I'm delighted by today's news that UA is apparently pleased enough with what they've seen of Valkyrie that they've signed screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie to a first look deal. The Usual Suspects is one of my favorite films -- the kind of film that will make me overlook a guy not doing anything of note for the next ten to twelve years of his career -- and what little I've heard about Valkyrie so far has put it at the top of my must-see list for 2008. It's got Carice van Houten, for starters, which should be enough to get anyone into the multiplex. The actual terms of McQuarrie's deal are known only to him and United Artists COO Xenu, but The Hollywood Reporter's writeup says that there are currently "several projects under discussion." One of them, we know, will not be the Alexander the Great biopic that McQuarrie spent much time on, only to be beaten to the punch by Oliver Stone's worst movie ever, and yes, I've seen U-Turn and it's great by comparison.

McQuarrie is currently prepping The Stanford Prison Experiment, a film based on a famous behavioral study conducted at Stanford in the 70s in which students had to play the roles of guards and prisoners and things got out of hands. For some reason, this doesn't really ring my bell -- I can't see how it will work as a sensible movie -- but one thing I love about McQuarrie is his fascination with history and I'm crossing my fingers that he'll use this deal to get his John Wilkes Booth screenplay into the development cycle immediately. What little I know of the script is that people who read it a couple of years ago were floored by it and that its development seemed to follow the same trajectory as the Alexander script -- it was written, it was tossed around and toyed with by some A-list actors and then dropped because of competition concerns. But unless it's flown under my radar, I don't know of any competing Booth film that has made it to the filming stage, so why not do it now? And seriously, raise your hand if you'd rather see McQuarrie's John Wilkes Booth biopic than Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic. Just like I thought -- every hand in the room.

He's been fighting his young look for years, but it looks like Leonardo DiCaprio has finally gotten to a place where he looks older and more experienced. Perhaps that's due to the furrowed brow he's sporting in the picture above. The image is from his current film, Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, and it leads me to wonder if he practiced that furrowed look to age him, and how long it will be before he and Josh Brolin play brothers. (See the bearded resemblance?)

[via Empire Online]

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.

Abbie Cornish's agent has come out and publicly refuted the story that's been circulating that Cornish has sewn up the leading lady role in the next Bond film. This sounds like a complete non-story to me, since we pretty much knew that already. Last time I checked, major casting deals aren't usually announced through the Rose Byrne Tribune. "I can tell you that information is not accurate," agent Belinda Maxwell told the Sydney Morning Herald, clearly speaking to the idea a deal is completely locked up. The only other quote from Maxwell is a reiteration of that first, careful statement: "Well, I can reiterate that that's not accurate information." In other words, she's choosing to stay within the bounds of the obvious -- that her client hasn't signed on any dotted line. I'm a van Houtenite, not a Cornite, so any news that puts distance between Cornish and this part is good news to me.

In other Bond news, Commanderbond.net is linking to some details on the upcoming fourth Young Bond novel, which will be titled Hurricane Gold. This one is set in and around Mexico, and has the young hero finding himself on an island that's a "safe haven for criminals." The name of the Bond Girl in this one will be Precious Stone, which sounds kind of lame to me. Couldn't they have come up with something better? Anyway, the book is set to be published in September of this year, but I'm not sure if that's U.K. or worldwide. Stay tuned to Cinematical as we continue to report on all things Bond-related.

Any day now, Carice van Houten is going to become a major international movie star, and when that day comes I will have a million-times fewer chances with the Black Book beauty. Right now I think I only have to fight Ryan and actor Sebastian Koch for her. Soon, I will have to fight the world. She's worth it, though, as you'd know if you saw Black Book, or you will know once you see any number of films she's slated to star in, including Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, in which she plays wife to Tom Cruise. Other projects I look forward to seeing her in are Paula van der Oest's Smoke and Ochre and Bond 22, which both Ryan and I insist she be officially cast in (last we heard she was being considered). Of course, there's also older films of hers that I'm dying to see available in the States, such as Zwarte Zwanen and the TV movie Suzy Q.

