Oscars

Between Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, I would go for Hoffman; like Jamie Foxx last year, from almost the very beginning of the movie I forgot it was an actor and only saw Truman Capote. An astonishing performance, really. I didn't get that same feeling with Joaquin Phoenix.

I can totally understand the way you felt. I felt the same way only... for Phoenix. Hoffman to me felt, just like the character he was playing, to be continuosly screaming "Look at me!". You can argue that this was the character and not the actor so in the end it boils down to which character you found more interesting. And while Walk the Line did a pretty decent job of portraying not only Cash but also June Carter, Capote in a sense left me without knowing much more about Truman other than him being an intelligent but obnoxiously egotistical character.

On the contrary, I felt that P.S.Hoffman (dang that long name) did give a remarkable amount of insight into Capote's character, given that on the surface he is an egotistical, preening man with that annoying voice. You can see the insecurity in him and the drive to complete his work, even sacrificing others along the way, and in the end, his own soul.

Joaquin Phoenix was fine as Johnny Cash, but I never could believe that he WAS Johnny Cash, and I am not sure he brought out the joy in his music...though that is partially the fault of the script. He also got outshone in the same movie by Reese Witherspoon who gave a much more nuanced performance.

And I say all this even though I enjoyed Walk The Line a lot more as a movie. (Though, my favorite performance out of all the nominees was from Terence Howard, but I don't think he has much chance to win.)

Well, we certainly agree on one thing: Reese's performance was indeed the shining one in Walk the Line.

For Truman and PSH... I guess I just don't buy into the "losing his soul" part, although I did notice his struggle... I guess I just didn't care about it.

And yes, Terrence Howard was great :)

I think that I just find Truman Capote as a person rather fascinating, because he's an artist that achieved great success then ultimately died, to use a cliche, a broken man. It's not like the stories of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, to use two recent prominent biopic examples - artist struggles, achieves success, haunted by childhood traumas, goes through and conquers drug addiction, lives happily ever after. The artist that fails is somehow more interesting than the one that succeeds and becomes happy. This reminds me of another great movie...Lust For Life, about Vincent Van Gogh. Hmm, maybe time to post a review :)

Yes, you can totally view him as the tormented artist that achieved success but lost himself in the process... For me, as portrayed in the movie, he is just an artist that went for success at all costs, and the fact that he died a broken man is simply the logical consequence of his egotistical actions. I don't see him as a tragic figure broken by circumstances, but rather a man broken by his own under-thought actions. Success is not everything in life and he had at least two good friends that warned him about his choices to no avail.