Infamous

Movies come in a lot of varities: good, bad, weird, etc. But as "The Onion" has pointed out repeatedly, some movies aren't so much bad as they are completely unnecessary. Sequels are usually completely unnecessary, but even a horrible sequel isn't as unnecessary as the copy-cat movie that loses the race to the theaters.

And so now we have "Infamous" - another movie, not just about Truman Capote, but about his writing In Cold Blood. As if it weren't unnecessary enough, they've replaced Catherine Keener with Sandra Bullock (who, as a buddy of mine once said, needs to be executed gangland-style).

I sort of understand how this sort of thing happens with other types of movies. One studio hears that another studio is doing a movie about an asteroid crashing in the Earth, and they just can't stand getting beaten to the punch. But Truman Capote? I can just picture a movie studio executive going "What? What? Paramount has a Capote film? Goddamit, why don't we have a film about Truman Capote!!."

I would've given Infamous the award for least necessary copy-cat movie sight-unseen. But that was before I stumbled across "Without Limits" in the middle of the night on HBO. Not just a completely uninspired biopic about semi-famous 1970s middle distance runner Steve Prefontaine starring the always wooden Billy Crudup, but a note-for-note copy of "Prefontaine" which came out the year before and starred the even less charismatic Jared Leto. "Without Limits" basically threw down the gauntlet of non-necessity. We'll have to wait to see if "Infamous" will pick it up.