This is the thread in which we anticipate "Capote"

i thought it really walked a thin line... sorry i'm going to have to think about this before i can articulate it well, but there was this balance between bleakness and warmth that i thought was very nice. the tone was controlled very well.

and only a few biopic-y moments ("this is going to change everything, truman!" "what was it called again? 'killing a mockingbird?'") to bug me

i am not saying anything new here, but psh is really superb, isn't he? his performance transcends simple affectation - i like that hoffman portrayed him with the self-awareness of someone who knows he is being watched. there's scarcely a moment where he's in the presence of another person that he doesn't have a sort of performative affect about him -- such deep narcissism and untrustworthiness!

also, this:

i couldn't help thinking that philip seymour hoffman's vocal affectations reminded me of damon wayans.

is strangely otm!

http://imdb.com/title/tt0420609/

I couldn't disagree more strongly. Look at the performance again, specifically her scenes with Hoffman. There isn't a moment when she isn't glaring skeptically, or tossing a bitter one-liner. In my review I called her the "best friend of our nightmares" cuz she quietly, without calling attention to herself, subverts his narcissism.

Keener is fantastic in it. Hoffman did a fine job but Capote isn't a difficult character to "nail", you just need to have enough of a character actor in you. Even I can do a good Capote.

But the direction was hamfisted and the music was distractingly Lifetime Movie Of The Week. The pacing was completely off, perhaps because it was trying to shove in too much -- the movie lets you know that it was difficult for Capote to get info from the Kansans at first, but it certainly doesn't have time to make you feel that struggle or even give you a reason for wanting Capote to succeed in getting them to open up (if anything, I was rooting for the Kansans at that point, that they would fend off the obnoxious big city interlopers hoping to make a buck off their sadness). The movie is filled with these sorts of "so you see how this was exciting for them" explanations that didn't actually make me feel excited.

The only time it broke through was when Capote was anxious about them getting executed so he could finish his book, and that was because I knew that them getting executed would finish the movie, and I was ready for that to end.

Manipulative and warm: The scene where he gets the young girl to talk by telling her what an outsider he always felt like. He does it for his book, but it's not untrue and it doesn't feel the least bit contrived (a testament to Hoffman's acting as much as anything else). He's getting his way by telling the truth.

What he tells her is that people always judge him by how he behaves and think they know him, but really they don't peg him right at all, and that's why he feels like an outsider. But, of course, they peg him perfectly well -- he really is a self-centered homosexual, and he really isn't to be trusted, which is how he comes off and what puts people off. This is, I think, why Harper shoots him that look -- because he is telling the girl "oh I'm not this bizarre caricature freak that you think I am" but, in fact, yes he is. It is untrue. It's just as untrue as the porter being a big fan of his books or as the thought that he thinks the [police cheif]'s wife is the "queen of the prairies".

horrendous editing - check
overdetermined underscoring ruining every moment hoffman isn't speaking - check
ludicrously underwritten part for keener - check
zero engagement w/townsfolk beyond pat stereotypes - check
beginner's acting class portrayal of the killer - check
100% bravura performance from hoffman - check
skin-crawling "the genius at work" montages - check

when some police dude (who? does he ever appear again?), upon his exit from the room, in response to capote's namedropping the the shop where he bought his scarf, tweaks the brim of his hat and says, "sears roebuck," i thought to myself, "now this is gonna get good" but it never did, really

True, but in this film it was supposed to be portentious and agonizing: Capote was himself was guilt-wracked and agonzing.

We see people having fun in this movie - notably when Truman's regaling his buddies with jokes to which we only hear the punch lines, never the set-ups - but we aren't allowed to join them.

Yeah, this is even more true, but again, I suspect it's Miller's intention to put the audience at a distance from Capote. A cuddly Truman would have been a horror.

that's one of the main things i liked about it! i hate "life of..." biopics!

(so does a pre-gut Vince Vaughan)

And meeting Gore Vidal, thus instigating a lifetime of delicious, creative insults and one-liners.