Another flick I am excited to see is capote. Amazing cast with three of my favorite actors Philip Seymour Hoffman, Katherine Keener and another John Sayles guy, Chris Cooper.

Capote’ Propels Hoffman to Star Status

By CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP Movie Critic
Tue Sep 27, 8:29 AM ET

Truman Capote probably wouldn’t have liked “Capote,” which chronicles the period in his life when he was researching and writing “In Cold Blood,” the book that influenced nonfiction scribes for decades to come.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the film. On the contrary — it’s excellent, and surely one of the year’s absolute best, with a performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman that’s so simultaneously rich and subtle, they should just give him the Oscar now and get it over with. Better work this year will be hard to find.

Hoffman doesn’t just look like Capote in his dark-rimmed glasses and dapper suits, and he doesn’t just sound like him with his lilting, high-pitched voice. He manages to embody a famous figure fully without once devolving into caricature, something it could have been easy to do in portraying someone as well-known for his idiosyncrasies as his brilliance.

But Capote himself probably would have chafed at the insights into the darker parts of his character — his neediness and greed, his selfishness and questionable ethics — that director Bennett Miller and writer Dan Futterman offer in their astonishingly assured feature debut.

After all, this is the man who was so fond of being fawned over that he paid a train steward to compliment him on his latest book in front of one of his best friends, Harper Lee — who would go on to garner her own unsolicited praise (along with a Pulitzer) as the writer of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

This is the man who was only too happy to attest to the greatness of “In Cold Blood,” drink in hand at glittering New York cocktail parties, without having finished it — or knowing how this true story would end.

“This is the book I was always meant to write,” Capote claims unabashedly. And he was right. But the genius of Futterman’s script, adapted from Gerald Clarke’s biography, is how it shows that “In Cold Blood” represented both the zenith of Capote’s fame and acclaim and the beginning of his social and psychological unraveling.

Like last year’s “The Motorcycle Diaries” about Che Guevara, as well as this year’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” about Edward R. Murrow, “Capote” functions beautifully as a snapshot of a pivotal point in a celebrity’s life. In all three instances, focusing on the forces that shaped this person results in a film that’s far more incisive than the cursory, greatest-hits collection that so many traditional biopics ultimately become.

And what we witness of Capote at the height of his intellectual powers is a jaw-dropping spectacle of ambition, sly manipulation and delicate charm.

Sitting at home in his Brooklyn brownstone in November 1959, Capote notices an article in The New York Times about four family members who were brutally slain in their rural Kansas home. He’d made a name for himself writing the glamorous “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” but something about this graphic story intrigues him. Impulsively, he heads to this small town to investigate, and possibly write a magazine article.

By his side is Lee, who goes by her first name, Nelle, and serves as his research assistant. And while we’re discussing actors giving the performance of a lifetime, this is Catherine Keener’s. Forget the cynical, acerbic roles she’s best known for playing in movies like “Being John Malkovich.” There’s a quiet confidence to her here, a wisdom and comfort within her own skin that’s unlike anything we’ve seen from her before. She is, to borrow the title of another of her previous films, lovely and amazing.

With Nelle’s help, Capote ingratiates himself among the initially skeptical locals and collects information from the victims’ friends and law enforcement officials. (He never takes notes, repeatedly bragging that he has “94 percent recall of all conversations I have — I tested myself.”) He weasels dinner invitations out of the Kansas FBI agent investigating the killings (Chris Cooper, subtly powerful as always) and shmoozes his way into the sheriff’s residence inside the jail by bringing his wife breakfast and autographed copies of his books.

Basically, he works his butt off but makes it look effortless, and he always gets what he wants.

But Capote gets the most and best details for his book by befriending Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), one of the two killers who’ve been tried, convicted and sentenced to die for the crime. The other, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino), sits in a nearby jail cell but isn’t nearly so rich a goldmine.

The scenes these two men share begin hesitantly but evolve into a dance of gentle negotiation and suspense. Every moment tingles simultaneously with wrongness and the possibility of discovery, as Capote says and does whatever he must to maintain a relationship that’s essentially a veneer for his journalistic aspirations. (And Collins, reserved and unpredictable, provides the sense that he could pounce at any moment.)

“It’s your friend, Truman, it’s OK,” Capote assuages Perry, finding himself increasingly obsessed with this person and leaving his longtime romantic partner (Bruce Greenwood) feeling slighted. “If I leave here without understanding you, the world will see you as a monster always, and I don’t want that.”

