Apologies for my absence...I have been seriously licensed to Ill the last few weeks and am only just now maybe seeing either the illusory or very far-off light at the end of the tunnel. Yuck.

I never saw crucial works such as the English Patient and I thought The Talented Mr. Ripley was something of a (beautiful but limited) paean to art direction and pretty people, but I am sad that Anthony Minghella died in a film-y way because I really love Truly, Madly, Deeply and that was a movie that I know was all his. It's a little crusty, but it's beautiful. For some reason I am endlessly enamored of the way he handled the last shot--the Bach helps, of course, but it's the way that very dark shot suddenly cuts to black that is so important. It would have been so easy to do something dreamy and fadey, but that simple sharp cut...that's an ending, somehow. Just thinking about it makes me bawl. Obituaries are calling that movie a comedy, which seems awfully wrong.

Seductive and dangerous: http://www.librarything.com/