In Appreciation of Anthony Minghella

( A brief review of the segment written by Anthony and starring Julie Christie, John Hurt and Shia LeBeouf. )

( Shekhar Kapur on Anthony and 'New York, I love You' )

Some stills from the Minghella-Kapur segment:



( 'How can you bear it? I don't know how you can bear it.' )

Here is a wonderful review of the reading of Cigarettes and Chocolate at the festival.

Also, an interview with the lovely Robbi Holman, who travelled from Texas to the Isle of Wight for the festival.

Belatedly cross-posted from my journal: photographs of the cathedral in Ripley.

( Peter and the frescoes )

The cathedral is the Chiesa Della Martorana in Palermo, built in the year 1143. (In the film, it's meant to be the Santa Della Maria Pieta in Venice, 'Vivaldi's own church', which 'became mysteriously unavailable' when shooting for the film began.) If you look closely at the pictures of the actual cathedral, there's no organ loft there! It was a temporary structure made for the film, and Jack Davenport and the musicians were hoisted up there. *g*

I recently had the pleasure of attending a talk by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. He spoke, among other things, of working with Anthony on the film adaptation of his novel. Agency is groundbreaking in being the first film to be shot entirely in Botswana, and Smith said that the scene with the Bishop of Botswana was written by Anthony especially for the film. He said he was very glad when he first discovered that Anthony was making it, because "his films are beautiful"; he even talked a little about Ripley, calling it a film with "gorgeous textures and music".

( And here is something funny that happened during the session. )

Today is Anthony's 56th birthday. Here he is with Jude Law, promoting Cold Mountain in Rome, February 2004:



And an article: The Almásy Castle in Hungaria is on sale for one forint (less than a penny). Count László Almásy is the protagonist of The English Patient, and the character (played by Ralph Fiennes) is based on the real-life explorer.