It's hard to say which event in midtown Manhattan on Thursday night was cooler: New German Cinema legend Werner Herzog in conversation with director Jonathan Demme at the Times Center, or the two crazed climbers who attempted to scale the New York Times building right next door just a few hours earlier. In some ways, the two occurrences worked together: It was later announced that one of the climbers did it in order to raise awareness about global warming, a relevant issue for anyone interested in Herzog's latest film, the remarkable Antarctica odyssey Encounters at the End of the World. Like most of Herzog's documentary work, it's a brilliant amalgam of gorgeous imagery and Herzog's personal philosophies. Not a scientist himself, he spends time in their company down south, seeking to understand their behavior ("Is this a big moment?" he asks when they nonchalantly announce the discovery of a new bacterium).

Demme, admitting that he and Herzog had just met earlier in the evening, opened the conversation by reading an effusive letter to Herzog written by Roger Ebert after the critic discovered that the director dedicated Encounters to him. Herzog seemed displeased that Ebert printed the letter ("Those things should stay between two men") but had only praise for his friend. "I salute him, a good soldier of cinema," he said. "We have very few left."

At GreenCine Daily, Dave Hudson brings word that the German Film Awards, also known as the Lolas, just awarded three of the top prizes to Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven. Akin has been recognized over the last decade for his explorations of the tensions between culture and religion, particularly as they pertain to German Turks. Edge of Heaven is no exception. A gorgeous survey of several interlocking tragedies, its deft structure puts Paul Haggis' Crash to shame. A German scholar struggles with his senile father's decision to bring a prostitute into their home. It gets complicated once the young man takes a liking to her. When sudden tragedy strikes, he sets out to find her next of kin for his own sense of closure. Smart without being too brooding, Edge of Heaven has a memorably epic scope. It's no wonder the Deutsche Filmakamie awarded Akin with Best Director and Screenplay awards, while Andrew Bird took home the Best Editing statue for his role in stitching the thing together.

Akin isn't the most accessible foreign filmmaker, but his movies speak to international concerns that are rarely explored in American cinema, which gives his work a unique feeling of immediately. Akin has five other features worth your attention, but don't miss this one: Edge of Heaven opens in New York on May 21, followed by a national roll-out.

The German Defense Ministry has said "nein" to Tom Cruise, Bryan Singer and the entire Valkyrie crew. The original plan was to shoot on some German military locations, but apparently Mr. Cruise's connection to the Church of Scientology has shot that plan all to hell. Germany, you see, has a very low tolerance of the Hubbard religion (see Monika's post on the Stauffenberg family reaction to Cruise's participation). Variety explains it perfectly when they say the "decision was based on Germany's longstanding contention that Scientology is not a religion but an exploitative, profit-based business concern." Yowch. No hair-splittin' there, folks.

In years past certain German officials have called for boycotts on some of Cruise's films, plus they didn't let him shoot any of the third Mission: Impossible there -- even though he probably asked really nice. Personal opinions aside (yes, I think Scientology is mega-goofy), I think the German government is probably overreacting a little bit. But hey, points to the guys for sticking to their principles, right? Yet again, I don't see what one guy's religious beliefs have to do with the making of a movie... Oh, it's so frustrating to see both sides of an argument!

As far as Valkyrie goes, there are still plans to shoot in Germany, but apparently the military locations that the crew was after are strictly off limits. And it's all Scientology's fault. Production on the wartime thriller, which also stars Kenneth Branagh and Bill Nighy, is set to begin some time next month. (The flick's about a plot to kill Hitler, and even though we already know how the story ends (he lives) it still sounds like a pretty solid project.)

20th Century Fox has a short memory ... or a lot of nerve. Despite the studio's very recent battle with German exhibitors on the issue of release windows -- which it lost -- Fox continues to see how far it can go with shrinking the time between its films' theatrical debut and video debut. This time Fox has upset the British market, announcing a UK DVD release date for Night at the Museum that is barely three months after the comedy's bow in UK cinemas. Like in Germany, there will be a boycott of the movie by most theater chains. Beginning tomorrow, Night at the Museum will not be shown in cinemas run by Cineworld, Odeon, Vue and Showcase.

People in the UK can still see the movie this weekend, but only at Empire, Apollo and some independent theaters, all of which claim a stronger obligation to the customers than to the goodness of a united national position (even though they apparently agree with that position). Despite the absence of real support from the little guys -- some of which, it is probable, need that Museum business this weekend -- Fox is likely to be hurt by the boycott. Museum is the second biggest movie of the season in the UK, and without the theatrical hiatus, it would continue to make the studio millions over the weekend. It is interesting to point out that Eragon, which is one of the films involved in the German boycott, is not part of the threat/action, possibly because it isn't performing nearly as well.

