Great Moments in Gay - The Talented Mr. Ripley - Bathtime with Dickie
Sunday, June 26, 2022 at 9:06PM In honor of Pride Month, we're highlighting a few Great Moments in Gay. Here’s Christopher James
Spoilers and NSFW Images to Follow…
Entries in Anthony Minghella (6)
Sunday, June 26, 2022 at 9:06PM Almost There: Cate Blanchett in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"
Thursday, December 23, 2021 at 12:45AM 
Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley is now in theaters, bringing Cate Blanchett back to the big screen where she belongs. Playing a manipulative psychologist who proves herself a femme fatale, the Australian actress is sure to bring glamour to the part, dazzling audiences as she's been doing for decades. To commemorate the occasion, this week's Almost There entry revisits one of Cate Blanchett's best performances. In fact. It might be her greatest. In any case, it's my favorite from her sterling filmography, a supporting part she injects with life and patrician heartbreak. The Academy ignored her in 1999, but Blanchett may have come close to a second nomination for her work as Meredith Logue in Anthony Minghella's adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley…
The Furniture: Death by Taste in The Talented Mr. Ripley
Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 11:00AM "The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)
As we gear up for a Patricia Highsmith centennial, here’s a not-exactly-fun fact. Only one adaptation of her work has been nominated for Best Production Design at the Oscars: The Talented Mr. Ripley. (An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Carol had also been nominated for this award, as the author had unconsciously, but happily, written The Danish Girl out of his memory. Carol was nominated for costume design, not production design.)
Production design is central to Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of the first Ripley novel, given that so much of the plot hinges upon taste. The young Tom (Matt Damon) ingratiates himself to Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) with his self-trained taste in jazz. Freddie Miles’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) knowledge of his friend Dickie’s taste in furniture is what gets him killed. Ripley’s games of subterfuge and impersonation depend upon his understanding of style and class - and his own fluctuating taste in other people will lead him to the film’s violent end.
20 Appropriate Ways to Celebrate "The Talented Mr Ripley"
Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 7:17PM 
1999 is considered by many to be one of the best years for cinema. The Matrix, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, Election, Magnolia, All About My Mother, Run Lola Run, Go, Boys Don't Cry, The Sixth Sense, American Pie, Three Kings and Being John Malkovich. It is also the year that The Talented Mr Ripley was released. Ripley was well reviewed at the time if not ecstatically so. Perhaps that was because it came after the juggernaut that was The English Patient -- Anthony Minghella’s previous film was a big hit and won 9 Oscars. Since then Ripley has elevated in estimation in large part because of the subsequent huge careers of the then young actors who starred: Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett. Aesthetics have also stood the test of time; the clothes, the attitudes, sun soaked Italy. The story still resonates with its undertones of queer identity and its thriller framework. Today Ripley is rightly considered a classic and beloved by many cinephiles.
Released 20 years ago this week, here are 20 ways you can celebrate this fabulous film...
‘The English Patient’ Wins Best of Man Booker Prize
Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 12:53PM by Murtada
The English Patient, the novel by Michael Ondaatje, has won the Golden Booker prize. The one-off award, voted for by the public, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Man Booker prize. The shortlist of five novels was selected by a panel of judges from the 51 previous winners of the Man Booker, which honors the best novels written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. The book, which I read after the film won 9 Oscars in 1996, has always been a favorite. Not only for its beautifully written lyrical romantic love story but for its exploration of the fallacy of nationalism.
The characters in The English Patient - Hungarian, Indian, Canadian and English - form artistic allegiances rather than arbitrary ones based along geographical lines. Those themes resonate even more today, as we are in the midst of a of a volatile debate about immigration...