BlackBook Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I always trust that there are far more references crammed into a Tarantino film than I could ever acknowledge, and the extra wink-wink workings of Inglourious Basterds made that all but a guarantee. Luckily, the "video store nerds" (their words) over at Seattle's Scarecrow Video not only have their own extensive and ongoing catalog of films that are either referenced or given homage in Basterds, or are just fitting companions, but they've all been placed in their own section in the store, which just really makes me more jealous of the locals than anything, seeing as all the independent video joints in my own neck of the woods have either gone belly-up or have scaled back their selections.

(Really, it's a shame. Netflix may be convenient, but it will never have that personal touch -- a note that Scarecrow's lengthy list happens to conclude on.)

Do you guys and girls agree with like-minded recommendations like Black Book? (I do.) Is there anything you think is missing? (Comment away, here or there.) And more than anything, what one film do you have a hankering to see, or see again, in the wake of QT's latest?

When two movies with similar plots hit theaters around the same time, it usually just reveals the vapidity of Hollywood formula (as was the case when Deep Impact and Armageddon came out a few months apart). The situation changes, however, when the subject matter has far more thematic weight. Defamer's S.T. VanAirsdale points out the potential conflict brewing now that The Weinstein Company has picked up U.S. theatrical, DVD and television rights to the 2004 German film Operation Valykrie, a dramatization of the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hilter during World War II. Sound familiar? That's because Bryan Singer's upcoming 2009 release, Valkyrie, tells precisely the same story, with Tom Cruise in the role of would-be assassin Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg. In the German movie, the character is played by Sebastian Koch, the debonair star of The Lives of Others and Paul Verhoeven's Black Book.

In addition to the overlapping content, VanAirsdale points out another potential conflict: Koch's female co-star in Black Book, the alluring Carice van Houten, stars opposite Cruise in Valkyrie, creating the sort of meaty overlap that money can buy. Harvey Weinstein's no slouch when it comes to instigating controversy, but his company hasn't exactly had the best of luck with its recent daring titles (few turned out for Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?). Personal drama has impacted Cruise's films before, but this might be the rare case where he would have nothing to do with it.

Last night I was having drinks with a Manhattan film critic who told me that he was putting both Zodiac and Black Book on his end of year list, no matter what the establishment thought of their awards chances. I was very happy about the latter, since I'm sure that it's one of the best films of the year, and although I didn't see Zodiac until recently, I also feel that it would be absurd if that film loses a slot in awards consideration to lesser (and later released) films like American Gangster or Enchanted. The Academy is, of course, notorious about forgetting what came in the January -- April period of the year, but sometimes they can surprise you, especially in a weak year for Best Picture like this one is. (Aside from No Country for Old Men and Atonement, what other sure bets for a Best Picture nomination are there?) Zodiac in particular seems to be catching some late momentum -- today Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere has released his top ten list and declares Zodiac to be the best of the year. I doubt he really thinks that, but putting it at the top spot may succeeded in the true goal -- getting it noticed.

When we take a look at The Envelope's Buzz meter -- the most comprehensive awards buzz calculator known to man -- we see very few early year contenders, except for Julie Christie for Away from Her. In fact, every movie on The Envelope's Best Picture slate is a movie I've seen in the last few weeks, except for Atonement, which I caught at a festival. A great film like Black Book isn't even a blip on The Envelope's horizon at this point. What early 2007 films do you think are being overlooked?

Have you seen Black Book yet? It's on DVD now, and with Ryan and I raving about it and especially its star, Carice Van Houten, all year, I hope you got the hint. It's really worth seeing. And once you do check it out, you'll understand why we are so smitten by Van Houten. And you'll understand why Hollywood can't get enough of her these days, casting her opposite many of the most prestigious actors, such as Tom Cruise, who she's linked up with in Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, both of whom she's appearing with in Ridley Scott's Body of Lies. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the Dutch actress is confirmed to play opposite Jude Law in Repossession Mambo. She will play wifie to Law in the film, which is a sci-fi thriller about a guy who can't afford his most recently installed artificial organ. Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, a former storyboard artist who worked on Trainspotting, the film is said to also star Alice Braga, who actually plays Law's love-interest in the form of an ex-wife he reunites and goes on the lam with.

So then is Van Houten just a minor character who is left behind? That's what it sounds like, and if you look at most of these American roles she's getting they're either labeled simply as wife or love-interest. Considering all that she got to do in Black Book, it seems Hollywood could be missing the boat on why she's worth casting. If Van Houten does end up wasted or underused in these roles, it wouldn't be the first time a young European actress came into flavor and was then miscast. I'm thinking mostly of Audrey Tautou being put in The Da Vinci Code, of course. I have to admit that after falling in love with her in Amelie, I gradually grew out of my crush by watching the rest of her available films, none of which featured her in quite the same way. For Van Houten, I've already gone and looked at one of her earlier films, and was similarly disappointed -- though it could have been the fact the movie, Minoes (aka Undercover Kitty), is only available here in a terribly dubbed version. All I can hope is that I won't ever see her in a worse movie than that, but with Hollywood's track record of late, such hopes are really difficult to hold on to.

