Cold Mountain the movie
 

We were lucky enough to be given an invitation to see the screening of Cold Mountain with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law last night.
Although it was a rough cut, 3 hours long and still needed scoring, it was pretty much finished.
If you read the book, you will know the end. All in all, it was a brilliant film and excellent in the Anti-War catagory.
What does this have to do with TRAVEL you ask?
The film takes place in NC and the South/Virginia, during the Civil War.
So where do you think they filmed it ?
North Carolina, Canada and Romania!!
Why Romania? I haven't been there so someone might tell me if it looks just like the mountains of NC :)
Anyway-just thought I would tell you and advise you to see it in December :)

yep...my son who plays the old time music and knows a musician who was over in Romania teaching the actors how to fiddle said that Romania looked like NC/VA once looked like during the civil war.
Sounds like that could be a good "next trip"!

great book!

By the way..after I read the book I wanted to see Cold MT....there is a great campground that you walk into...privately owned. You can park nearby off the road...there is a river that runs thru it and is very quiet and beautiful. If anyone is interested I can search for the name.

I am really looking forward to seeing that film! Thanks for the advance notice about locales. I saw Message In A Bottle a few years ago which was set in the Outer Banks but filmed in Maine. Both places are gorgeous but Maine is so not the Outer Banks. It ruined the movie for me. Perhaps I can squeeze in a quick trip to Romania to see for myself....

There was a huge outage by the state of North Carolina about filming the movie in Romania instead of NC. The NC movie industy is dying because of productions moving to Canada (and Romania). Glad to know the scenery looks right instead of it was done in "Message in a Bottle"

How close to the book was the movie?

I was watching Message In A Bottle and the scenery killed the movie for me also.

Excellent book. I hope the movie is just as good!

Were they looking for input from the audience? Or, was the screening just for those involved in the production?

There was input after the film. Also production sort of stuff ..

I had a problem with the book. Too long descriptive sentences, ( sort of the way I write!) and the ending :)
I mostly skimmed the book.

But as far as I could tell, they stuck to the book. Right down to that ending.
Which came up a lot afterwards in the discussions.

Another interesting bit-almost all of the actors are English/Irish/Australian. Some are my favorite actors too and they all did excellent Southern accents :)

I'm glad I'm not the only person who didn't like the ending. One of my literary friends was a cheering me to the end. My dad enjoyed it (and the ending) and when I told him of my objections to the ending he sort of looked at me with a "huh?" expression.

Scarlett, as a born southerner, do you hate horrible southern accents? I find the bad southern accent grates on my nerves.

I'm looking forward to seeing this movie, although it does steam me they didn't film the movie here in Western North Carolina.

I could understand moving the production elsewhere perhaps if Cold Mountain were blanketed from stem to stern in condominiums, as too many mountains around here are, but it's pristine! It's preserved -- so why not at least humor us a little and feature the mountain in the movie?

Grrr, I say. But, I suppose I can take comfort in the way North Carolina just keeps pumping out oustanding writers like Charles Frasier. Even if Hollywood never gets it through its thick skull that the actual setting of the book would be the best place to film the movie version of that book, at least there will never be a shortage of good books featuring North Carolina.

And speaking of good books set in North Carolina, now that we've gotten Cold Mountain out of the way, howzabout some movies inspired by Kathy Reichs's novels? What say, Hollywood?

I was lucky enough to have spent some time in Romania and i can tell you that there are parts of trannsylvania [yes it exists] that look remarkably similar to VA NC. However, in all honesty they could have filmed really anywhere and gotten away with it. to those who suggest the sentences were "too long" i say go grab yourself a mary higgens clark or tom clancy or some other crappy "best seller". There is a reason Charles Frazier won the National Book Award for Cold Mountain, and it is the prose and the dialogue. I was fortunate enough to hear him read passages from the book at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver.

