After Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sudden death yesterday, it’s hard to find ways to pay tribute to his greatness.

Hoffman’s talent moved him rapidly toward award-winning “prestige” pictures of the sort I tend to avoid: Capote, Doubt, Cold Mountain. His sterling credentials seemed to point him in that direction as well: a BFA in Drama from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, celebrated stage work performing Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neill, Sam Shepherd.

But even when he appeared in big commercial Hollywood fare, it was uncanny how he repeatedly chose movies that I wanted no part of: The Hunger Games franchise, Mission Impossible  III, Red Dragon. (Why the hell would anyone remake a brilliant film like Manhunter?)