This month of Best Picture nominees that didn’t quite get over the finish line to win the big prize comes to an end at Film Seizure. This week, the gang discusses Capote, the film that looks at some behind the scenes of the writer’s work on In Cold Blood and a Best Actor award for Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Film Seizure Podcast 
I watched both of the Capote pictures for the first time this weekend, Capote first, then Infamous. That was the wrong sequence.The comparison renders Infamous a TV movie, and I’m sorry to say not just in comparison. Most of the actors playing his friends only rise to the credibility level of a really good skit on SNL. It looks and feels like they’re having fun playing dress-up (Julie Walters excepted). The faux interviews feel about as fake as most fake interviews did pre-The Office. It may not drop to the level of ‘bad’, but it’s consistently distracting. Comparisons only hurt where Capote shone: the great Toby Jones feels like he’s doing a caricature only because Hoffman’s performance has so much going on under it. Sandra Bullock’s pretty over-the-top, Oscar winning, Blindside performance would have fit well into this movie, but she does better here. She grounds things, often a much needed presence, but again, next to Keener, she feels more mannered than present. Likewise the cinematography. My father commented on how great Capote looked a few times in the first 15 minutes. Infamous looks like Technicolor, which I generally prefer, because muted colors are so commonplace, but Capote did the common better than Infamous did the rare.The directing is problematic. It plays like the non R-pushing scenes in a Ryan Murphy production, many of which I like, I should say, but here it includes the fantasy he can bring in. His Hollywood comes to mind, because there it rose to the level of being distracting. Here, the Capote/Perry relationship is ultimately an open romance in this one, and that’s the thing with the direction. Here, it’s all on the surface, and that renders the playing with history kind of silly.It’s too late for you three, but if one had the opportunity, I’d have them watch Infamous first. It spends more time with Capote’s pre-In Cold Blood life, so it’s the better setup, and most people seem to think it only pales in comparison with Capote, rather than on its own, as I do, so seeing it first, there’s a better chance to like both. Then Capote can sweep in and focus more and more insightfully on the interesting part of the story, while mopping up some of the messes Infamous makes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry for the huge block of text. I had some paragraph divisions, but WordPress seems to like “hard to read” as a format.
LikeLiked by 1 person