As for the ending... you want a Hollywood Ending go rent Shawshank Redemption again.

ncgrrl, yes, a bad put-on Southern accent can be so unpleasant while a natural one can be soothing and nice on the ears ~
I hardly have an accent any more..too much Yankee influence ((L))
hauntedhead, they did use some of NC but I think not the mountains. They were in some mangrove sort of places and along a beach, so I am thinking the coast more than the mountains. I have fond memories of Chimney Rock and throwing rocks on some Yankee soldiers grave :) and going to Little Switzerland and staying there when my grandfather was chef there. Always in the fall, so my memories are of the crisp beauty of the place and that great autumn smell~

The south does produce some great authors. Pat Conroy is my favorite.

Scarlett -- Autumn is defnitely the mountains' season of glory. In most of the rest of the South, springtime is the season to see but here... Even when the leaves barely turn color at all, when the goldenrod and asters, and butterfly trees all bloom the fields still blaze with colors. And when it's a good year for leaf color... well, then! It's another way we're set apart from the rest of Dixie, I suppose.

Flopmeister -- If Transylvania resembles parts of the mountainous regions of WNC and western Virginia, I guess it should surprise no one that there is a Transylvania County in WNC! It's the only county in the United States with that name as far as I know.

Pat Conroy...now there's a haunted head!! :) Our boat is named after one of his books, GoTravel. My husband insisted, and I wasn't coming up with anything better. Inauspiciously, in the end of that book the old family home succombs to beach erosion and is swallowed by the sea. Beats me why he'd want to give that name to a boat, but I'm hoping this is something akin to contrarian good luck :lol

OO, he is nuts that's for sure. Saw him snoozing on a park bench on the waterfront in Beaufort one Saturday morning. Friend of mine played baseball with him at the Citadel and said he was the funniest guy in the class. Read somewhere they are making a movie out of the book! I hope it as good as La Streisand's The Prince of Tides.

It was during my reading of Cold Mountain that I once again fell in love with the art of writing. Some sentences I read over again simply because they were so great. I had the book with me on a long solo trip to Europe and finished it cover to cover and then read it again before I got back home.

I dread seeing the film (although I know I won't be able to stay away) because for me it wasn't really about the "action" but the language. How can anyone capture the feeling the words induce? Has there ever been a satisfactory screen adaptation of one's favorite books?

Even my spouse (a NCAA nut) says Pat Conroy is a whining loser, if you read his losing season book about Citadel basketball in SC youll see for yourself. This will be a movie - ha. He screwed up at every opportunity just to get back at his dad. His writing style is bogus and tiring. When he does manage to accomplish something, he ruins it. Every chance he gets he reminds readers he's a loser and coward. My friends tell us reading his stuff is painful.

My Goodness, Helen Zass! Your three posts on Fodors are all so negative!

I find it mildly interesting that HelenZass has already removed its name from Fodors. Someone is trolling today!

Yes, he's on the edge, GoTravel! I think he still lives around Fripp doesn't he? (No wonder he wrote about houses falling into the sea!! LOL) Of all his books I enjoyed the <u>The Water Is Wide</u> about his teaching experience on Daufuskie the most.

Yes Lola, &quot;it&quot; is quite droit--and that a learned skill so you'd think it'd take more than a day to perfect, wouldn't you? lol I'm sure it's still smiling somewhere though. :P teehee

Make that &quot;adroit&quot;....droit, it is not! :)

Well Helen, why on earth do your friends keep reading Conroy if it's so painful? Are they masochists? If so, they may want to read some of your fodors posts.

:D Someone deserves extra points for a most comical screen name! I wonder who Helen is and what is so special about her A** ? LOL~

I just read that Nicole Kidman thought that the movie might get lost in the Hollywood shuffle, all the holiday movies will be coming out around Christmas and this is due to open Christmas Day.
I think the reviews will be good though and most people that read the book will want to see how they did the movie.

Does anyone have a favorite book that they would like to see as a movie?

But I would still like to see a good English murder mystery, maybe one by Elizabeth George or Minetta Walters.
What do you say?