After a lengthy career of meaty, memorable supporting roles, from comedies like “State and Main” and “Along Came Polly” to dramatic ensemble pieces like “Boogie Nights” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Hoffman is letting the world see what he is: beyond just a versatile actor — a leading man, a star.

“Capote,” a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated R for some violent images and brief strong language. Running time: 115 minutes. Four stars out of four.

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Feel much better. Eating Ben & Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Cookie ice cream. Do they have Ben and Jerry’s in the UK?

My doc gave me a prescription for 30 clonazepam so sleep shouldn’t be a problem tonight. The pharmacy thought that it was a fake script because they called my doctor to confirm it. Was rather funny.

I am going to horde these things as much as possible. But tonight I will be able to sleep. Life is good.

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Day 2 of no sleep caused by cold, hyper active brain, achy mouth post dentist visit (four cavities and a cleaning) and George the cat who kept trying to get me to play fetch with him and didn’t understand that my laying down on the bed was not an invitation for me to be one of his big cat toys.

Had the big hand off to his new people. Cried a lot.

Traffic back home sucked ass. God damn tourists. For those who don’t know the freeway from Vegas to LA is an evil thing. Two lanes. Idiot SUVs trying to do 100+. When it is crowded, traffic becomes stop and go. It is a place to avoid at all costs on holiday weekends unless you leave with the roosters.

Day 3 of no sleep is being cause by cold, hyper active brain and Gordon the cat that keeps trying to get me to pet him and doesn’t understand that my laying down on the bed is not an invitation for me to be his cuddle slave.

I haven’t let my cats in the bedroom for four years. I had been seeing someone that was allergic and when it went to hell, I kept them out because I slept better. (I am also allergic to cats. I know. Crazy cat lady with three cats that is allergic to cats.) I can’t not let Gordon in now that he is alone until I give him to Ophelia.

Hyper active brain is caused by the knowledge that I probably can’t apply for the jobs that I want because they pay bubcus and that I will have to go for something similar to what I have been doing for the last six years that makes me want to kill myself. Not to mention not being thrilled about the cryo big fun tomorrow, thinking about my last week of work, things I have to do to sell my furniture and then things I have to do to donate the furniture I don’t sell, money, hoping there isn’t a problem with the visa when I apply and oh yeah. . . the wedding.

I may call my doctor and ask for some ativan.

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I woke up at 1:30 from my cold. Is now 4:12.

I can’t shut down my brain.

Things I have to do. Things I want to do. Things that I hope will happen. Things I am scared of.

*Monkeys.

A year ago I never saw these forks in the road. I suppose we never really do. . . There are certain things you can plan for- but those often go to hell too don’t they?

I’m excited. Scared. Beyond freaked out.

Happy.

I am really happy.

*I didn’t really think of monkeys. I’m just Punchy. Not Judy. Bah-Hah!!!

Okay. Bad punning means bedtime.

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A. O. Scott’s NY Times Review ofGood Night, and Good Luck

Looks like my hunch about this flick being good weren’t off. I smell Oscar for David Straithairn. I forgot to mention that it did really well at the Venice Film Festival. . . Opens early October.

September 23, 2005
News in Black, White and Shades of Gray
By A. O. SCOTT

SHOT in a black-and-white palette of cigarette smoke, hair tonic, dark suits and pale button-down shirts, “Good Night, and Good Luck” plunges into a half-forgotten world in which television was new, the cold war was at its peak, and the Surgeon General’s report on the dangers of tobacco was still a decade in the future. Though it is a meticulously detailed reconstruction of an era, the film, directed by George Clooney from a script he wrote with Grant Heslov, is concerned with more than nostalgia.

Burnishing the legend of Edward R. Murrow, the CBS newsman who in the 1940’s and 50’s established a standard of journalistic integrity his profession has scrambled to live up to ever since, “Good Night, and Good Luck” is a passionate, thoughtful essay on power, truth-telling and responsibility. It opens the New York Film Festival tonight and will be released nationally on Oct. 7. The title evokes Murrow’s trademark sign-off, and I can best sum up my own response by recalling the name of his flagship program: See it now.

