characters next. The budding relationship between Little Dorrit (Amy, played by Claire Foy) and Arthur Clennam (Matthew Macfadyen) appears to be the backbone of the plot, but its growth will probably not be a smooth one. After the first episode, my primary questions are:

1. Why is Mrs. Clennam such a witch to her son?

2. Why will Mrs. Clennam not reveal the meaning of the watch?

3. What is the meaning of the watch?

4. What are all the circumstances regarding Mr. Clennam’s death, and why does Arthur seem haunted by it?

5. What are the circumstances surrounding Little Dorrit’s birth in the Marshalsea?

6. How did Mr. Dorrit come to be the “Father of the Marshalsea”?

7. Is John Chivery as sweet and innocent as he appears?

8. One word: Rigaud?

9. What is Tattycoram’s story?

10. Who the heck is the freaky Mrs. Wade???

&c., &c.

In short, I am quite confused and can’t wait till more of the puzzle pieces are revealed.

If you didn’t catch it on Sunday, you can view Episode 1 here.

Visit Jane Austen Today for a post on Matthew Macfadyen as Arthur Clennam.

View the large cast photo here.

Masterpiece Editor Erin Delaney was a special guest on the Barnes & Noble PBS Masterpiece Board, and you can find her correspondence with other book club members here. She answers questions relating to her role as editor, the relationship between PBS and the BBC, and the general adaptation process. Her responses are very informative and worth the read.

The Masterpiece site is prepared for the premier of Little Dorrit this Sunday night (March 29) at 9 pm Eastern. The Little Dorrit minisite is full of features, and Episode 1 of 5 will be available for online viewing on March 30 and will remain online till May 3. Set your TiVos!

There’s another supposed Titanic replica in the works—as if we haven’t heard that one before. This one comes from Finland, where a Finnish tycoon is preparing to erect a full-scale model of the infamous liner next to his shopping center, at a price tag of around 30 million euros, in hopes of luring more tourists and shoppers to the area. Well, let me know how that works out for you, Mr. Ambitious—if you pull it off, I promise to visit the Land of the Finns before I die.

I found this Examiner entry titled “Books to Film: Four major mistakes movie companies make.” Amen sister, especially to the point about dialogue. Few things leave a more indelible impression on a reader than the novel’s dialogue; where would Pride & Prejudice adaptations be without the quintessential Darcy line, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.” As this writer points out, authors put words into the mouths of their characters for a reason. Screwing with the dialogue in an attempt to add originality often backfires; one can never go wrong by sticking with phrases and lines straight from the novel. And her criticisms of Eragon are solid. Ask any Eragon fan, and they will tell you what a failure that movie was. I remember walking into the bathroom after leaving the theater and hearing a devastated girl exclaim to her friend, “They ruined the story!” As one commentator noted, however, books-to-film can be done right, noting The Lord of the Rings trilogy as one magnificent example.  

But in short, please be careful with our books, Hollywood.

Keira Knightley will not be returning for Pirates 4. “It was a completely fantastic experience and it was an amazingly large portion of my life, but I don’t think I need to go there again,” she says. I don’t blame her, although one wonders how the Pirates saga could get much worse—from At World’s End, the only conceivable direction is up. And as much as I would love to see Orlando Bloom in suave buccaneer garb again, he should probably stay away from the fourth one, too.

Marvel’s Pride & Prejudice comic book series comes out on April Fool’s Day, and the writer Nancy Butler shares some of her thoughts:

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, every Jane Austen fan is going to be looking at this and saying, ‘How dare she!’”

Her fears seem to be mostly in vain. From what I’ve read, many Janites are really excited to see how the comic-book medium will do justice to Austen’s most popular story.

Twilight is giving back. One of the inspirations in Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga was Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and now it seems the wild popularity of the Twilight series is spurning a new interest in Bronte’s classic tale of unbridled passions amongst the Yorkshire moors. Nowhere has the connection between the two books (especially Eclipse) done more than in France, leaving booksellers amazed and eager to capitalize on the enthusiasm:

“We are on course to sell several tens of thousands of copies this year, which is exceptional. The enthusiasm has prompted a lot of bookshops to put Brontë on display next to Stephenie Meyer, and that has obviously encouraged people to buy both of them.” . . .

