Capote reviews

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Post by OscarGuy »

The movie wasn't terrible. Though, it was dreadfully slow. (I just got to watch it tonight). There were times when Hoffman came very close to capturing the man himself but the voice just grated on my nerves after awhile. I thought Keener also somewhat exasperating at times.

I'm miffed at a lot of alterations to the actual story (Truman's book is fantastic, why do they have to change parts of the truth to make it quicker when what was there was more dramatic). There were plenty of factual details abandoned in the creation of the film. It was nothing more than a character study and while it wasn't nearly as passionate as I would have hoped, Hoffman did have a few exemplary scenes (including one near the end when he's speaking to Perry and Dick for the final time).

The movie was not great, not even good. It was merely passable as filmed entertainment. I, personally, though there should have been more coverage of his interviews with the people of Holcomb but to each their own.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

As a showcase for Hoffman, I thought Capote was quite engaging (when it didn't sag, which was too often). But by keeping the focus of the film limited to a character study and by keeping the cinematic tone neutral, the film ends up being a failure. I don't mean to be an ethics fundamentalist - that's Armond White's job - but I found the Truman Capote depicted here was absolutely repugnant and the movie only seems to be saying "Well, he was no saint, but..." Not good enough for me.

Capote gets some of its smaller points across successfully, such as the contrasts between the small heartland town and huge, sophisticated metropolis - each isolated from the world in their own way - and it beautifully captures the strained relationship between Truman and his partner, author Jack Dunphy. I certainly have no qualms with Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance, which I thought was terriffic. I know some people here find him to be a self-indulgent actor, and he can be. But having to portray a real-life character puts restraints on his worst tendencies. And it's more than just imitation. Hoffman has to convince us that this whiny nebbish, this diminutive flamer who loves to show off his Bergdorff scarf, can muscle his way into jail cells and other people's psyches, has the strength to manipulate the media for his own purposes. And he does. But I partly agree with the Village Voice's J. Hoberman. The movie is only about Truman, and how the crime affected him personally, psychologically and professionally. But when he says "Hoffman bogarts the oxygen; everyone else asphyxiates" he has the vacuum tube pointed in the wrong direction. It's the filmmakers sucking out the oxygen by making the focus of the film so narrow. In Cold Blood may be a milestone in literature, but its subject matter also makes it a dubious achievement. As credible a goal as humanizing cold-blooded killers may be, there's a yang to every ying. The only time the filmmakers suggests how damaging Capotes' literary endeavor may be to the small and already traumatized town the murders took place in is through very brief commentary by the agent investigating the case (Chris Cooper, authoritative and wonderful as usual). The only times the filmmakers suggest that there is something crass about an adoring public waiting breathlessly to hear how artfully a phrase can be turned regarding real life mass murderers are occassionally critical shots of Truman snobbishly looking up into a literal spotlight. For me, the low point of the film was the shots of Truman coming on stage to read passages of his just-published book to an applauding, adoring audience of sophisticated intelligensia. This is the low-point because these shots are wholly uncritical about this relationship between author-celebrity and audience. While the film acknowledges Truman is laboring under an unhealthy pathology in his zeal to befriend the killers in order to get the story, it stubbornly refuses to acknowledge there may be an underlying pathology when an audience clamors for enlightenment from a storyteller-journalist's rendition of a grusome murder. Indeed, the title cards before the end credits fill in the biographical details of how the murders and the book affected Capote and Capote alone, as if no one else was touched by the murders or the execution, as if it were The Doors for bookworms. Capote chides, but doesn't have the courage to condemn.
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Post by Big Magilla »

A perfect book-end to Richard Brooks' 1967 film of In Cold Blood, this is a nicely executed little movie that will probably have to win a slew of critics' awards to really make Hoffman the front-runner for the Oscar. He is good in surprising ways. No, not the whine, which isn't that bad as there are long periods of his not saying anyting in the film. Rather it's the way he plays Capote as a two-faced liar and con man who can't even sumon up enthusiasm to congratualte his best friend, Harper Lee, on the success of her acclaimed novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Hoffman and Clifton Collins, Jr. as killer Perry Smith are the only strong acting Oscar contenders. Catherine Keener as Harper Lee is good, but with no big dramatic scenes, she doesn't seem to have much of a chance. A best screenlay nod is also possible but director and film seem a stretch.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

From Rush and Malloy in the New York Daily News

'Capote' figure called un-Tru

Oscar handicappers are calling Philip Seymour Hoffman the man to beat for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote in "Capote." But old hands at the New Yorker are rankled by the movie's take on the magazine's late and beloved editor William Shawn, as played by Bob Balaban.

