Doctor Who: Amy’s Choice

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Rating 3¾


Written by Simon Nye

Directed by Catherine Morshead

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory), Toby Jones (Dream Lord), Nick Hobbs (Mr Nainby), Joan Linder (Mrs Hamill) and Audrey Ardington (Mrs Poggit)


“If you can’t save him, then what is the point of you?”

The Doctor unexpectedly arrives in the small village of Upper Leadworth to visit Amy, who is heavily pregnant, and Rory, five years after they last travelled with him. All three fall asleep while sitting on a bench and wake up back in the TARDIS. It has, or so it seems, been a shared dream. They encounter a mysterious figure who has somehow managed to infiltrate the TARDIS. He calls himself the Dream Lord and tells them they must decide which reality is real. Death awaits them if they make the wrong choice.

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‘Amy’s Choice’ is the seventh episode of the fifth season of the revived series. With the exception of the somewhat under-par ‘Victory of the Daleks’, the standard has been very high so far, closer to that of the first two seasons than the slightly tired latter stages of David Tennant’s time in the role, when the episodes, especially the “specials” broadcast in 2009, were becoming a little brash, if still just about the best thing on television.

Matt Smith settled into the lead role immediately. As has been commented elsewhere, he seems to have an uncanny ability to project the fact that although the Doctor now has the appearance of a young man and outwardly behaves as such, he is, in fact, extremely old and carries the weight of often painful and traumatic experience. Karen Gillan, also in her first season, has proved to be excellent and should be given extra points for getting the Daily Mail worked up into a froth of moral outrage. I like the character Rory and the performance of Arthur Darvill, but this character does seem to have been greeted with scepticism by many fans.

‘Amy’s Choice’ instantly became a favourite episode on first viewing and that didn’t change when I watched it for a second time. It put me in mind of episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, in particular ‘Nightmares’ from the first season of that show, ‘Restless’, the inspired season four closer, and, to some degree, ‘Dead Things’, a dark and controversial episode from the sixth season. Although there is no reason to assume that ‘Amy’s Choice’ drew any direct inspiration from these episodes, it would not be the first time the revived series has been influenced by Buffy. Former executive producer and head writer Russell T Davies never hid his love of that show or his admiration for Joss Whedon.

The episode is very cleverly pieced together, as the Doctor and his two companions move between two possible realities – one inside a dead TARDIS, where they are rapidly freezing to death, and the other in what initially appears to by an idyllic rural setting, one that the Doctor thinks is “boring” and then very quickly realises is not as it seems on the surface. It also manages to incorporate some very well judged and genuinely laugh-out-loud humour into what otherwise proves to be an ultimately rather dark episode with a real sting in its tail.

Added to this, the Doctor is left with the riddle of the true identity of the Dream Lord (brilliantly played by Toby Jones), which proves to be a particularly compelling component of the episode and one that promises to provide some more twists in the future.

‘Amy’s Choice’ was written by Simon Nye, creator of the 1990s sitcom ‘Men Behaving Badly’ and more recently the co-writer of the misfiring ‘Reggie Perrin’ update.

Review posted 25 April 2010


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Infamous

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Rating 3


Written and directed by Douglas McGrath, based on the book by George Plimpton

Starring Toby Jones (Truman Capote), Sandra Bullock (Harper Lee), Daniel Craig (Perry Smith), Lee Pace (Richard Hickock), Sigourney Weaver (Babe Paley), Jeff Daniels (Alvin Dewey), Gwyneth Paltrow (Kitty Dean), Isabella Rossellini (Marella Agnelli), Juliet Stevenson (Diana Vreeland), Michael Panes (Gore Vidal), Hope Davis (Slim Keith), Frank Curcio (William Shawn), John Benjamin Hickey (Jack Dunphy), Bethlyn Gerard (Marie Dewey) and Peter Bogdanovich (Bennett Cerf)


When, in November 1959, the celebrated New York author and wit Truman Capote reads an small report in the New York Times about the murder of a family in Holcomb, Kansas he decides to write an article about the crime and its impact on the local community, travelling to Holcomb with his lifelong friend and confidant, the author Harper “Nellie” Lee. He soon realises he has enough material to write a book, adopting a new approach that he describes as a “non-fiction novel”. As his research and writing continues, he becomes increasingly wrapped up in the life of Perry Smith, one of the two men responsible for the killings.

