rip anthony minghella

On the front of bbc news page. He can't have been that old can he?

DJ Martian now world's most famous Pompey fan

Only 54

;_; Third story on R4 news. He was 54!

no way! blimey.

To whom will Miramax go for bloodless adaptations of contemporary classics?

In interviews, he sounded a very personable chap, but I have to say I found The English Patient a bit of a bore and he made a hash of The Talented Mr Ripley.

^^^ will do till shakey mo arrives

crosspost

thought 'cold mountain' sucked but 'talented mr ripley' was dece for an oscar movie.

*shrugs shoulders*

This is where he comes back as a 'cello-playing ghost, right?

Plein Soleil was much better than Minghella's Ripley. Also Minghella turns Ripley into a sort of tragic figure eaten up with self hatred, whereas he isn't at all in the Highsmith novel. The novel's characterisation is much more psychologically interesting.

http://thumbnail.search.aolcdn.com/truveo/images/thumbnails/07/A6/07A6B0CF451E92.jpg

"I liked the English Patient. It was very long and very boring and very far-fetched, but it was my kind of fillum"

I wonder if Truly Madly Deeply viewed today would be easily his best film, or just seems so bcz he proceeded immediately to White Elephant Land.

Truly Madly Deeply makes me wish for NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST IN ONE SECOND

i liked truly madly deeply! not nuts about his stuff but RIP still.

Pretty good director of actors. Jude Law's never been better than in TMR.

If only he'd casted him and Damon the right way round.

no, Law is perfect for the Dickie part! Damon isn't right for anything there. (the best of the 3 Ripleys I've seen is Malkovich)

always forget that Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett are there somewhere, lost in the bric-a-brac.

Plein Soleil was much better than Minghella's Ripley.

not even

Plein Soleil didn't even try to be the book; unfortunately TTMR did, with Andrew Cunanan and a retarded form of p.c.-queer sensibility grafted on.

when I saw it a few people walked out after Ripley came on to Dickie.

PLein Soleil didn't try to be the book, but Delon's Ripley felt like Highsmith's Ripley, unlike Damon's. And yeah, it left the homosexuality implied but unstated, again like the book.

PSH is great in ripley, best thing in the movie

wonder if there's a silverman/jude law mash-up out there...

don't really care about faithfulness to source book tbh.

Agreed - all I was saying was that Highsmith had created an interesting character, which Minghella turned into a conventional one.

xp: who said they did? But why buy the fucking rights if yer gonna trash it?

within the limitations of Minghella's cramped vision of Tom Ripley, Damon's perfectly cast, I guess. Clearly he thought that transforming Ripley into a sensitive type who falls into murder in the Hitchcockian sense was easier for the audience to accept than the tale of the awakening of a sociopath; turning Ripley into a self-loathing homo is also in line with Hollywood expectations.

RIP boring guy.

Agree with ZZ about superiority of Plein Soleil.

Highsmith's Ripley is an out-and-out sociopath with no remorse whatsoever and yet we still sympathise with him, and in the end he's allowed to escape into a fantasy version of himself. That is much more interesting than self-hating gay man who is tormented by his crime.

xpost, or in other words Sotosyn OTM

'Plein Soleil' is not as faithful to the book but Marie Laforêt and Delon are so hot, who cares? 'Truly, Madly, Deeply' is probably his best. RIP.

Any word on what killed him?

In the late 80s, when I was about 16, I heard him on Radio 4 talking about his plays, was impressed and wrote his name in my notebook. Then I never saw any of his films till The Talented Mr Ripley, which made me decide to have another crack at being an actor, which I never had the heart for.

I liked Breaking And Entering last year, but I think only about three other people saw it.

RIP

This thread is like a Shakey Mopocalypse.

No fake boobs, though.

"Initial reports suggest that he suffered a brain haemorrhage during a routine neck operation at Charing Cross Hospital in London, although this has not yet been confirmed." says Wikipedia.

Also, RIP Captain Birds Eye.

It's just that he's a textbook case of when someone makes an intriguing 'small' film like TMD, then goes to Hollywood to do Major Motion Pictures, you can be fairly confident you've seen his best already.

english patient and ripley both had some visual style. overblown in the former, obviously, but i liked the sun-blasted look in ripley.

woah!

i am mostly thrown bc he was prominent in the met's turn towards new directors - his madama butterfly was really important in ushering in their 'new era' under p. gelb.

i have actually never seen the english patient though.

The Mets? Oh, that Met's.

he was a hell of a pitcher, too.

This thread is like a Shakey Mopocalypse.

-- Nicole, Tuesday, 18 March 2008 14:31 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yes! Good grief.

I heard this on then news when I was having lunch, 54 is pretty young, poor guy.

He wrote several episodes of Inspector Morse and mid-'80s Grange Hill, so RIP big man.

He also played keyboards in ultra obscure early 70's prog band Dancer, so RIP for that too.

I really liked 'Breaking & Entering' - his own script, not from someone else's book
and also that show 'The Storyteller' he wrote/directed with Jim Henson in the 1980s with John Hurt, doing groovy versions of old European fairy stories.

the guardian seems to think this guy is a bigger figure than arthur c clarke which i can't believe

well perhaps if we're talking literally i suppose

Friends of the Grauniad always get priority.

Remember they thought Lee Brilleaux and Dan Hartman were bigger than Kurt Cobain.

Lee Brilleaux was a friend of the Guardian!??!?!

He was the last rock musician they'd heard of.

He is bigger than Kurt Cobain as far as I'm concerned. So's Dan Hartman.

Let's see if David Edelstein gets Shakey'd for having the temerity to point out Minghella's lackluster Hollywood work:

http://nymag.com/daily/movies/2008/03/the_not_entirely_fulfilled_talent_of_anthony_minghella.html

"Anthony Minghella was only 54 and might have had a quarter-century left to break new ground. His passing robs us of the movies he might have made and leaves behind a cautionary tale. It's not that he was forced to make crap. It's not that his movies were entirely mangled by big hairy paws. It's that an artist who could have set an example for gutsy personal filmmaking surrendered his autonomy - as so many others have done - in the name of someone (or shmomeone) else's ego."

Not much temerity, Morbs – this is far from an alternative take on Minghella. I'd love to read what Armond wrote.

i haven't seen anyone in the MSM til D.E. say "RIP, not so good a filmmaker."

it's a catrgory thing. i would say minghella was a better filmmaker than robert redford and latter-day pollack. that's not big praise, but that was more or less the terrain he was playing on. for that kind of 'classy' oscar bid film, 'english patient' and 'talented mr ripley' are dece.

Redford? "Quiz Show" is one of my favourite films of the 90s.

it's definitely far better than anything Minghella made.

i think it's aight yeh

it's probably the screenplay that i love it for really but i think he redford a v good job with it.

was supposed to be soderbergh till the last minute, guess he developed it.