RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I agree so whole heartedly. Phillip Seymore Hoffman is soooooooo deserving of this oscar. I too found the story behind Capote's most famous book intrigueing. The acting was awsome and the story interesting. My other favorite underrated actor was also great in it: Chris Cooper.

interesting movie.Phillip Seymore Hoffman was excellent as Truman Capote. good plot about Capote and how he wrote the book In Cold Blood. got me interseted enough to buy the book and am in the process of reading.

I knew from watching "Talented Mister Ripley" years ago, that Philip Seymour Hoffman was destined for great things. He earns his Oscar here. He IS Truman Capote. It's one of the best real character portrayals since George C. Scott and Patton. Truman Capote is an interesting subject; I recall him on frequent appearances on the Merv Griffin Show in the '70s. My Dad would immediately ridicule this "Fancy Little Man in the Hat." Yet director John Huston claims he saw Humphrey Bogart make fun of him and Capote knocked him down and after a bit of tussling, was squarely on top of the Tough Guy Bogey. I read In Cold Blood many years ago and saw the movie (a touch of irony that Robert Blake played one of the killers). It was taut and chilling. Capote was a great writer. Capote is not a movie for everyone. There is no happy ending. It kind of turns out to be a tragic love story, as Capote bonds with one of the killers [I once heard -- allegedly, though never mentioned in the movie --Capote paid the warden a sum of money for the guards to leave him and Perry Smith alone for some conjugal time]. The work that made his career, also destroyed him. The movie plodded at times, but it was well acted and added much insight to what transpired in "In Cold Blood." I will confess, while I have made banter over Hollywood's obsession with gay-themed movies, Capote is worth a look. Now I have to work up the courage to see the movie with the queer cowpokes.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is perfection.

If I gave this movie a Good, rather than a Great rating, it was not because of the acting. Watching Philip Seymour Hoffman duplicate the self absorbed person of Truman Capote was a truly amazing experience. Every side of the Capote character was exposed. At one point he compares himself to the murderer, Perry Smith, and said "they grew up in the same house and one day Perry went out the back door and he went out the front." The postscript to the movie said he never finished another book and I would like to think that it was because he felt guilty about so blatantly using the lives of so many people to make himself both rich and famous, but I did not get the feeling he could regret anything he did or said.

What Philip Seymour Hoffman does in the title role is less acting than it is an act of necromancy. I am always in reverent awe when I witness truly great acting, and that's what you'll see here. Hoffman is nothing less than stupendous as Truman Capote. He brings the character back to life in the same way that Jack Nicholson did with "Hoffa" and George C. Scott did with "Patton." Where the 1967 film "In Cold Blood" focused on the 2 killers, the murders they committed, their trial, and eventual execution, "Capote" focuses instead on the monumentally-talented, monumentally-egotistical and tortured man who immortalized them in his classic "non-fiction novel." The film covers the period from when Capote first read of the Clutter murders in the NY Times in November 1959 until the executions of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock in April 1965 in Kansas. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent. Particularly noteworthy are Clifton Collins Jr. as Perry Smith, Catherine Keener as Harper Lee, and Chris Cooper as Detective Alvin Dewey. It's very rare that I'm so enthusiastic about a contemporary movie, so take my heartfelt advice, and run, don't walk, to see it. You probably won't be able to catch the film at your local multiplex mall theatre (which will probably be playing "Harry Potter" in 2 theatres and the latest Adam Sandler-Tara Reid movie), but if you do revere great acting as I like to think I do, this is one you won't want to miss. Trust me. It'll be worth the effort of searching it out.