And be prepared to pay attention. “Good Night, and Good Luck” is not the kind of historical picture that dumbs down its material, or walks you carefully through events that may be unfamiliar. Instead, it unfolds, cinéma-vérité style, in the fast, sometimes frantic present tense, following Murrow and his colleagues as they deal with the petty annoyances and larger anxieties of news gathering at a moment of political turmoil. The story flashes back from a famous, cautionary speech that Murrow gave at an industry convention in 1958 to one of the most notable episodes in his career - his war of words and images with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

While David Strathairn plays Murrow with sly eloquence and dark wit, Mr. Clooney allows the junior Senator from Wisconsin to play himself (thanks to surviving video clips of his hearings and public appearances), a jolt of documentary truth that highlights some of the movie’s themes. Television, it suggests, can be both a potent vehicle for demagoguery and a weapon in the fight against it.

Mr. Clooney, who plays Murrow’s producer and partner, Fred Friendly, has clearly thought long and hard about the peculiar, ambiguous nature of the medium. It is a subject that comes naturally to him: his father, Nick, was for many years a local television newscaster in Cincinnati, and the younger Mr. Clooney’s own star first rose on the small screen. Like “Good Night, and Good Luck,” his first film, “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” (2002), used the biography of a television personality (Chuck Barris of “The Gong Show”) as a way of exploring the medium’s capacity to show the truth, and also to distort and obscure it.

Indeed, these two movies can almost be seen as companion pieces. “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” suggests that a man with a hard time telling truth from fiction can find a natural home on the tube, while “Good Night, and Good Luck” demonstrates that a furiously honest, ruthlessly rational person may find it less comfortable. Murrow, as conceived by the filmmakers and incarnated by Mr. Strathairn, is a man of strong ideals and few illusions. He knows that McCarthy will smear him (and offers the Senator airtime to do so), and that sponsors and government officials will pressure his boss, William Paley (Frank Langella), to rein him in.

He is aware that his reports are part of a large, capitalist enterprise, and makes some necessary concessions. In addition to his investigative reports - and, in effect, to pay for them - Murrow conducts celebrity interviews, including one with Liberace, which Mr. Clooney has lovingly and mischievously rescued from the archives.

From that odd encounter to the kinescopes of the Army-McCarthy hearings, “Good Night, and Good Luck” brilliantly recreates the milieu of early television. (Robert Elswit’s smoky cinematography and Stephen Mirrione’s suave, snappy editing are crucial to this accomplishment.) It also captures, better than any recent movie I can think of, the weirdly hermetic atmosphere of a news organization at a time of crisis.

Nearly all the action takes place inside CBS headquarters (or at the bar where its employees drink after hours), which gives the world outside a detached, almost abstract quality. A telephone rings, an image flickers on a screen, a bulldog edition of the newspaper arrives (sometimes it’s this one, whose television critic, Jack Gould, was one of Murrow’s champions) - this is what it means for information to be mediated.

But its effects are nonetheless real. While the camera never follows Friendly or Murrow home from the office, and the script never delves into psychology, we see how the climate of paranoia and uncertainty seeps into the lives of some of their co-workers. Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise), an anchor for the New York CBS affiliate, is viciously red-baited by a newspaper columnist, and Joe and Shirley Wershba (Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson) skulk around the office like spies (though for reasons that have more to do with office politics than with national security). When Murrow, in March 1954, prepares to broadcast his exposé of McCarthy’s methods, the suspense is excruciating, even if we know the outcome.

Because we do, it is possible to view “Good Night, and Good Luck” simply as a reassuring story of triumph. But the film does more than ask us, once again, to admire Edward R. Murrow and revile Joseph R. McCarthy. That layer of the story is, as it should be, in stark black-and-white, but there is a lot of gray as well, and quite a few questions that are not so easily resolved. The free press may be the oxygen of a democratic society, but it is always clouded by particles and pollutants, from the vanity or cowardice of individual journalists to the impersonal pressures of state power and the profit motive.

And while Mr. Clooney is inclined to glorify, he does not simplify. The scenes between Murrow and Paley, taking place in the latter’s cryptlike office, have an almost Shakespearean gravity, and not only because Mr. Strathairn and Mr. Langella perform their roles with such easy authority. McCarthy may serve as the hissable villain, but Paley is a more complicated foil for Murrow - at once patron, antagonist and protector. (Addressed by everyone else, in hushed tones, as “Mr. Paley,” he is “Bill” only to Murrow.)

Most of the discussion of this movie will turn on its content - on the history it investigates and on its present-day resonance. This is a testament to Mr. Clooney’s modesty (as is the fact that, on screen, he makes himself look doughy and pale), but also to his skill. Over the years he has worked with some of the smartest directors around, notably Joel Coen and Steven Soderbergh (who is an executive producer of this film). And while he has clearly learned from them, the cinematic intelligence on display in this film is entirely his own. He has found a cogent subject, an urgent set of ideas and a formally inventive, absolutely convincing way to make them live on screen.