Longtime New Yorker contributor Roger Angell notes that the film has the painfully shy Shawn holding a press conference "and talking about how to make [Capote's book] 'In Cold Blood' more newsworthy. Shawn never did anything in his life to make something more newsworthy."

In the movie, Shawn also accompanies Capote to the execution of the murderers. "He was too nervous to travel, by and large," Angell tells us.

Writer Ken Auletta likewise took exception with the brusque and terribly social Shawn of "Capote."

"I don't believe he would have had that kind of breathless quality [Balaban has]," Auletta told us yesterday at a Newhouse School panel. "Shawn didn't talk that way. He held writers' hands. He held Capote's hand, and nurtured him and supported him."

Shawn's actor son, Wallace, couldn't be reached yesterday, but we're sure he'll have some thoughts.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Capote

Denis Seguin in Toronto
Screendaily

Dir. Bennett Miller. US. 2005. 110mins.


Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers a galvanising and awards-worthy performance in Capote, the superb dramatisation of US novelist Truman Capote at the zenith of his career: the six years from 1959 to 1965 that he devoted to his ground-breaking ‘non-fiction’ novel In Cold Blood.

But the real star of the show is Bennett Miller in his feature film directorial debut. The director of the award-winning documentary The Cruise has achieved a tender and sometimes macabre view into the parasitic connection between an artist and his subject.

Being the story of a writer – there is no sturm und drang, no car chases or close shaves to appease the inattentive audience – it’s an unlikely candidate for break-out. Sony Pictures Classics release Capote in the US on Sept 30.

A story based on a cultural icon of Capote’s stature is made doubly difficult because the man became in later life that terrible cliche of celebrity, famous for being famous and the butt of any number of impressionists because of his high drawling voice. That is how Capote is remembered 22 years after his death at 59 from alcoholism.

Hoffman banishes this image. He resurrects the Capote of that era, 35-years-old and at the top of his game. It’s less a portrayal than an embodiment, despite the fact that Capote was just over five feet tall.

Similarly, the film resurrects In Cold Blood. While the 40 years since its publication have shown the power and popularity of novelisations of actual events – Alive, The Hot Zone and The Perfect Storm - the film reminds us how truly ground-breaking Capote’s work was. At minimum, the book should enjoy a resurgence in popularity.

Capote was no stranger to journalism and his first encounter with the murder of a Kansas family – he’s seen clipping with precise scissor snips from the New York Times - seemed like another long magazine piece.

With his childhood friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) as his research assistant, he sets off on the train to Kansas, and the first sensational Capote insight: a black train porter with florid ease compliments Capote on his latest novel. Capote thanks him. The porter leaves. A beat. Lee looks at Capote, “You paid him to say that.” Capote looks at her, “Was it that obvious?” It’s an ice-breaking moment that sets the film on course, establishing the playful side of a monumental ego and laying the foundation for an almost graphic depiction of how the work grew to consume its writer.

From the moment Capote steps off that train to the last frames as he drains yet another cocktail, the film gets everything right. Arriving in Kansas, Capote is beat-generation camp until he recognises that his appearance may distract the good folk of Kansas, including the local detective (Cooper) he has come to interview.

From there on he wears dark suits – so dressed, he does a pirouette for an approving Lee. Again, these are the subtle moments where the film is most impressive. There’s no direct reference in the dialogue and yet the meaning is clear.

Supporting players are all strong but the discovery is Clifton Collins Jr as Perry Smith, a person who mesmerised Capote by subverting his expectation of a killer. Collins has the same effect on the audience. Capote was drawn to Smith because the two men were very much alike in their background and sensitivity. “We could have been born in the same house, except I walked out the front door and Perry walked out the back.”

If the film drags toward the end, it may have more to do with the surreal torpor of their final exchanges as the writer waited for his subjects to be executed so that he could finish his book.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Capote
By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter


TORONTO - Just as Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" represented something entirely new in American literature - a non-fiction novel, as Capote correctly called it - the movie "Capote" represents something unique in cinema. It's a hybrid that borrows from bio-pics, docu-dramas and the kind of true-life stories that turn up on television as MOWs. Unlike Capote's book, this film cannot claim to have invented a new genre. But "Capote" certainly expands the possibilities and extends the reach of cinema into the private create and emotional lives of real people, both living and dead.

