CALL ME SNAKE

Call Me Snake is At the Movies tonight with reviews of two films recently out on DVD. The first is Good Night and Good Riddance. George Clooney was disappointed not to have won “Best Director.” I’m amazed he was nominated. And equally amazed this one got a a “Best Picture” nomination, because it was a real dud. The movie was supposed to be a drama about Edward R. Murrow but Murrow (played by David Straitharn in another unworthy Oscar nomination) wasn’t a character at all. He was mainly a face on a TV screen. Murrow’s showdown with Joe McCarthy was supposed to comprise the central “drama” of this picture, but it was totally undramatic as their confrontation, again, occurred on TV. The two weren’t even in the same time zone. How’s that for drama? I’ve got a better word: i-n-e-r-t.

“Capote” was a more intriguing film, but I have a similar complaint. There really wasn’t any drama here either because the “action,” such as it was, was almost all internalized–taking place behind the mask that Truman presented to the world. The most dramatic thing in the whole film was contained in a one-sentence epilogue that said Capote did not write another book after “In Cold Blood.” That sentence had a lot of impact, which is more than I can say for the hour-and-three-quarters that preceded it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was fine in the role of Capote, but it wasn’t an Oscar-winning performance. He did a serviceable impersonation of Capote but didn’t do much in the way of acting, mainly because he didn’t have much of a script to work with. We never got to know the character he played, which made the performance ultimately unsatisfying. I would have much rather seen Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix win for Best Actor because they actually played real flesh-and-blood characters–people who actually did something onscreen. But maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

Well, that’s our show for this evening. Grab your popcorn and get the hell out. The balcony is closed.