Fortunately her latest casting is in a movie we'll definitely see released in America, Boris Damast's Vivaldi. Written by Jeffrey Freedman, the film will be a biopic of the 18th century Venetian composer, to be played by Joseph Fiennes, and is expected for U.S. distribution sometime in 2008. In addition to Fiennes, Van Houten joins Malcolm McDowell, Lena Headey, Gérard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset and little Elle Fanning. Van Houten is playing a character named Julietta, but I'm unaware of what relationship the character has to Vivaldi. In fact, none of the named actors' characters are listed anywhere in the composer's Wikipedia bio, so I guess I just need to do some deeper research. All I can find is that the character of Julietta was previously attached to actress Zuleikha Robinson. I'm not sure, though, if the change is because van Houten replaced her. The only thing I honestly know or care is that I love classical music and I love van Houten, and I will no doubt love this movie, good or bad.

Dutch phenom Carice van Houten has signed onto her next project, it was first reported a couple of weeks ago.The actress will shoot Smoke and Ochre, a biopic of South African poet Ingrid Jonker, who made her name in the 50s and 60s and is often compared to the American poet Sylvia Plath. The film will be directed by Paula van der Oest, a Dutch filmmaker who previously made Zus and Zo, which was nominated for an Oscar. van Houten is expected to jump immediately onto Ochre after she completes shooting the thriller she's working on now, in which she plays a Dublin psychiatrist who takes care of a young girl in a small village that suffers from multiple personality disorder.

With Ochre set to begin filming in 2008, its unclear how this affects van Houten's rumored involvement with Bond 22, which will begin shooting at Pinewood Studios in January 2008. Since both films will be shooting in Europe, something could obviously be worked out if the schedules conflict -- surely Barbara Broccoli sees that van Houten is too much of a prize to let slip away, so she won't let some commitment to an independent biopic get in the way of making Bond history. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- Daniel Craig and Carice van Houten, in a Bond film directed by Anthony Minghella -- Best Picture.

A London-based charity called ARK recently held a big dinner, where Prince, Madonna and Bill Clinton showed up, and they auctioned off a bunch of prizes, one of which caught my eye - a "day on the next James Bond film set with actor Daniel Craig." I've been trying to get some further detail on this, but there's very practically no information available. (Another prize auctioned off included dinner with Mikhail Gorbachev.) Somehow I doubt that the prize-winner will end up lounging on a beach chair, watching as Daniel Craig films his love scenes with Carice van Houten (cross your fingers) but will instead be sort of hustled in and out in the space of a half-hour. Cinematical recently sent one of our people to the set of a major upcoming thriller and the person ended up watching an actor open and close a cab door for a million takes. It's a tough business, folks. The fact that the prize specifically says "with actor Daniel Craig" implies there will be a quick meet-and-greet and that will pretty much be it.

On a separate Bond note, the Bond girl rumors have now officially gone overboard, with some gossip rags reporting that Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are being courted to play 'good Bond girl twins' in Bond 22. Even in the homestretch of Pierce Brosnan's Bond run, when there were was an invisible car, a villain trying to take over the world with giant ant-burning magnifying glass and a machine that could change a person's race, no one would have dared suggest something so over-the-top as casting the Olsens. It's just not happening. So let's all go back to waiting for the official announcement of Carice van Houten's casting, which will hopefully be coming very soon.

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.

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!"

Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven has a distinct formula: sex and/or violence = profit. His explicit content has worked for the director, giving him large, indulgent hits with the likes of RoboCop, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers. Hell, even Showgirls, which was an almost unanimous flop, became a cult hit as the years progressed. (I guess there's just something about Saved by the Bell alum being dirty and naked.) Probably the last film you'd think to attribute to the director would be a period piece, but he is the man behind Black Book -- a film that seems to mix his sex and violence interests with serious drama and historical flavor.

Sony has just provided Cinematical with links to the trailer for the film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September. The plusses: the trailer knows how to lay on the excitement, the cinematography looks lush and it's co-starring Carice van Houten and Sebastian Koch, who gave a strong, multi-layered performance in The Lives of Others. On the down side, it got mixed reviews from the Dutch press, who seem to love van Houten's performance, but laugh at the large number of coincidences that pile up. As much as it's new ground for Verhoeven, his fans shouldn't be disappointed. It seems that beyond the expected sexual forays, the leading lady also bleaches her pubic hair in one scene. Ah, Verhoeven.

You might find it tacky or insightful, gripping or goofy, but either way it looks entertaining in a way that no one but this man could create.

Check out the trailer (in various formats) after the jump.