Review: Infamous

UK release date: 19th January

Coincidentally made at the same time as the Oscar-winning Capote, this rival project also focuses on the events surrounding the writing of In Cold Blood — Truman Capote’s bestselling account of a shocking mass murder in a remote Kansas farmhouse in 1959.

Where Capote went for understatement, however, Infamous turns up the volume. It boasts a terrific performance from Toby Jones in the lead (one part Deputy Dawg, two parts Oscar Wilde) and punctuates the drama with stylised talking heads from the likes of author Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) and society maven Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver).

More bothersome, though, is the heavy-handed portrayal of Capote’s relationship with killer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig) and the foregrounding of the homoerotic tension that underscores his prison visits. If Capote didn’t exist this would be a fascinating failure, but next to it Infamous is mostly entertaining but somewhat superfluous.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 117mins

Review by Damon Wise

News: Toby Jones

Odd-faced British thesp Toby Jones does a good job as truman Capote in this week’s Infamous, despite following a tough act in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance in last year’s Capote.

A leading role for this top-notch character actor is rare, but he’s got a fair few supporting turns in the works, like playing the Duke of Clarence (aka the future King William IV) in Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace, looking at the efforts of reformer William Wilberforce to end slavery in the British Empire during the early 19th century. It’s due to hit our screens in March.

Then it’s shift forward to the 1920s for Somerset Maugham adaptation The Painted Veil, a romantic drama set in Shanghai during a cholera epidemic, before leaping back to the 17th century for notorious director Peter Greenaway’s Nightwatching, based around the life of Rembrandt – to be played, somewhat implausibly, by The Office‘s Martin Freeman.

Then there’s yet another historical drama – A Harlot’s Progress – but this time with Jones in the lead as artist William Hogarth, whose relationship with a prostitute helps inspire one of his most famous works. It’s due out in November.

News: Sigourney Weaver

After this week’s outing in Infamous, Weaver will barely be off the big screen this year, with another four due out over the next 12 months, from the (apparently rather poor) attempt to do a Shrek by taking the piss out of fairy tales in the animated Happily N’Ever After to the rather more promising Vantage Point, a rashomon-style tale of an assassination attempt on the US President told from five different perspectives.

Along the way she’ll team up with Kate Bosworth for The Girl in the Park, with Weaver a woman whose daughter went missing while a toddler, who thinks Bosworth could well be her little girl – it could sound a bit like a remake of Vertigo from that, but other details are as yet unclear. There’s also The TV Set, a comedy based around the creation of a TV show pilot (which makes the title a truly unforgivable pun), co-starring David Duchovny and Ioan Gruffudd, before she tries her luck at another fairy tale-based animation next year, The Tale of Despereaux, alongside the voices of Robbie Coltrane, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Christopher Lloyd, William H Macy, Justin Long and Tracey Ullmann.

News: Gwyneth Paltrow

Following her turn in this week’s Infamous, Paltrow looks set to be on our screens rather more in coming months, following a break of a couple of years to start raising her family in which she’s mostly just appeared in the tabloids.

Next up – out in the UK on 2nd February – is the quirky comedy drama Running With Scissors, about a teenager from a troubled household who ends up living with his psychiatrist’s bizarre family for a year. Alongside Paltrow are some big and up-and-coming names, from her Shakespeare in Love co-star Joseph Feinnes through Alec Baldwin, Annette Benning, Evan Rachel Wood and Patrick Wilson. Could be good.

She’ll keep up the family theme with The Good Night, directed by her brother, Jake. Starring Martin Freeman asa former popstar turned advertising jingle writer who’s having a mid life crisis, the impressive cast includes the likes of Penelope Cruz, Danny De Vito and Simon Pegg. Another British-based movie – unsurprising as Paltrow now lives pretty much exclusively in London – is Love and other Distaters, a romantic comedy revolving around an American intern at the British version of fashion mag Vogue, and co-starring the likes of Orlando Bloom and Stephanie Beacham.

Then come her two biggest projects, bothe decidedly more American. She has just signed on to star alongside Robert Downey Jr in the big screen adaptation of comic book superhero Iron Man, due out next year and sure to be huge. But more interesting is Dirty Tricks – a drama set during the fallout from the Watergate affair, with Jim Broadbent brilliantly cast as disgraced President Richard Nixon, and co-starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Annette Benning, Sharon Stone and Meryl Streep. That could prove very promising indeed.

News: Sandra Bullock

After a relatively small role in this week’s Infamous, Bullock will be back with her name above the title later in the year for Premonition. She plays a housewife whose husband dies in a car crash, only to reappear the next day – for her to realise it was a premonition, and set out to prevent the accident from happening. She has no other definite acting projects in the works, but has recently signed on to produce Kiss & Tango, based on the memoirs of Marina Palmer about a New York advertising executive who quit her job to move to Argentina and learn how to dance. It’s just possible (i.e. rather likely) that Bullock may opt to star.

News: Isabella Rossellini

Rossellini seems to be keeping a fairly low profile of late, with yet another relatively small role in this week’s Infamous. A deliberate choice, or the Hollywood curse of the middle-aged woman? She may have a leading role in The Architect – currently stuck in distribution limbo after making appearances at a few film festivals last year – but as it’s a low-budget indy drama about a tenant’s conflict with the architect who designed their building, and has not exactly gone down well with those who’ve seen it, it seems unlikely to give her career a boost. After that, she’ll only have a small role in the Uma Thurman-starring romantic comedy The Accidental Husband (currently filming), and another smallish turn in the one man and his dog animation, based on the novel by J.R.Ackerley, My Dog Tulip.

Yes, she may never have been a full-on acting star, but nonetheless you’d think someone as well known and distinctive as Rossellini would have few problems getting bigger parts.