March 24th: COLD MOUNTAIN (Anthony Minghella, 2003)

NOTE: This film will be projected in the high-definition Blu-ray format

During the Civil War, a disillusioned Confederate soldier deserts the army in order to return to his love, who faces her own challenges keeping her family farm going with little help.

North Carolina native Charles Frazer wrote his first novel based on stories told about his great-great-uncle, in addition to other accounts about the war. Loosely based on Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, it was a bestseller and won the National Book Award for fiction. Actress Renee Zellweger had read it prior to its release and was interested in producing a film version, but couldn't afford to outbid the studios.

The adaptation was written by British director Anthony Minghella, an accomplished playwright who burst onto the scene with his debut independent film Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) and graduated to big productions with the The English Patient (1996) which won 9 Oscars including Best Picture and Direction, putting him on Hollywood's A-List. He followed up with the prestige thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley, another financial and critical success, and then partnered with veteran director Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Out Of Africa) to form the production company Mirage.

The cast is headed by Jude Law (who had his big break with Minghella's Ripley), Nicole Kidman, and Zellweger, and includes Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jena Malone, Giovanni Ribisi, Brendan Gleeson (Gangs Of New York), Ray Winstone (The Departed), Donald Sutherland, Kathy Baker (Edward Scissorhands), and musician Jack White.

Returning collaborators to Minghella's team included cinematographer John Seale, score composer Gabriel Yared, and editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now). In order to stay within budget, a large portion of the production was shot in the Carpathian mountains of Romania, which resembled North Carolina enough to get approval from Frazier after visiting the location. Additional photography took place in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Faced with whittling down a 5-hour assembly cut to normal feature length, Murch made news by editing the film on his computer at home with Final Cut Pro (unheard of for a large studio production), eventually writing a book about the process and the new options available to editors. The songs in the film, made up of traditional folk standards and new compositions, was supervised by veteran producer T-Bone Burnett, and includes contributions from White, Alison Krauss, and Sting. Kidman and Gleeson play instruments on camera during the film.

The film was released on Christmas Day to mostly positive reviews, with a healthy box office take. It factored heavily in the awards season, earning 9 Oscar nominations, 8 Golden Globe nominations, and 13 BAFTA nominations, with Zellweger winning honors in her Supporting category for all three.

Running time is 2.5 hrs.