Judging by French teenage chat forums, Brontë has made a profound impact on her new readers, who almost all appear to be adolescent girls. “The atmosphere is so dense that you are left breathless. It’s strange,” one said.

“Emily Brontë’s writing is astonishing,” said another. “Heathcliff and Catherine are figures of a really surprising blackness.”

“I dream of going to the place where the novel is set, in Le Yorkshire beaten by the wind,” said a third.

Don’t we all. *sighs*

Not all appreciated the writer, however. “I have to admit that I couldn’t get into the novel,” said a detractor. “Someone gave me the DVD, but I can’t be bothered to watch it.”

What a shame—watch the darn movie!

Hachette, Meyer’s publisher, even suggested that Twilight was the greatest novel in its genre since Wuthering Heights, a notion that enhanced Meyer’s status among her adolescent readers but won little support from critics.

Umm, yea, that might be a stretch.

The first episode of David Copperfield (1999) can now be viewed online here, at Masterpiece’s website. Episode 2 will not be available till March 23, and both will be up through March 29.

I regret that I haven’t blogged in a while, but to be honest there hasn’t been much to blog about! And summer is on the horizon(*cue Hansel’s Messiah*)!

Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood has been given a release date for 2010: May 14.

Keira Knightley’s UK period piece, The Edge of Love, will be released in limited theaters starting tomorrow, March 13, 9 months after being released in Europe. The film focuses on the tangled relationships of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and stars Kevin McKidd, Cillian Murphy, Sienna Miller, and Matthew Rhys.

Here is Part 1 and 2 of  the interview with Daniel Radcliffe on his role almost a decade ago as David Copperfield that Masterpiece has on the David Copperfield minisite:

Don’t forget to watch David Copperfield on Masterpiece Classic tonight as The Tales of Charles Dickens continues; tonight’s episode will be 90 minutes long, with next Sunday’s being 120 minutes. This adaptation is nearly ten years old ans stars Daniel Radcliffe in his first major role, and he is as cute as a button. The minisite is up on the Masterpiece website, and it features an interview with Radcliffe and Ian McKellan as they look back on making the film. It is interesting that these two parted ways and each became stars of the (nearly) rival fantasy series, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.

The Times has an article out about Rupert Friend’s role as Prince Albert in the soon-to-be-released The Young Victoria,

I was especially touched by Sophie Okonedo’s role as the first black Nancy in Oliver Twist, so I have been doing some reading: the BBC had an interview with Sophie on her role, and the Times had an article about the same. I thought casting her was a bold and interesting move that certainly paid off. I am not familiar with all the socio-racial norms of the Victorian Era, so I couldn’t say if interracial relationships would be plausible in a Dickens’s work or not, but I greatly enjoyed Sophie’s performance. She is one of my favorite rising stars (her character in The Secret Life of Bees is also phenomenal). I did find this quote from the BBC interiew a bit odd:

She’s also completely and utterly in love with Bill Sikes, played by Tom Hardy; it’s quite a dysfunctional relationship but it works. He looks after her and she looks after him; he slaps her around a bit but that was all part of the times.

“He slaps her around a bit?” That actually made me laugh because it has to be one of the biggest understatements of the year. Lol. I didn’t get the feeling that she was utterly in love with Bill—the fear she communicated on screen made a deeper impression. I sensed a sort of helplessly devoted love—she did stick around after all, even when she could have safely escaped—but perhaps there was something deeper that I missed. All the more reason to watch it again!

Oliver Twist is now available on DVD at ShopPBS, but it is cheaper at Barnes & Noble ($16.99 compared to $19.99; if you are a B&N member, it’s even cheaper).

The first of two 90-minute installments of Oliver Twist premiered last night on Masterpiece Classic. The first episode played out much like the first half of a Dickens novel, with an abundance of characters whom one knows nothing about, questions that demand to be answered, and a tangled mess of loose ends that one hopes will soon be set straight.

