I just saw the preview for his new movie, it looks incredible. I'm glad he is using Jude Law, this is very appropiate.
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Moviefreeek2 — 18 years ago(February 23, 2008 05:20 PM)
Not sure he's a literary genius - it's a slightly overused word - however, he is certainly one of the most talented writer/directors working today.
I was fortunate enough to see him give a lecture in early '99 about the art of literary adaptations in which he talked about the difficulties of adapting English Patient and Talented Mr Ripley for the screen. He went on to discuss how he was intending to tackle Charles Frasier's Cold Mountain next.
Most exciting of all was that he presented clips from a rough cut of Talented Mr Ripley which at that time ran at around three hours long. One particular scene shown that night survived intact. It was the scene at the Opera where Tom bumps into Marge at the Opera. If I recall, Minghella said he needed an Opera which had a death in the Second Act so he had to change it in the script to Eugene Onegin. These kind of insights were fascinating and really demonstrate the singular challenges of turning a words into images.
At the time I was so impressed with the footage - rich, epic, powerful imagery typical of Minghella at his best - that I was convinced the picture was a dead cert for Oscars. I was wrong on that occasion, but it remains one of my favourite films to this day and probably Minghella's most fully realized work. I really don't think there's a single frame you could change to improve that movie IMHO. So, I can imagine the screenplay was superb going by the finished product. -
Moviefreeek2 — 18 years ago(March 20, 2008 07:02 PM)
Dissing a talented guy who just died is not an opinion.
It's sad, attention-seeking behaviour.
He's entitled to an opinion if he actually has one and can back it up with any degree of substance.
Until then, I'll stick to my guns, if that's ok by you. -
Augusto_casanova-1 — 18 years ago(March 29, 2008 09:24 AM)
I love him. He, unfortunately, was way too classy for this times, so people rarely give him the credit he deserves. Only The English Patient received what it deserved, but its going through a bad time right now.
Minguella wrote great scripts and had beautiful direction. His movies felt like every piece was in the right place, the dialogues were very poethic and there was never anything over the top (except Rene, but that was intentional).