Capote

[whitenavel]

Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role he was born to play. He was magnificent. He shined and an Oscar nom is sure to come his way. Great first feature from director Bennett Miller.
Nice supporting cast (Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood, Catherine Keener) but they are under used. It's purely PSH's film and he's great.
Clifton Collins is also superb as the murderer on death row. It takes patience to get through the flick, but if you like character pics with some great acting, check it out.

[RavinDave]

The mock accent is really terrible; labored and grating. I'm convinced that most those fawning over it don't really remember Capote (or never heard of him before this movie). Most are probably too young, I guess.

[whitenavel]

I guess I am too young. I have heard Capote (just a few times), and to me, that's what he sounded like. I thought Hoffman did an excellent job.

[The White Album]

The mock accent is really terrible; labored and grating. I'm convinced that most those fawning over it don't really remember Capote (or never heard of him before this movie). Most are probably too young, I guess.

Capote had the most grating voice for a public figure second only to Eleanor Roosevelt's ("Like a bantam rooster," Gore Vidal once described it). Don't know which Capote you remember, but PSH's rendition isn't that far off.

[RavinDave]

Don't know which Capote you remember, but PSH's rendition isn't that far off.

He makes the same mistake that 99% of the people who try to imitate WC Fields make -- they overcompensate, exagerrate and reduce it to caricature. PHS compounds this error; he seems to think a mincing lisp is sufficient. He misses the cadence, lilt and rhthym. He sounds more like Warner Brother's Droopy Dog (http://www.zachary.com/s/static/droopy) than Truman Capote.

I'm sure the acting itself is outstanding.

[whitenavel]

I'm sure the acting itself is outstanding.

Wait, you haven't even seen the film?
Your comments were based on clips and the trailer?

[RavinDave]

Wait, you haven't even seen the film?
Your comments were based on clips and the trailer?

I was only commenting on the voice.

Are trailers and previews unsuitable for that?

[whitenavel]

Not at all.
But you hear only him speak all of a few seconds. It sounds gimmicky seeing it only in the trailer.
Watching him throughout the film, he becomes that character.

[RavinDave]

Not at all.
But you hear only him speak all of a few seconds. It sounds gimmicky seeing it only in the trailer.
Watching him throughout the film, he becomes that character.

I hope you're right (though, in truth, I saw more than a few seconds).

I have no axe to grind, wish the film well and anticipate quite a battle between PSH and Joaquin Phoenix ("I Walk The Line") -- who, by all accounts ... Ebert the latest ... really does do a spot-on voicing of Johnny Cash. Assuming that movie is reasonably good -- the academy might have a tough time denying him the same award they gave Jamie Foxx for lip-synching through "Ray".

[Jake Schuster]

They key to getting Capote down cold isn't so much the pitch as in the languidness and rhythm of his speech. When he was on Johnny Carson (which he often was, and yes, I saw him many, many times) telling one of his horror stories (the dog and the window; the spider in the hair), he owned the audience; they sailed on his phrases until the pause, and then the payoff.

The contrast between the studied casualness of his speech and the pithiness of his substance was what made Capote such a brilliant raconteur.

[Hairy Lime]

I wonder if Jake ever saw this ... I'll have to call him up.

[Jake Schuster]

Just moving this over from the thread Hairy forgot:

This film takes one key episode from Capote's life--his obsession with the Clutter murders in Kansas, his subsequent, very complex relationship with one of the killers, and his relationship to the writing of the book--and makes it its subject

Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a performance that, like the film, is quiet, nuanced, exceptionally sensitive, and full of stillness, showing a writer at what he already knew would be the turning-point of his professional life, where writing was no longer storytelling but carried with it a greater responsibility.

It's a remarkable performance in a film that far exceeded my expectations. I would be amazed if his performance is bettered by any other this year. It was like listening to a performance of chamber music, and the writer and director have avoided being at any time shrill, going for easy laughs or mocking the eccentric that Capote's outward figure made him out to be. What especially impressed me was how the tone of this picture--autumnal, and in a minor key--was sustained throughout without once dropping into caricature.