Film Corner!

Do we need another remake of Great Expectations, the Dickens novel which has already inspired no fewer than 17 film, television, and theatrical adaptations? No, we definitely don't.

But we definitely do need to gaze with wonderment and delight at this still shot from Mike Newell's in-progress adaptation, of the perpetually scrumptious Helena Bonham Cartner as Miss Havisham, the "embittered spinster who sits in her mouldering mansion still wearing the wedding dress she wore when she was jilted at the altar; she has trained her adopted daughter Estella to break men's hearts just as her heart was broken."


[Click to embiggen.]

Bonham Carter co-stars opposite Ralph Fiennes as escaped convict Magwitch. Producer Stephen Woolley tells me the Oscar nominee is playing Miss Havisham at the same age she is in Dickens novel – previous incarnations by Charlotte Rampling, Anne Bancroft and, most memorably, Martita Hunt in David Lean's version played her much older. New York-based Unison Films is searching for a US deal for the film, which Lionsgate UK will release in fall 2012.

I don't even like Great Expectations (I'm an A Tale of Two Cities gal myself), but I have to say I'd seriously consider seeing a version with Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham.