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Gaga for ethnic kids
SPO CULTURE COLUMN
illy Madonna, always hav- tion, prospective adopters must
ing to get her way with spend (at least) one or two years
everything. It's one of the in the country where they seek to
accepted perks of fame, that a adopt while being evaluated by
celebrity scoops up certain allow- child welfare workers.
ances undreamt of by normal folk: Two, the infant isn't actually
ordering your staff to bring you an orphan. Too poor to care for
room-temperature water, jetting David after his wife died short-
to exotic countries by ly after childbirth,
private plane, pick- Yohame Banda told
ing up impoverished The Associated Press
Malawian youngsters the child had been liv-
along the way. ing in an orphan care
David Banda center in Mchinji,
arrived in London Malawi, when the
yesterday from Mala- baby first caught the
wi. At 13 months old Ritchies' eyes.
he's already the star Though the baby's
of a growing over- father claims he's
seas adoption con- happy the celebrity
troversy, and as the KIMBERLY couple has chosen to
newest addition to CHOU adopt his kid (Banda
the Madonna/Guy told the AP last week,
Ritchie family, baby David better "I am very, very happy because
get used to the attention. Madge as you can see there is poverty
and her filmmaker husband found in this village and I know he
David at a Malawian orphan- will be very well looked after
age on a recent trip to the small in America"), activist groups in
African country. According to Malawi and around the world are
various reports, Madonna had crying foul.
agreed to donate $5 million for A representative of the Eye of
programs supporting orphaned the Child organization told the
children and an additional $1.5 AP that one cannot buy a child
million to make a documentary the way one buys a house - no
publicizing their case. Her Rais- matter how rich the prospective
ing Malawi project will not only buyer. African babies, Madonna
be a child-care center providing has learned, are harder to obtain
food, shelter and education to than deeds to centuries-old Brit-
4,000 orphans, it will also have ish manors.
Kabbalah-related projects, a sect Madonna and her people
of Judaic mysticism with which brought their case to the Malawi-
Madonna is famously associated. an High Court Oct. 10; the court
News wires and gossip sites ini- gave their okay a few days later,
tially focused on the couple's trip giving the prospective parents
objectives, but Malawian govern- preliminary custody, but Madon-
ment officials revealed that they na was not able to take the child
planned on taking home a baby to out of the country when she left
boot. Law dictates that a couple that Friday because of "legal pro-
must live in Malawi at least a year cedural reasons," according to a
before being cleared for the adop- statement by Madonna's publicist
tion process; speeding through by Liz Roseberg.
pleading their case at the Malawi The purported method with
High Court, the Ritchies gained which Madonna and husband Guy
permission to take David back to Ritchie "selected" their Malawi
London less than two weeks after treasure was not unlike special
they arrived. treatment at upscale stores where
Cue the outcry from human- some L.A. boutique is cordoned
rights activists now. off to regular customers for an
So what's the problem here? afternoon while some celebrity
What's wrong with fancy, rich- drops $10,000 on ostrich-skin
Brit (one artificially so) white totes and cashmere coats in peace.
superstars swooping in on Afri- But instead of some Rodeo Drive
can children and saving them establishment, it's an orphanage
from a life of misfortune like in Malawi: Allegedly, the children
some secular, modern-day mis- of the care center were all brought
sionaries? out on display for the Ritchies.
One, Madonna and Guy have The famous couple subsequently
completely skirted adoption laws.
Typically for international adop- See BABIES, page 11A


A

Some call it an empire waist.

TWO'S A CROWD
SECOND CAPOTE BIOPIC TREDS TOO-FAMILIAR TERRITORY

By Michelle Zellers
Daily Arts Writer
Hyperbolic (but mostly deserved)
acclaim for last year's "Capote" made it
possible, and Phillip
Seymour Hoffman's ***
Oscar win for its
title performance Infamous
made it certain: This At the Michigan
year's rival Truman Theater
Capote biopic would Warner Independent
be forced to trail
the paradigm of a hard act to follow. But
Douglas McGrath's "Infamous" manages
the trick respectably.
Just like "Capote," "Infamous" depicts
the author's experience writing "In Cold
Blood," tracking Truman (Toby Jones,
Dobby the House Elf in "Harry Potter
and the Chamber of Secrets") from the
glamour of 1950s and '60s New York high
society to a small Kansas town shaken by
the murders of a wealthy wheat-farming
family. Along with his childhood friend,
"To Kill a Mockingbird" novelist Nelle
Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock, "The Lake
House"), Capote researches what he calls
a "nonfiction novel" about the communi-
ty-shaking deaths in Holcomb, Kansas.
In the New York setting, Jones shines
as a funny, charming bearer of scandal-

ous chitchat among his so-called "Swans"
(played by Sigourney Weaver, Isabella
Rosellini and Hope Davis), the elegant
women with whom Capote associated,
or perhaps accessorized. He adopts a
more serious air in Kansas, even while
spilling his firsthand celebrity gossip to
local families over home-cooked din-
ners in exchange for insider info. The
film's focus then shifts from document-
ing a town in the aftermath of tragedy to
examining the two murderers, especially
Perry Smith (Daniel Craig, "Munich"
the soon-to-be Bond). Over the course
of six years and countless prison visits,
Smith and Capote develop a relationship
of trust, at least on Smith's part, and per-
haps even romantic love, seemingly on
the part of both.
"Infamous" frequently cuts back to the
night of the murders and flashes forward
to interviews about Capote with both
friends and critics. Consistently bright
and graphic whether portraying opulence
or brutality, it nevertheless smoothly
threads itself together. Only in Smith's
painful childhood memories and their
cowboy motif does the film border on
melodrama.
But sometimes the movie, starting and
ending at the same points in the author's
life as "Capote," appears merely to retell

the tale audiences were already told last
year. Especially in the film's nearly identi-
cal execution scene, its main distinguish-
ing feature is its more explicit cruelty,
taking us graphically where "Capote"
was able to take us emotionally.
And while "Infamous" intersperses
more moments of entertainment in its
first half, it fails to achieve the same level
of poignancy in its second, where both
films address the same key issues: wheth-
er Capote loves Smith or simply manipu-
lates him, whether or not he somewhat
hopes for his subjects and whether or not
he, as a friend puts it, actually feels his
book "is worth a human life." The per-
spective of "Infamous" does end up more
sympathetic than that of "Capote" chiefly
because Jones' character remains genuine
at heart despite the artistic liberties he
takes, but it ends up a character portrayal
of less complexity of Hoffman's guilt-rid-
den Capote.
"Infamous" could stand as a very worth-
while picture alone, but just seven months
after the success of "Capote" at the Acad-
emy Awards, it doesn't have that luxury.
Its proximity to an accomplished picture
on the same subject sets up the expecta-
tion and necessity for a new and different
point of view - something "Infamous"
approaches but never reaches.

0


Veterans can't save sophomoric comedy

By Mark Schultz
Daily Arts Writer
Growing old is never easy to do,
but it seems especially tough for
John Mason
(John Lith-
gow, "Third
Rock From the Twenty
Sun") and Jef- Good Years
frey Pyne (Jef-
frey Tambor, Wednesdays
"Ar stedDevel-
opment").John NBC
is a doctor who
is abruptly forced into semi-retire-
ment by his colleagues and Jeffrey
is a judge whose decisions drag on
longer than the O.J. Simpson case.
Both characters still act like 10-year-
olds, so what suits them better than a

juvenile pact to live every day to the
fullest, complete with the dumping
of fiances and the purchasing of new,
smaller bathing suits?
It's hard to really like a pair
of 60-year-old men who decide to
spend their golden years acting like
complete jackasses, and even vet-
eran comedic actors Lithgow and
Tambor can't bring appeal to John
and Jeffrey's waning libidos and
immature antics. John barks orders
to his fellow surgeons like a coke-
addled version of his "Third Rock"
character Dick Solomon, and Jeffrey
will make you wonder how such a
weak-minded loser ever could have
passed the bar exam.
Unfortunately, the success of
"Twenty" must depend on the per-
formances of Lithgow and Tambor,

because the supporting cast is decid-
edly weak. Jeffrey's male-model
son Hugh (Jake Sandvig, "Sky
High") and John's daughter Stella
(Heather Burns, "Bewitched") are
the typical rebellious children, serv-
ing mostly as one-dimensional fig-
ures that become the target of John's
quick wit and Jeffrey's old-fashioned
values. "I really wish you'd go back
to college," Jeffrey wails to Hugh as
he views a distasteful advertisement
featuring his son.
John and Jeffrey's relationship
bears a striking resemblance to that
of Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison
of "The Odd Couple." In "Twenty"
John plays the wild womanizer and
Jeffrey is the meek milquetoast,
who constantly exudes nervous-
ness by chewing on his thumbnail.

Their schtick is similar to Felix and
Oscar's as well: John engages in
some ridiculous,over-the-top action,
Jeffrey predictably reacts to it. But
where "The Odd Couple" succeeds,
"Twenty" fails. John and Jeffrey
have all the awkwardness of two
dissimilar best friends with none of
the wit and charm that would make
this formula successful.
Besides wearing out the odd-
couple routine, "20 Good Years"
faces more basic challenges in its
premise. If the show heads in its
most likely direction, every episode
will find John and Jeffrey in some
new bizarre situation or conquering
some different fear. The question
is, how long will audiences toler-
ate a show about old men in their
post-mid-life-crises skydiving and

Old guys. Not that funny. But old.
riding motorcycles, as shown in the of old men feebly trying to recapture
credits? their youth might be passable, but
The show might have been a better seeing it every week will likely get
idea for a movie, because two hours downright pathetic.

4

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