INFAMOUS **

Sometimes two films dealing with exactly the same subject are made simultaneously, leading to the success of one and the failure of the other. This happened when "Capote" and "Infamous" arrived almost at the same time, "Capote" going on to win Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar while "Infamous" virtually disappeared. The subject of both is how Truman Capote came to write "In Cold Blood"with Capote being played here, in a brilliant piece of mimicry, by Toby Jones.

Douglas McGrath wrote and directed the picture and it's got a terrific cast. Sandra Bullock is excellent as Harper Lee, Daniel Craig is the killer Perry Smith, Jeff Daniels is the detective Alvin Dewey and elsewhere we have the likes of Juliet Stevenson, Hope Davis, Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini and Peter Bogdanovitch addressing the camera as they discuss Truman. Despite the grimness and the seriousness of the subject matter, McGrath does find a good deal of humour in the material, certainly more so than Bennett Miller did in his version.