I think the book &quot;The Secret Life of Bees&quot; by Sue Monk Kidd is ripe for a movie! Beautiful South Carolina setting, and what a time frame, in the early 1960s! So many important things were going on then--Kennedy's presidency, the civil rights movemement--to name a few. And the book tells a beautiful story, beautifully told.

And who knows? Maybe they'd actually film in SC!

... oh, I do agree - SC is a terrific place.

... for the film, I was down at Myrtle Beach at every opportunity (before it was built up!). That was seminal in my existence, and reflective of life in the 60s - surely it deserves a scene.

Setting: lonely SC highway - cooler perched on 'vette rear lid - fab woman by my side - exceeding the speed limit - headed for the beach.

Action ... Lights ... Camera.

I see an Oscar.

Scarlett - A book to movie... How about &quot;Confederacy of Dunces&quot;? Haven't read it in years, but I think it would be a fun movie. Set in New Orleans (Have to keep this travel related...)

Austin...he's another who was waaaaay over the edge...what is it with authors? What a fantastic book though, and what a look behind-the-scenes through a (crazy) New Orleanian's eyes. I picture Ignatius Reilly as mirroring John Toole. Talk about ROFLMBO... Too bad it was his only book.

I have read many of his writings and books about him, and have most enjoyed the &quot;Motorcycle Diaries&quot; of Che Guevara. I am reading a book right where the author is riding the same path and is describing his experiences along the way. I think a movie is in production now with a talented Mexican actor but I would rather see more of his youth and education than the political strife of his later life. I guess I will have to wait and see.

That Mexican actor is Benicio DelToro and Steven Soderburgh is making the movie. I would see that!

Sounds good so far ! =D&gt;

Benicio's a hotey

While they'd likely be a better fit for the small screen instead of the silver screen, I'd like to see Kathy Reichs's novels come to life -- on whichever screen!

They're fascinating -- the adventures of a character modelled on Reichs herself, a forensic anthropologist who commutes between Charlotte, NC and Montreal, Quebec. She teaches forensic anthropology at UNC-Charlotte and serves as the official anthropologist for the province of Quebec, where the burned and the mummified, the decayed, and the partially missing come to her lab where she listens to the tales their bones tale and then helps the police solve the crimes that landed the victims on her examination table.

The books bounce between Quebec and the Carolinas, where Reichs's character, Dr. Temperance Brennan, has helped catch a serial killer in Montreal, uncovered a horrifying connection between a plane crash in Bryson City, NC and a cannibalistic secret society, chased a murderous cult from small-town Quebec to Beaufort, SC, and nabbed a poacher who'd kill to protect his profits in Charlotte.

Great books, great characters, great writing, and great settings. I'd love to see them come to life -- and it would be even better if they actually filmed on location. From what I hear and have read, Montreal is a spectacular place, while Charlotte is a surprisingly groovy city that ought to get the chance to strut its stuff. And those little side trips to the mountains of WNC (Bryson City), and coastal South Carolina (Beaufort), would be nice too!

I LOVED the book. One of my all-time favorites. Refuse to see the movie. They hollywoodized it. Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellwinger as those two characters. Totally unbelievable and ridiculous.

I believe Benicio del Toro is Puerto Rican, raised mostly in the US. The accent he did in Traffic was not his own--he speaks English without an accent.

I know he doesn't have an accent, but I could swear he was talking about being Mexican, after filming Traffic.
Whatever he is, he is a good actor!

I have only read one book in the last 5 years and luckily Cold Mountain was the book I randomly picked from a library shelf. It was great. Now I want to read a 2nd novel but don't want to leave it to chance. Can someone recommend a book as good as Cold Mountain. I didn't know they made a movie of it, I will surely want to see it and hope it is as good as the book.

Remember Michael Crichtons book Timeline? That has been made into a film now..that should be fun!

Governator: The only book I read after Cold Mountain that I enjoyed as much was Sea Biscuit. Its a little slow at the beginning and you have to give it a chance. It is very well written. In fact, in the notes the author said that she also loved Cold Mountain and was influenced by Jane Austin. Another favorite of mine.