Most eye-catching for critics and audiences in the weeks to come will be Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant metamorphosis into the persona of the late author. Capote is a man easily imitated, yet hard to pin down, a slippery devil who took one guise after another to cover up the loneliness of his personal nature and his genius. Hoffman gets it all.

Sony Pictures Classics will rightfully hitch the film's marketing to this remarkable performance. Yet "Capote" is a team effort, involving an exceptional screenplay by Dan Futterman and a director, Bennett Miller, willing to move at a painstaking pace to make certain all the nuances, conflicts and contradictions get fully explored.

Yes, it is slow moving. The catastrophe of an answered prayer - a thing that Capote said causes more tears than an unanswered one - only gradually takes shape. The movie will probably not achieve the boxoffice success of Richard Brooks' 1967 movie version of "In Cold Blood" But it could break out of the art-house niche. Word of mouth, critical response and year-end awards may determine how far it does....


....Finally, the film does rest on Hoffman's shoulders but Futterman's words, often cribbed from life, and the structure of his screenplay beautifully delineates all these developments.

This is a meticulous production where Jess Gonchor's set design tells us much about the people who inhabit these places and environments hauntingly photographed by Adam Kimmel have a powerful effect on people. Mychael Danna's muted score, relying heavily on the piano, never intrudes but only amplifies the dramatic content.

"Capote" is one gutsy film.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Venice awards are this Saturday (per Variety).

Toronto plays through next Sunday (18th); I don't know when the audience awards are announced.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

By the way, does anyone know when will the winners of the Venice and Toronto fests will be announced? Is it this Sunday?
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I'm not sure what the other trade papers are waiting for, but here's some internet (and otherwise) buzz on Capote.

From Cindy Adams' column in the NY Post (9/8/05):
http://www.nypost.com/gossip/cindy.htm (requires registration)
Sony's soon-due Capote to show at the New York Film Festival. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar material for this one, is magnificent, marvelous, astounding. Looks exactly, sounds exactly, acts exactly as Truman. So much so that, in certain scenes, he even ad-libbed his own cocktail party chatter . . .


from Fest films garnering notice; Several already emerging as 'must sees'
http://www.metronews.ca/movies/details.asp?id=10637
Capote: Already being touted as an Oscar contender, Capote may well be Philip Seymour Hoffman's best performance to date. The film follows legendary writer Truman Capote as he researches a gruesome murder for his novel In Cold Blood, a groundbreaking work that introduced the true-crime genre to literature. Hoffman and co-star Catherine Keener (The Forty Year-Old Virgin) as Nelle Harper Lee delve deep into the psyches of two larger-than-life characters and resurface with impassioned depictions.


from "Capote, Cash, Dylan pics top Telluride fest"
http://www.leadingthecharge.com/stories/ne...ws-0068214.html
TELLURIDE, Colorado (Hollywood Reporter) - Philip Seymour Hoffman came to check out the competition, and he liked what he saw and heard.

His starring role in Bennett Miller‘s "Capote" was the talk of the sold-out 32nd Telluride Film festival, which took place during the four-day Labor Day holiday weekend.

Hoffman‘s performance as fey New Yorker Truman Capote, in Kansas to report on Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, the murderers he portrayed in his 1966 nonfiction novel, "In Cold Blood," wowed many of the 2,000 pass holders at this tiny Rocky Mountain ski resort. An Oscar nomination for Hoffman appears inevitable, observers said, and Catherine Keener , who co-stars as novelist Harper Lee, could find herself in the supporting actress race.


from IN TELLURIDE | "Capote", "Paradise Now", "Edmond"
http://blogs.indiewire.com/eug/archives/005677.html
Truman Capote's writing of "In Cold Blood" is such an intriguing story that it has resulted in two new feature films about the acclaimed author and his writing of the acclaimed non-fiction novel. Bennett Miller's ""Capote", starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as the writer, debuted last night here in Telluride, prior to screenings at the Toronto and New York film festivals later this month (a Killer Films production dubbed "Every Word Is True" is rumored to have been bumped to late next year).

On day 1 in Telluride "Capote" was clearly the buzz title, showing twice to a potential max capacity of 1,150 people. Hoffman's nuanced performance as Capote is the big news, the actor brings the character to life in such a rich way that for the first few minutes its nearly hard to take it: the voice, the mannerisms, the style. But as Capote learns of the murder of a family in rural Kansas and begins researching the story for a book, the film swiftly becomes an engrossing exploration of the relationship between Capote and one of the killers, offering a fascinating study of the relationship between the two. The look, the mood, the script, and the performances are all exceptional.


from "SNEAK PREVIEW: Capote"
http://blogs.indiewire.com/reverseshot/arc...ves/005664.html
Priveleged to catch a screening of Bennet Miller’s Capote the other night. I cannot remember the last time I was so disconcertingly enthralled, so self-consciously immersed in a film. I might not’ve made the trip uptown were it not for the recent announcement of the New York Film Festival lineup which includes the work. Philip Seymour Hoffman – storied indie lovable, perennially undervalued, underused, blah, blah, blah – plays the title role.

