Infamous

I don’t have the heart to compare this to the film that beat it in the Capote sweepstakes, but it would make an interesting exercise; throw in Richard Brooks’ stark film of In Cold Blood, and you could really examine three different ways of handling the same material. Put aside the comparison and this is a decent little film, with an astounding cast: Toby Jones is Capote to a T, Sandra Bullock is authentically Alabamian as Harper Lee, Daniel Craig is a powerful Perry Smith, and Capote’s NY retinue is impersonated delightfully by the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini, Hope Davis, and Peter Bogdanovich. Though egotistical and devious, this Capote is not as big a villain as the other. See, it’s impossible not to talk comparatively about these simultaneously produced and equally effective films on the same small subject, with precedence to the one that made it to theaters first. So this Truman is funnier, less distasteful, and more intelligible to me. By all means, if you have the stomach for it, see either or both. And maybe I’ll get around to reading the book, which I eschewed as off-puttingly popular at the time it was published -- I remember riding a train back to college, and half the people in the car were reading it. I read lots of other Capote, but determined to avoid In Cold Blood. Now it seems that it can’t be avoided. (2006, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-68.)