Word: minghella
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that he's hit 30, Law has finally taken on the type of role he seems genetically engineered to play--man in loooove. In Cold Mountain, Anthony Minghella's captivating Civil War epic from the Charles Frazier book, Law embodies the cinematic romantic hero down to the chest hair. He plays Inman, a curt country carpenter who falls for the new preacher's sophisticated daughter (Nicole Kidman). They share perhaps six awkward conversations (his declaration of love: "It's like when you wake up and your ribs are bruised thinking so hard on somebody") and one kiss before he marches...
...former vegetarian, Law discovered he was 20 lbs. underweight and had to bulk up for the role. "I remember looking out the window of my hotel room in Brasov and seeing Jude running up and down the hotel car park with his personal trainer on his back," says Minghella. That trainer--the 200-lb. Eddie Joseph, who has a good 40 lbs. on his client--chuckles at the memory. "There wasn't any gym equipment there," he says, "so I also had Jude pull big logs and push one of those tennis-court rollers around...
...Mountain, is The Odyssey compressed, Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge expanded to saga dimensions. As much as Inman aches to return to a woman he barely knew, but knew he loved, the novel's vivid prose needed to be turned into moving pictures. Paging Anthony Minghella, adapter-director of The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley...
...those films Minghella proved himself a poet of blinding sunlight and murky impulses. Now, on the darker, ruder landscape of 19th century North Carolina (though much of Cold Mountain was shot in Romania), he tells a story of the severest passion--of a beautiful woman who learns strength, and a strong man who discovers beauty...
...grimly detailed, superbly staged Battle of the Crater--the 1864 debacle that Minghella weaves into Frazier's plot--reminds you that this is a Civil War movie. But of a blinkered nature: Where are the slaves? Ahem, where are the black folks? Minghella may be dodging the race issue (slavery is never mentioned), but he probably wants us to see the Confederacy both as one more lost cause worth fighting for, then fighting to get out of, and as a military metaphor for the impossible dream at the story's core--one of rebellious love, against all odds, that...