it's good! it's good!

i have very shamelessly stolen this capote still from rotten tomatoes, and they can punish me however they'd like; i stole it, and i'd steal it again, because i am so enamored of philip seymour hoffman at this moment that it is chewing a ragged and soon-to-be septic hole in my swirly girly guts.

he. is. AMAZING. there's nothing he can't do. i think if a role required that he spin straw into gold while breathing underwater through gills he'd engineered the genetic mutation for himself using nothing but a plasma lightning ball, an easy-bake oven and a can of tuna fish, if he liked the character enough, he'd just fucking find a way, because he's that hardcore. the first time he really knocked me on my ass was when i saw todd solondz's happiness, and he's never given me any reason to try to get back up. i'd pay ten dollars to spend two hours watching him drool in his sleep.

everyone in this movie is good, but it's called capote for a reason; the other characters only exist as surfaces for him to bounce himself off of or gaze at his reflection in, and this effectively brings home the idea that that's exactly how the actual capote felt about the people in his life. manipulative, narcissistic, calculatingly ambitious--these are the adjectives the viewer will most strongly attach to him, and there won't be many positive ones to balance them out. so what? i already knew everything i needed to know about the man; i went to see a movie, and there's nothing better in a movie than an accurate and unapologetic portrayal of a questionable human being. hoffman loves these flawed individuals, he rolls them all around his mouth until he's found every earthy undertone and hint of citrus, and man, when he's got it, he's got it.

i'm at the point where i'm likely to start echoing my previous gushes in similarly worded circles, so i'm going to stop here by giving it both thumbs and all of my toes way up. if you see it, tell me what you think, and if you see philip seymour, tell him to call me.