“Good Night, and Good Luck” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Apart from a little rough language, it is as clean as the television broadcasts it describes.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Opens tonight at the New York Film Festival; nationwide on Oct. 7.

Directed by George Clooney; written by Mr. Clooney and Grant Heslov; director of photography, Robert Elswit; edited by Stephen Mirrione; production designer, Jim Bissell; produced by Mr. Heslov; released by Warner Independent Pictures. Running time: 90 minutes. This film is rated PG. Tonight at 8:15 at Alice Tully Hall and at 9 at Avery Fisher Hall, at Lincoln Center, as part of the 43rd New York Film Festival.

WITH: David Strathairn (Edward R. Murrow), George Clooney (Fred Friendly), Patricia Clarkson (Shirley Wershba), Robert Downey Jr. (Joe Wershba), Frank Langella (William Paley), Grant Heslov (Don Hewitt), Ray Wise (Don Hollenbeck) and Dianne Reeves (Jazz Singer).

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One week left. One week at this job that I have at for 6 years. Strange. . .

Two weeks before Stuart arrives.
Three weeks before we are hitched and I go to the consulate for my visa appointment.
Five weeks before I am moved out of my apartment and on a plane back to London.

I really am not too freaked right now. If I don’t think about everything in big chunks but in little baby steps of things I need to do, everything is okay.

Next week I need to take pictures of my furniture and spam co-workers with them to try to get rid of some stuff so I don’t have as much to drop off at whatever charity will getting it all.

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One of the things that will be hard about leaving is all of the great people that I work with as well as advertisers I really enjoy talking to.

One of those folks is Charles Kessler. He has a newsletter that he sends out called The Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter which “offers weekly insights into new, cool, useful, fun, unusual and interesting sites on the Internet.”

The last time I spoke with him he asked if I was doing any online projects so I told him about the blog and he included it in the newsletter that he sent out today.

He is really a dear.

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No Way Out: Many Poor Stuck in Houston

By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer
1 hour, 4 minutes ago

HOUSTON - Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the officials of this city. If only someone would pick up their phone.

“I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain’t none. No one answers,” she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. “Everyone just says, ‘Get out, get out.’ I’ve got no way of getting out. And now I’ve got no money.”

With Hurricane Rita breathing down Houston’s neck, those with cars were stuck in gridlock trying to get out. Those like Skinner — poor, and with a broken-down car — were simply stuck, and fuming at being abandoned, they say.

“All the banks are closed and I just got off work,” said Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get inside the store, where more than 100 people, all of them black or Hispanic, fretted in line. “This is crazy. How are you supposed to evacuate a hurricane if you don’t have money? Answer me that?”

Some of those who did have money, and did try to get out, didn’t get very far.

Judie Anderson of La Porte, Texas, covered just 45 miles in 12 hours. She had been on the road since 10 p.m. Wednesday, headed toward Oklahoma, which by Thursday was still very far away.

“This is the worst planning I’ve ever seen,” she said. “They say, ‘We’ve learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.’ Well, you couldn’t prove it by me.”

On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. “I’d like to go, but nobody come get me,” the woman said in broken English. When asked her name, she looked frightened. “No se, no se,” she said: Spanish for “I don’t know.”

Her daughter, who appeared to be about 9, whispered in English, “We’re from Mexico.”

For the poor and the disenfranchised, the mighty evacuation orders that preceded Rita were something they could only ignore.

Eddie McKinney, 64, who had no home, no teeth and a torn shirt, stood outside the EZ Pawn shop, drinking a beer under a sign that said, “No Loitering.”

“We got no other choice but to stay here. We’re homeless and we’re broke,” he said. “I thought about going to Dallas, but now it’s too late. I got no way to get there.”

Where will he stay?

“A nice white man gave me a motel room for three days. Just walked up and said, ‘Here.’ So my buddy and me will stick it out,” he said, pointing to another homeless man. “We got a half-gallon of whiskey and a room.”

In Deer Park, a working-class suburb of refineries south of Houston, Stacy and Troy Curtis, waited for help outside the police station. Less than three weeks ago, the couple left New Orleans after it was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

With no vehicle, and little money, they tried to get their lives together while staying at a hotel in Deer Park. Stacy Curtis, a nursing assistant in New Orleans, had a job interview scheduled for Thursday.

