year after the Oscar-winning "Capote" comes Infamous, with the British stage actor Toby Jones as Truman Capote and Sandra Bullock as long-time friend Harper Lee. While the first rendition delivered a Capote as a conniving weirdo - with Philip Seymour Hoffman distributing the message - Infamous is more of a shrine to the man who, while writing "In Cold Blood," may have fallen in love with the killer he wrote about.

Directed by Douglas McGrath from a novel by George Plimpton (Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career), Infamous is indeed well-made and worth seeing, particularly because it offers a different perspective, as well as a few strong performances.

The timelines are identical, but the two films take different approaches. A compelling story it is: A promising young writer immerses himself in a once-in-a-lifetime project, forms an emotional bond with a killer, and ends up spending six years writing "In Cold Blood."

Infamous begins in 1958 with Capote (Jones) listening to a New York nightclub chanteuse (a cameo by Gwyneth Paltrow). We spend time with the author and his "Swans'" - the ladies he lunched with, gossiped with - and gossiped about. This would be Vogue editor Diana Vreeland (Juliet Stevenson), Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver), Marella Angelli (Isabella Rossellini) and the socialite Lady Slim Keith (Hope Davis). Peter Bogdanovich even drops by as Capote's editor, Bennett Cerf.