The English Patient director has died aged 54, reports the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7302841.stm

I'm shocked. So young. There are plenty of middle of the road filmmakers but few good ones, and THE ENGLISH PATIENT and THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY are exemplary. I hear his BUTTERFLY is terrific, too. I imagine THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY will cap a forehortened career with another hit. (He played Vanessa Redgrave's briefly seen TV interviewer in ATONEMENT.)

Shocked here as well, I can't believe it. That's extremely sad and he's been involved with some amazing films. Hope his family is well, at that age it seems that it was probably pretty unexpected.

I love ENGLISH PATIENT and THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. In fact, with the latter, I remember thinking that Minghella made a film that Kubrick might have made if he'd been more prolific. It's also a really great modern Hitchcock movie. For all of his obvious attempts to ape Hitch', DePalma wishes he could have made a movie as good as MR. RIPLEY.

And COLD MOUNTAIN is almost certainly the best film that I've never gotten around to seeing. Hell, it's a Minghella Civil War film with Jack White in the cast. What am I waiting for?

And I know that he in a low period thanks to the buggered release of BREAKING & ENTERING, but I figured that it was just a hiccup on the way to greater things. I recently looked at his IMDB page thinking that Minghella's best work was probably still head of him.

I'm not only sorry to hear this news, but genuinely angry about it as well.

My thoughts go out to his family.

This is very shocking. I was watching an interview with him on BBC2's The Culture Show only three days ago. He was hardly one of my favorite directors, but none of his films is without interest. THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY is showing on BBC1 this Sunday (and is featured on the cover of this week's Radio Times, the BBC's listings magazine).

Jeffrey Wells has more.

And Variety's obit mentions Minghella's producing partner Sydney Pollack as "gravely ill." I can only assume Pollack has vetted such a description. More's the pity.