I am not an avid reader of Truman Capote’s work, nor am I a student of literary history. Until that night, mention of In Cold Blood – title of the work around which the film revolves and the last book the author finished – elicited only vague renderings of literary criticism half-read. Bennett – first-time feature director (not-so-hot off the heels of the Timothy “Speed” Levitch doc The Cruise – if that isn’t a shot out of left field…) has managed an acute, austere portrait of utter and harrowing poignancy. I hesitate to call anything poignant and hope not to for a very long time after this, but #### it, I’m blogging.

The film, were it less than the success it is, could remain aloft through academy season solely on the power of its players alone. Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, and Clifton Collins Jr. as inmate Perry Smith give performances worthy of any accolades that come their way. And Hoffman, ripe as he is for the perfect vehicle, has outdone himself. To my knowledge, that’s about as high a compliment as I could give. But to anyone reading this, praising Philip Seymour Hoffman for his acting chops is a waste of words.

Capote manages biopic with only a few years of a life; it felt like the finest qualities of exacting portraiture were recalled here. In comparison, Scorcese’s fly guy seems bathed in fat and excess; somehow unwound on film. Bennett carves a small, harrowing monument to the artist as outsider through examination of Capote’s process as he researches and writes about a pair of murderers and their oft-delayed but ultimately inexorable slide into the hands of capital punishment – the subject of Capote’s “Non-Fiction Novel.” Hoffman, as the dandy, the drunkard, the journalist and eventual friend to one of the killers, crafts one of the most memorable of all beloved and doomed artists to grace silver screens in recent history.

I guess I’m moved enough to write this because I’ve no interest in the biopic as mere biography, loaded as that statement may seem. Call me some kind of romantic, borne of the Kane ethos. But this is great stuff. The potential, as they say.

This is also my goodbye to a summer of delightful treats that did just fine by me, and my hello to the best thing about the start of the fall: The New York Film Festival and some real heavy hitters.

Catch this one.
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Post by Reza »

I think it's time I finally watched In Cold Blood. I've had it lying around on video for over a year now.
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From Variety.

Seems like a winner. And Clifton Collins as Perry Smith might get the nomination alot of us felt Robert Blake deserved in 1967.

Capote


A Sony Pictures Classics release of a United Artists, Sony Pictures Classics presentation of an A-Line Pictures, Cooper's Town Prods., Infinity Media production. Produced by Caroline BaronCaroline Baron, William Vince, Michael Ohoven. Executive producers, Dan Futterman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kerry Rock, Danny Rosett. Directed by Bennett Miller. Screenplay, Dan Futterman, based on the book by Gerald Clarke.

Truman Capote - Philip Seymour Hoffman
Nelle Harper Lee - Catherine Keener
Perry Smith - Clifton Collins Jr.
Alvin Dewey - Chris Cooper
Jack Dunphy - Bruce Greenwood
William Shawn - Bob Balaban
Mary Dewey - Amy Ryan
Dick Hickock - Mark Pellegrino

By DAVID ROONEY
The creation of a milestone in both modern literature and journalism -- which became a memorable 1967 movie -- is explored to reveal yet more riveting layers in "Capote," an unsettlingly intimate account of Truman Capote's obsessive research into the brutal 1959 killings of a Kansas family that yielded the groundbreaking faction work, "In Cold Blood." The mesmerizing performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman as the celebrated writer dominates every scene, while director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman's penetrating study enthralls in every aspect, making this Sony Pictures Classics release sure to figure high among the fall's prestige specialty draws.

Inherited by SPC from United Artists, "Capote" is the first of two indie projects on the same period in the subject's life, each culled from major biographies -- in this case, Gerald Clarke's probing, compassionate 1988 book. Due in 2006 from Warner Independent PicturesWarner Independent Pictures is Doug McGrath's "Have You Heard?", based on George Plimpton's 1997 assembly of recollections from those who knew Capote.

