On I List of Movie Reviews
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Infamous (2006)
Rate:
9
Viewed:
2/26
2/26:
After seeing Infamous, I had to go back to my review of Capote
and make several changes while downgrading the rating from '9' to '8'.
Clearly, this movie is much better and a lot more fun. The other one mostly consisted of characters walking
around and creating empty spaces. Infamous is more informative and goes deeper overall. That's because
it's based on a different book and the director did so much research that he insisted on achieving total
accuracy. But...get rid of Gwyneth Paltrow! Who's the joker for thinking she would be a singer?
Philip Seymour Hoffman may have won the Oscar for Best Actor, but let's not kid ourselves: Toby Jones is
truly Truman Capote. The resemblance and the voice are uncanny. It's like watching the guy come back from
the dead. On the other hand, Sandra Bullock makes for a better Harper Lee than Catherine Keener.
I was actually fine with Clifton Collins, Jr.'s portrayal of Perry Smith, but Daniel Craig didn't do that bad
and went further this time in regard to his character's homosexual relationship with Truman Capote (that's
what I thought the whole time while reading In Cold Blood;
Capote was mum on this subject). The following is according to Wikipedia:
"Assistant Director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation Harold Nye admitted to George Plimpton that 'Capote
paid for privacy so the two could be intimate' and that 'they had become lovers in the penitentiary. I can't
prove it, but they spent a lot of time up there in the cell, he spent a considerable amount of money bribing
the guard to go around the corner, and they were both homosexuals and that was what happened.'"
All in all, Capote is worth watching, but Infamous is the
true winner, thanks to Toby Jones' dead-on performance of Truman Capote.