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‘Infamous’ is based on a 1997 book by the late George Plimpton and deals with the events leading up to the writing of Truman Capote’s book ‘In Cold Blood’, which caused a sensation when it was first published in serial form in the New Yorker magazine in 1965, six years after the killings. The film received a limited theatrical release in October 2006 and dealt with exactly the same subject as ‘Capote’, which had been released in September 2005. That earlier film received much greater attention, including the Academy Award for Best Actor for the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role.

Both films deal with Capote’s motivation for writing the book, which he researched in considerable detail, interviewing many of the people connected with the case, including the two convicted killers, and eventually amassing more than 8,000 pages of notes. He did not tape record any of the interviews he conducted, instead transcribing them from memory, and it has been claimed that he deliberately changed some of the detail to suit his own purposes in creating this new style of non-fiction work. He was particularly fascinated by Perry Smith and it has long been rumoured that the two shared a romantic or even sexual relationship during Capote’s visits to the prison where Smith was held, although there is no real evidence to support this.

I had initially avoided watching ‘Infamous’, having already seen the excellent ‘Capote’ and deciding that I did not need to watch two films that dealt with the same subject matter in such a short space of time. However, a friend recommended it to me, making mention of the performance of Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee, whose acclaimed novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was published in July 1960. Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel in 1961. I like Sandra Bullock very much and believe she is a much better actress than many of her film choices and has genuine screen presence. Her performance here is quietly impressive and is, for me, the highlight of the film, although the central focus is on Toby Jones as Truman Capote and Daniel Craig as Perry Smith and the relationship of these two pivotal characters. Harper Lee, who has never published another novel after ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, said in 2007, when asked to address an audience at a ceremony she attended, “It’s better to be silent than to be a fool.”

‘Infamous’ makes a distinction between the small community of Holcomb and the impact it (and Perry Smith) has on Truman Capote and his celebrity lifestyle in New York and the society circles he moves in. We see him with the socialite and style icon Babe Paley, of which he once wrote, “Babe Paley had only one fault, she was perfect. Otherwise, she was perfect.” Paley was one of Capote’s “swans”, as were Marella Agnelli and Slim Keith, both of whom feature in the film. Paley and Keith were the inspiration for Capote’s posthumous novel ‘Answered Prayers’, which when some work-in-progress chapters were published in Esquire magazine in 1975 and 1976, resulted in Capote being ostracised by several friends led by Paley.

The scenes set in New York are somewhat stylised, but I imagine this is deliberate to create a juxtaposition with the reality of Holcomb and the real lives of real people that Capote encounters there. His friends in New York seem like caricatures, but that is what they are, jet set socialites and style icons playing a role. I don’t think the film quite manages to make this mix work entirely successfully, but I can see what it set out to do.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays a nightclub singer called Kitty Dean. The original intention had been that she would portray the singer Peggy Lee and the scene in the film when she goes into a kind of trance during her performance of a song to a nightclub audience, including Capote, is based on a genuine performance by the nightclub singer and Broadway musical actress Barbara Cook.

The film boosts a very impressive cast and there are some very good performances. Toby Jones, in particular, manages to avoid turning Capote into a caricature, even though that is what he was in many ways, and perhaps even more so than Philip Seymour Hoffman the previous year, he creates a real person who found himself identifying with Perry Smith. Capote’s childhood was a long way removed from the circles he moved in later on after his successful writing career was established and both films reference this as a motivator for the strange attraction of the contemplative but explosively violent Smith.

‘Infamous’ has a 71% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 135 reviews. It had a production budget estimated to have been in the region of $13 million and grossed $2.6 million at the box office worldwide.

Review posted 11 June 2009



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