The first narrative feature from Miller (1998 docudocu-portrait "The Cruise""The Cruise"), and the first screenplay penned by actor Futterman (best known for roles in "The Birdcage" and "Will & Grace"), the film's most notable qualities perhaps are its quiet perceptiveness and unhurried sense of purpose, showing a sure-footedness and maturity that usually are the domain of far more experienced filmmakers. Futterman takes small liberties with the events and persons but his approach is one of measured respectfulness.

There's a graceful calibration and balance evident in the central positioning of Capote among opposites. Complete with an uncannily precise take on the prissy, infantile voice, and with all the author's characteristically fey mannerisms -- the batted eyelashes; the hands constantly fluttering to adjust his hair and glasses; the languid flourish with which he waves a cigarette, a martini or telephone; the perpetually raised pinkie -- Hoffman's Capote is Southern flamboyance taken to baroque extremes, yet at all times vulnerable and real.

One of his closest associates during the period portrayed here is Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), then on the cusp of fame with "To Kill a Mockingbird." The polar opposite of her childhood friend, she's the epitome of another kind of Southerner: down-to-earth, plain-spoken, unpretentious.

No less distinct from the central character is William Shawn (Bob Balaban), Capote's sedate, gentlemanly editor at The New Yorker, who agreed to the author's request to go to Kansas and write a story on the impact of the Clutter family killings on rural Holcomb. Likewise Capote's straight-up, dependable longtime companion Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood), and the taciturn, masculine Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent who led the hunt for the two ex-con drifters responsible for the murders, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.).

The depiction of Capote as a social alien -- even when holding court at the Gotham soirees that were far more germane to him than Kansas farm country -- adds poignancy to the sense of kindred, misunderstood spirits that evolves between the writer and Smith. The convicted killer transfixes Truman from his first sight of him to his much-delayed execution, fueling the writer's creative genius but also destabilizing him emotionally. In many ways, this is a tragic story of unfulfilled love.

"It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house, and he stood up and went out the back door while I went out the front," says Capote. The film succeeds remarkably in tracing the process by which Truman gained the trust and esteem of a man he described as "remote, suspicious, sullenly sleepy-eyed" -- all qualities brought to wounded life in Collins' deeply etched performance.

But what's most affecting is the double edge of Capote's literary achievement -- he invented the "non-fiction novel" with "In Cold Blood," which brought him for the first time to a mass audience -- and the shattering personal cost at which it came. He never completed another book, later descending into alcoholism and obesity, burning bridges with his rich socialite pals.

Futterman's script addresses with honesty the unpaid debt of a writer to his subject, as well as touching eloquently on the creative process, the bonding between misunderstood outcasts, the randomness of violent crime and the inhumanity of taking a life, on either side of the law. The film also acknowledges, as Capote did, the thin divide between quiet, conservative American life and its violent underbelly.

Hoffman never shies away from painting the subject as a vain, self-absorbed spotlight-seeker and a guileful manipulator, milking Smith and Hickock's death row agony for personal and professional glorification. But even when impatiently awaiting an execution date to give his book an ending, when deceiving Smith or using vicious, dismissive words to hurt him, Truman never becomes an entirely unsympathetic monster; the impact on the writer of the two men's complex association is made achingly palpable. Capote's refusal to take notes during interviews allows for constantly locked eyes, which cranks up the intensity and intimacy of his encounters with Smith to almost painful levels in scenes shot in uneasy close-up.

Playing a brilliant man who presented himself as a caricature and was the target of endless comic impersonations for it, Hoffman's achievement in giving him dignity and soul is impressive indeed. While the actor's height works against physical accuracy as the diminutive author, the depths and sensitivity of his characterization overcome any doubts.

In addition to the arresting work of Collins, unerring support comes especially via subtle turns from Keener, Cooper and Pellegrino, while stage actress Amy Ryan has lovely moments as Dewey's wife, whose welcome breaks down barriers for Truman with the Kansans.

In a movie refreshing for its lack of flash, the frugal use of handheld camera in Truman's shaken final encounter with Hickock and Smith before their hanging is emotionally effective. Elsewhere, Adam Kimmel's controlled camera work creates a textured, grainy visual field, its retroretro flavor enhanced by a desaturated color palette and a painterly eye for the empty, wintry landscapes. (Canadian locations stood in for the Kansas prairies.)

No less polished, in the same judicious, unshowy way, are composer Mychael Danna's pensive score, the understated period look of production designer Jess Gonchor and costumer Kasia Walicka-Maimone's work, and Christopher Tellefsen's fluid editing, which builds suspensefully toward a full account of the night of the murders, and then, to the haunting executions.
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