But most businesses had shut down because the neighborhood will likely flood if the hurricane hits Galveston Bay. The streets were empty Thursday afternoon.

“We’re stuck here,” Stacy Curtis said. “Got no other place to go.”

An emergency official eventually sent a van to take the couple to a shelter at a recreation center.

Monica Holmes, who has debilitating lupus, sat in her car at a Houston gas station that had no gas. “We can’t go nowhere,” she said, tapping a fingernail against the dashboard fuel gauge. “Look here,” she said. “I’m right on E.”

Her husband, a security guard, had a paycheck, but no way to cash it.

“We were going to try to go to Nacogdoches” in east Texas, not far from the Louisiana border, she said. “But even if we could get on the road, we’re not going to get out. These people that left yesterday, they’re still on the beltway. They haven’t even got out of Houston.”

So she and her husband will hunker down in their Missouri City home, just to the south. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “You can’t be scared of what God can do. I’m covered.”

As always, there were those who chose to stay, no matter how dire the warnings.

John Benson, a 47-year-old surfer and lifelong Galveston resident, said he thinks his town “is going to take on a lot of water. But as far as the winds, I think here on the island, it will be a little bit less than they anticipated.”

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued Wednesday for the area.

Benson said he planned to use his surfboard as transportation after the hurricane. “The main thing is you have a contingency plan,” he said, and thumped his board. “You got buoyancy.”

Skinner, accompanied by her 6-year-old grandson, Dageneral Bellard, would settle for a bus.

“They got them for the outlying areas, for the Gulf and Galveston, but they ain’t made no preparations for us in the city, for the poor people here. There ain’t no (evacuation) buses here. I got nowhere to go.”

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — Associated Press writers Pam Easton in Galveston and Tim Whitmire in Deer Park contributed to this report

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The shipping company that I used told me to put my shipment in Stuart’s name since I would not be in the UK when it arrived.

Stuart called me all in a panic because he can’t fill out the form to get the stuff out of customs because the wording on the form says things like, how long have you been out of the country, etc. He asked me to sort it out to get it back into my name and for me to fill out the form.

He then said, “Confirm with me that you have taken care of this.”

I know his subtext was, I am worried about this. Can you let me know what happens so I don’t need to worry.

The problem is when I hear the word “confirm” in that context, I read the subtext to be, “I am worried about this. And what I am really worried about is that you will screw this up. Please check back with me so I can look over your work to make sure that you didn’t screw up.”

I got really snippy. Then I started to cry.

Poor Stuart kept saying, “There is no reason to be upset.” Which just made me cry more.

I know it will be fine.

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Yet another remake.

Just read that there are remaking the German film Bella Martha and Catherine Zeta-Jones is playing the lead, Scott Hicks is directing.

Now I am sure that it will be a fine film. It’s just that I really like the German version. There are layers of things happening with class and different countries that transplanting the story to the US will lose. But what the hell do I know. It is a sweet story. It will make money if they don’t fuck it up. Oh, hell, what am I saying, it will make money even if they do.

So, go rent the German version. It is called Mostly Martha here for some odd reason.

Sometimes, yes there are really great remakes or they at least don’t suck ass– but some unnecessary remakes that I can quickly think of. . .

La Femme Nikita
Tortilla Soup
Psycho
The In Laws (which firmly falls into the “What the Fuck were you thinking?” category)
Stepford Wives
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Italian Job
The Planet of the Apes
The Truth about Charlie
The Pink Panther - I know it isn’t out yet but the making of this movie is a sin and Mr. Martin should be ashamed of himself.
You’ve got Mail (I didn’t even like the original Shop Around The Corner)

Maybe someone will remake You’ve Got Mail in a few years and they will lambaste the main character for going to Starbucks while she claims to be against big soulless chains. And they will have scenes where people break up and it isn’t a simple easy thing. Ephron did that in Sleepless in Seattle too. People break up and it is no big deal.

HER: I can’t marry you. I care about you and it kills me to do this to you. Kills me. Kills, kills, kills me. But, you see? You see. . . I have this thing. A thing. For a guy. A guy. A guy I heard on the radio and I just know he is the perfect man for me and you are just so obviously not.

HIM: Well. Obviously you must get up from this table and go to him. Oh, no. I’ll be okay. I’ll find someone more like me. You know, someone with lactose intolerance.

Anyway. If I gave myself more time, I could think of more. . .

I am off to Ye Rustic Inn for a pint. . .

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