It's a fact I can attest to -- when she walked into the roundtable room for Black Book, every guy shut up immediately, which is pretty rare. But anyway ... some Dutch movie website is reporting that van Houten has cemented her latest leading role in an A-list project, landing the female lead in the crime drama Body of Lies, starring Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. (An early pic of the film, which is shooting right now, appeared over at Hollywood-Elsewhere on Friday.) For all I know, this movie website could be the Dutch version of Star Magazine, but JoBlo got someone to translate it and they seem to think it's legit. Either way, I'm starting to wonder -- does van Houten have a publicist? Her last starring role, as poet Ingrid Jonker in the film Smoke and Ochre, was first reported in Time Out, of all places, and now this.

It was also recently reported that van Houten's march to the top will bypass the Bond franchise -- Paul Haggis came out and admitted there was no part for the actress in the upcoming installment. I can't imagine what he's thinking, but then again, I muttered the same thing to myself the whole time I was watching Crash. Perhaps van Houten simply felt Bond was beneath her at this point -- she's already landed a leading lady role in Valkyrie for next year, and now she'll apparently be sidling up to Leo as well. Why would she need the stigma of being a Bond girl? As far as I'm concerned, she's the new Garbo -- the best new star to be found in the last ten years, at least.

It looks like Milla Jovovich finished work on Resident Evil: Extinction just in time, since she might not exactly be in fighting form for the next little while. Jovovich was set to star in The Winter Queen for Paul Verhoeven, but she has now confirmed that she is pregnant, and the film is going to have to be put on hold. Originally set to begin this July, production is now expected to resume sometime this spring. This won't be the only big-budget production that Jovovich is putting on hold due to her pregnancy; she has also postponed her wedding to director Paul W.S. Anderson, saying, "I don't want to do a white-trash wedding with a big belly."

The Winter Queen is based on the novel of the same name by Russian author Boris Akunin, and the story follows a government clerk turned detective who, while investigating a seemingly simple suicide, is caught up in a greater conspiracy. Jovovich was set to play the "femme fatale" in the film, which might have been a little difficult to pull off in her second trimester. News of the delay was made public during a press event at Cannes, when the producer, Peter Hoffman, announced that a film version of William Gibson's Neuromancer was going to replace Verhoeven's Queen as his high-profile production. There is no word on whether Verhoeven will be looking for another project while he waits for Jovovich, he could always try some volunteer work to catch up with his fellow knights.

About two months ago, when we at Cinematical and Moviefone were asked to name our celebrity crush, I had picked a long-time favorite, Emily Watson. But then I saw Paul Verhoeven's spectacular film Black Book and fell in love with its star, Carice van Houten. Unfortunately it was too late to change my selection for the celebrity crush piece, and anyway most readers have never heard of the actress and so wouldn't have likely cared about my choice. However, the actress' lack of mainstream awareness could very well change in the next two years, as she is rumored to be in the running for the next James Bond movie.

Of course, we hear about different Bond girl casting rumors on a regular basis. So far the most noteworthy choices have been Abbie Cornish, who supposedly flew to Singapore last month for related meetings, and Sienna Miller. Van Houten fits the routine of these rumors, which tend to reference relatively unknown actresses (and even more obscure models, as in the suggestion of Fulya Keskin), but she is definitely the best person for the role so far named. Obviously I'm basing her suitability on her character in Black Book, but in that film she exhibits all the qualities of what a great Bond girl should be. In fact, in her playing an undercover spy who infiltrates the Nazis, she exhibits qualities that make for a great Bond (would 007 ever dye his pubic hair for a mission?).

Surely I am not the only person who has seen Black Book and hopes this rumor is true. Cinematical editor-in-chief, Ryan Stewart, who called van Houten the "find of the decade" in his review of Verhoeven's film, even agrees with me that this is the greatest rumor of all time. If it is just a rumor, though, I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly plead with MGM to make it a reality. Please, please, please with a cherry on top cast Carice van Houten in Bond 22.

The best film of 2007 so far, Paul Verhoeven's elegant and unsentimental Black Book is a sweeping war epic heavily colored by the director's keen eye for cruelty and his shoulder-shrug attitude over the depths to which human beings can sink, but also steeped in influences as far flung as Garbo's Mata Hari and the breezy, fraternal war movies of John Sturges. Following a Jewish girl on the run in Nazi-occupied Holland, the film bounds with relentless verve from one set piece to the next, as Rachel Steinn (Carice van Houten, find of the decade) loses her family in one terrible flash and turns to the only people who will shelter her -- grizzled resistance fighters playing kill-for-kill games with the Nazis. Offered Aryan papers and a modicum of security, Steinn rejects them in favor of a more brazen kind of double-life, becoming a covert resistance fighter herself, putting her life on the wire on the slim chance that she may be able to throw a wrinkle into the plans of the piggish German high command.

