in memorium

British filmmaker Anthony Minghella has died at 54. I'll always think very fondly of his best film, "The Talented Mr. Ripley." It may not be the film he's more revered for, but he was able to capture the savagery of the stately, which is reflective of the "La Dolce Vita" period of film "Ripley" so closely resembles and finds its main source of inspiration. Minghella imbued that broken bourgeois sensibility with a dark and grim tale of obsession, compulsion, and the quest for identity. Add to the cinematic equation the relatively green cast of who we know consider some of our best actors of their generation (Damon, Blanchett, Law, Paltrow, Seyour Hoffman), "Ripley" is a thoroughly entertaining and yet handsomely flawed classic about the bad and the beautiful at play.