In just a few short days, the 78th Annual Academy Awards will kick off in Los Angeles. For us film fans, it's like the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500 all rolled into one but longer. This year's telecast may be the most interesting in years, with the expected dominance of Brokeback Mountain and the likelihood that afterwards Oscar will never again find solace in heterosexual drama. All this anticipation only served to remind me: I haven't seen any of the films nominated this year. So in the interest of providing a learned assessment of this year's ceremonies, I'm scrambling to catch all the Best Picture candidates before the red carpet - and Joan Rivers' wax remains - are officially rolled out on Sunday.
Last night I caught Capote starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
Naturally, the story of an ambitious eccentric who inserts himself into a major news event with seemingly little concern for the real people involved has great resonance with me. I probably haven't identified so strongly with a character on screen since PSH's earlier role in Happiness. Hoffman doesn't just play Truman Capote, he is Truman Capote, in a performance so convincing that even months after the film's release, Liza Minelli is still calling him up at 3:00 am and demanding to raid his Quaalude stash. The film also provides fascinating insight into the literary world of the 1960s; who knew that famed To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee (played by the exquisite Catherine Keener) was also one of the world's first "fag hags"?
It's in the story of Capote's relationship with a convicted killer, Robert Blake, that we see what an innovator the man really was. We witness how he pioneered the "non-fiction novel", a concept which the likes of James Frey have recently picked up and taken to new heights. With that in mind, it's too bad that Truman largely operated before the age of crack and Oprah because he really could've been somebody. Instead he became a sad, wasted figure chatting it up with celebrities at drug-and-sex-infested parties at Studio 54 - ie. living the American dream. But what a talent that creepy manipulative bastard was. The whole film made me want to pull out my well-worn, yellowed-out copy of In Cold Blood and actually read it instead of wearing it and coloring it yellow.
So cheers to Capote - the Best Picture of the year!
Now here's your chance to sound off on an Oscar category, via our old friend the Zenmaster:
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