Having never read Oliver Twist, I don’t know how faithful to the novel this adaptation is, but from scanning some of the early reviews, it appears that it is not nearly as true to the book as Dickens purists would have liked. Whether or not this is an improvement remains to be seen, but the film was certainly fast-paced and exciting, keeping me on the edge of my seat wondering what trouble Oliver would find himself in next and listening for any clues that revealed a little more about the sly Dodger, domineering Sikes, enigmatic Fagin, and good-hearted Nancy, as well as any information as to the relationship between Rose, Mr. Brownlow, Edward, and Oliver. In doing this I found my one significant complaint about the film: the music is too distracting. The same sort of raw, edgy music was used in Wuthering Heights, giving the film the very rough, primitive, and passionate feel that made it so great; where the score complements the action and emotions in WH, it overpowers in Oliver Twist. Taken with the fact that most of the characters speak in an unrefined dialect that is difficult to understand and rarely encountered in most costume dramas (at least those concerned with the upper or middle crusts of society), the overemphasized music is especially troublesome.

Part 1 ended at a very climactic point, with gunshots being fired and Oliver crying out; obviously the main character doesn’t die halfway through the story, but what will his injuries lead to? And who was the man whose house Sikes and Oliver entered? Part 2 promises to be just as riveting as Part 1.

If you missed it, you can watch Part 1 online here until March 1.

Some reviews of Part 1 (I believe the first and last contain some character spoilers, so read at own risk):

Variety: “Oliver Twist”

Oliver Twist’s classic themes of good and evil are deliberately blurred in this modern retelling of the Charles Dickens classic. Literary archvillains like Fagin and Bill Sikes, once glaring examples of moral corruption and criminal psychopathy, become mere byproducts of their time. In fact, director Coky Giedroyc’s grittier, reality-based approach to Sarah Phelps’ adaptation contrasts sharply the popular and nostalgic musical account “Oliver!” Nevertheless, this version does stay true to Dickens’ original intent to call attention to social evils in harsh times.

USA Today: “PBS’ turn of ‘Oliver Twist’ is ever so timely”

Austen in good times, Dickens in bad: PBS is on to something…

Certainly this latest adaptation does its best to tweak the story for a modern audience, sharpening the class edges and probing into the psychology of the darker characters. The approach does at times seem more Sweeney Todd than Oliver Twist, but the cast (led by Harry Potter’s Timothy Spall as Fagin) is first-rate, as is the production itself.

The Boston Globe: “A Twist and more in Dickens tale”

And the first Dickens adaptation, “Oliver Twist,” bodes well enough for the rest of the season. The two-part miniseries, which begins tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 2, makes missteps aplenty, with tone and plot changes from the novel that will likely offend purists. But it nonetheless has a warm spirit and an original vision, which is more than I can say for Roman Polanski’s rote 2005 version.

The Houston Chronicle: “Masterpiece puts its spin on Oliver Twist”

From spot-on casting and one extraordinary performance after another, to a bold adaptation by Sarah Phelps, to Coky Giedroyc’s energizing direction, to a toe-tapping musical score (that probably doesn’t belong here, but fie on that — it’s fun), this Oliver Twist is a thrill ride for anyone who still believes TV can be entertaining.

As a side note, I loved Sikes’s White Bull Terrier!! As a major fan of these clownish dogs (and dogs in films in general), it put a huge smile on my face to see one in a somewhat-starring role. The early bull terriers developed in the early 1800’s by crossing brawny bulldogs with tenacious terriers, but it was not until the 1860’s that the breed began to look more homogenous (during their early decades, some looked more like bulldogs and others looked more like terriers) with the work of James Hinks of Birmingham, England. The dog used in Oliver Twist is clearly a White Bull Terrier, and as the novel is set in the 1830’s, a bull terrier of such modern proportions and features would have been an impossibility—an easily forgivable anachronism, given the spunk the dog adds to the film and the softer side of Sikes he reveals. Sikes does have a dog in the novel, named Bulls-eye (which I guess, explains the reason they chose a bull terrier with that distinctive black ring), but he is said to be “A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places.”