While living life on the hoof and relying heavily on her striking looks to get the benefit of the doubt when its needed, events and quick thinking conspire to lead Steinn into the bed of a high-ranking Nazi, Muntze (Sebastian Koch) where the two play 'are you really friend or foe?' at night, while continuing about their separate missions during the day. Untypical for Verhoeven is the degree of tenderness and unclouded emotion that seep through during some of the scenes between van Houten and Koch, as their respective secret identities -- she as a fighting Jew, he as being possibly sympathetic to fighting Jews -- begin to melt away. Much hay will be made over a few shots devoted to van Houten's character deracinating her Jewish identity by painting her pubic hair blonde to match a bottled Harlow coiffure, but with all the attention Verhoeven lavishes on the actress's visage throughout the film and the justice he does her character and her story, I'm in the camp that says we should probably just allow an aging master his directorial Viagra.

There's a new interview with Paul Verhoeven over at SuicideGirls, prefaced by the interviewer's contention that Black Book, Verhoeven's latest, is one of the best films of the decade. I wouldn't go that far, but I do think it's one of Verhoeven's best works, which is saying a hell of a lot, and I'll be posting my review of the film on Wednesday morning. In the course of the interview, Verhoeven talks about what attracted him to the project, and about the characters -- anti-Nazi conspirators -- who face death around every corner. "My scriptwriter and I always felt that people under that kind of pressure are really living an existential life because every decision is extremely important," Verhoeven says. "The worst and the best come out."

After some more talk about Black Book, Verhoeven is led into a discussion of Starship Troopers and the unfair criticism it received at the hands of the critical community. "There was an article in The Washington Post when it came out that was not written by a movie critic," Verhoeven says. "One of the editors wrote it saying that this was a neo-Nazi movie and I was promoting fascism. That same article was published in all the European newspapers. When I went to do the publicity tour in Europe, everybody was already looking through that lens. The Washington Post is not a reliable newspaper anyway, but they said the film was written by a neo-Nazi or a Fascist and directed by one."

The most fun part of the interview comes at the end, when Verhoeven is quizzed on what he thinks about James Cameron's supposed Tomb of Jesus. The response is very long-winded and Verhoevian, but here's a sampling: "Of course, that Jesus was buried in some way and did not walk out of his grave is true. He stayed and he died. According to a very famous theologian Dominic Crossan, he thinks that the body was thrown in a mass grave and eaten by the dogs."

The latest film from Dutch master Paul Verhoeven is a two-sided coin: it draws heavily on the technical skills he honed to create his Hollywood blockbusters like Robocop and Basic Instinct, while telling an intimate story of loss and survival in World War II Holland. Black Book focuses on Rachel, a young Jewish woman (Carice van Houten) who loses everything in the carnage of the war and eventually finds that the only safe place for her is in a resistance movement that is actively thwarting Nazi plans to deport Jews from their homes in Holland to certain death. In typical Verhoeven style, the film deals squarely with the brutal, ugly side of human nature and shocks as much as it entertains. Group think, prejudice, tragic decision-making and the raw, persuasive power of sex -- all Verhoeven staples -- get some fresh interpretations here, as Rachel faces death around every corner and unwittingly steps closer and closer to a nasty secret.

Verhoeven, van Houten and co-star Sebastian Koch were on hand to take part in this week's Black Book roundtables in Manhattan. 69-year-old Verhoeven, amped-up as much as a human being can get, knocked over tape recorders and spoke a mile-a-minute almost without interruption as he talked up the film. Van Houten was more the soft-spoken ingenue, answering all questions quietly and politely. Here is a sampling of questions and answers from the event:

Paul Verhoeven

Cinematical: Two projects -- Azazel and the Robocop remake -- what are the status of those projects? "I don't know anything about the Robocop remake. Many times discussed, but no script, as far as I know, is there. You know, I'm not a big fan of sequels. I've been able to avoid them all, which was not easy with Basic Instinct. Total Recall became Minority Report -- the sequel to Total Recall was based on the same story. It was Total Recall 2, called The Minority Report. Then somehow, Carolco, the company, went bankrupt, as you know, or Chapter 11, and disappeared, and the project floated slowly through Jan de Bont, my former DP and now director/producer, then it came to the hands of Spielberg and he made an independent movie out of that.

I hope I can start shooting Azazel in July. Nobody other than Milla Jovovich is attached. It's a detective story based on a Russian novel that was published in the United States about three years ago, in English, under the title Winter Queen. The real title, the Russian title, is Azazel, which we use now because I think it's more intriguing. Azazel is in fact a Jewish demon and also a scapegoat. And basically, the scapegoat turns into a demon or the other way around, I forgot that. It's a detective story situated in St. Petersburg and in London, around 1876. So its about 130, 140 years ago. It's very modern in its narrative; it's kind of charming, but it's also very deadly. Its about suicides, its about murders, its about terrorism, and global conspiracy. In one book!"