Quick Cuts

Determinator

Joining the ranks of the hardiest filmmakers ever (think John Huston directing “The Dead” from a wheelchair while struggling with emphysema, an oxygen tank at his side) is “Mansfield Park” director Patricia Rozema. Yes, it’s a Jane Austen adaptation, but the actual production was anything but genteel. “We filmed in a crumbling old ruin, and the slate of the roof had been sold off years before, so half the time the biggest struggle was keeping the actors warm enough.” The actors fared all right, but three days before shooting was scheduled to wrap Rozema was hit with a case of meningitis. “It was just sudden blinding headache, ambulance, emergency spinal tap. Everything was put on hold for two weeks and--although I was quarantined--I directed the last few days from an ambulance, with a monitor and a walkie-talkie.”

Heavy Lifting Department

Several actors have taken on seriously heavy characters this season. To wit: Model-turned-chanteuse-turned-actress Milla Jovovich plays the martyred French teen in “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc”; Irish-born actor Gabriel Byrne is Satan in the apocalyptic thriller “End of Days”; and Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette tackles the role of God in Kevin Smith’s “Dogma.” But for casting that stretches credibility to the snapping point, there’s Cameron Diaz as the owner of a professional football team in Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday,” and Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist and weapons expert (the aforementioned Dr. Jones) in “The World Is Not Enough.”

Long Hauls

“The Green Mile,” 3 hours (without the credits).

“Magnolia,” approximately 3 hours.

“The Emperor and the Assassin,” 2 hours, 40 minutes.

“The Insider,” 2 hours, 38 minutes.

“Hurricane,” 2 hours, 26 minutes.

“The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc,” 2 hours, 21 minutes.

“Angela’s Ashes,” 2 hours, 20 minutes.

R.I.P.

Rumors have buzzed for weeks that director Frank Darabont had inserted a “secret” message into his death-row drama “The Green Mile.” When asked, the director nswered, “Are you kidding? I absolutely confirm that [there’s] a secret message in ‘The Green Mile.’ This rumor can keep us going for years!” In a cemetery scene toward the end of the movie, every name on the headstones is an anagram of the word “story,” which, our source says, is Darabont’s way of saying that, at least in Hollywood, the story is dead.