Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here with some really sad news.

Anthony Minghella has died at the age of 54. The cause of death has not been announced yet, but I'm sure details will arrive soon.

For now, knowing that this award-winning writer-director is not with us anymore is enough. He was the king of the epic adaptations, and I know a lot of you probably have your opinions about some of his work like THE ENGLISH PATIENT and COLD MOUNTAIN, but if you ever got a chance to see two of his original works, TRULY MADLY DEEPLY and BREAKING AND ENTERING, I think your opinion of Minghella as strictly a maker of melodrama would change. And let us not forget THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, arguably his greatest work. More recently he was executive producer on MICHAEL CLAYTON.

1990's TRULY MADLY DEEPLY is one of the finest films about death and grieving and moving on that you will ever see, and it delivered its message with equal parts tears and laughter. It also gave us one of Alan Rickman's finest performances. I know a lot of women who started and never stopped crushing on Rickman because of this film. Minghella had a habit of bringing the best out of his actors. Look at Matt Damon in MR. RIPLEY, or Juliette Binoche's Oscar-winning turn in ENGLISH PATIENT or Renee Zellweger in COLD MOUNTAIN (also an Oscar winner). BREAKING AND ENTERING is a film with about three film's worth of stories in it, but it still captivated me thanks in large part to the best performance of Jude Law's career. A little more than two years ago, I interviewed Minghella about this movie (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31360), and I found him to be about as generous and easy to talk to as anyone. I've spoken to other AICN staffers about doing phone interviews over the years, and we all agreed that we used to despise them, but eventually we all grew to love them for various reasons. For me, this conversation with Anthony Minghella was that reason. He turned what could have been a fleeting, surface discussion into something intimate and fun.

So the inevitable question becomes what happens to ongoing projects. From what I can tell, his next film THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY (co-written by Richard Curtis from the Alexander McCall Smith novel) was not only done filming, it was set to air on British TV this week. From what I've heard, HBO recently picked up the rights to do a 13-part series based on the novel, which would presumably be preceded by Minghella's film. He was also set to direct one of the short films in the NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU anthology (the New York companion film to PARIS, JE T'AIME), but I have no idea whether he got around to shooting that or not. His next feature film looked to be THE NINTH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX (for Miramax), based on Liz Jensen's novel that would have made a great film, told from the dual points of view of a 9-year-old boy in a coma and his doctor. (I'll try to give updates on the status of these projects in the Talkback as I receive them.)

I'm going to miss Anthony Minghella's beautiful, sensitive filmmaking and his wicked sense of humor. Our sympathies go out to his family and loved ones.

Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com