Hopefully, for customers, exhibitors and the image of Fox, there will be the announcement of a postponement of the Museum DVD before tomorrow morning. Otherwise, you'll hear of other effects come Monday.

German cinema is mourning the loss of two greats this week, composer Peer Raben and actress Gisela Uhlen. The news of their deaths should be especially heartbreaking to fans of Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, since it features the talents of both. Raben, who died Sunday at the age of 66, collaborated with Fassbinder on most of the director's films, including Querelle, which unfortunately earned the composer three Razzie nominations. Despite that one moment of fault, though, Raben was the recipient of a lifetime achievement honor at the 2006 World Soundtrack Awards.

In addition to scoring Fassbinder's major works, he also wrote original music for Wong Kar Wai's 2046 and The Hand (Wong Kar Wai's segment of the portmanteau Eros), Barbet Schroeder's Tricheurs and a restored version of Pandora's Box. And he occasionally wrote, directed, acted, produced. Uhlen died on January 16 at the age of 87. She had worked fairly steady as an actress for the past 70 years, though the aforementioned Fassbinder film is probably the work she's most known for in the States. It is also the film that brought her the one German Film Award she would ever receive. The only film that I have seen her in (I know, I need to see more Fassbinder) is Totò the Hero, and her death reminds me that it is disappointingly still unavailable on DVD in America.

By now, you're probably aware that Joel Silver is producing a big-screen version of Speed Racer, and that the Wachowski Brothers (those guys who dabble in S&M and cross-dressing, as well as helm films like the Matrix trilogy) are writing and directing. Well, not much was known about the project besides what I just mentioned (except for the fact that Vince Vaughn first pitched the idea a long time ago) -- but now, Silver is starting to leak a few little tidbits.

First, the Wachowskis were inspired to direct the film after watching Ice Age 2 -- yes, Ice Age 2 -- open to large box office numbers. They found that "very interesting" and thus were committed to making a big family-type film of their own. According to Silver, the film won't deviate too far from the cartoon series -- he says, "It's the story of Speed Racer, but in a way that you've never seen anything like that before in your life. The Wachowskis brought a tremendous sense of wonder and magic to that story. They just had a different way of seeing the story, in the way they do on everything they do. And we're going to shoot all of that in Germany". Ah Germany, where the speed limit is whatever you want it to be.

The last bit of coolness Silver offered up was a bit of a tease as to whether or not they'll be going live-action or straight CG. Says Silver, "I don't know if we'll even use any cars." Hmm, the Wachowski Bros. loved how much money Ice Age 2 made, they're shooting in Germany and not using any cars? What do you make out of that? Pic is set to race into theaters at some point in 2008.

SPOILER ALERT: If you don't want to know anything about the film Borat: Cultural Learnings on America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (God, I'm sick of typing that lengthy title), don't read this article.

While some people may not be aware of just who Borat is and why he has a movie, over in Germany they're plenty aware -- and plenty unhappy about Borat describing himself as a "former gypsy catcher." That's not going over too well in Germany, where a human rights group called the European Centre for Antiziganism Research has filed a complaint alleging the film violates Germany's anti-discrimination laws by slandering the Sinti and Roma gypsy tribes and inciting violence against them. The film's distributor, 20th Century Fox, pulled ads in Germany that talked tongue-in-cheek about running gypsies over with a Hummer. Germany has strict laws about speech that could be seen as defaming minorities.

Here's what I find really interesting, though: We have a German human rights group lambasting Borat for defaming the gypsies -- but what about the Jews? Given Germany's history, and given that Germany's anti-defamation laws were put in place especially to protect those groups persecuted by the Nazis, I kind of wonder why no one has stepped up over there to complain about the "Running of the Jews" sequence in the film -- which, if you're going to be offended by the film, is one of its more potentially offensive moments. The "Running of the Jews" bit -- a play, of course, on Spain's running of the bulls -- has a person with a giant green papier-maché head with an enormous nose and devil horns being chased by a crowd as they throw fake money to appease him. Then another person with a female head -- referred to as a "Jewess" -- comes along and lays a giant egg, and the children in the crowd are encouraged to kick, hit, and destroy the Jew egg before it hatches.

So this begs the question: Why the German hooplah over the gypsy slander, but not a peep about the Jewish sequence, which (for me at least) is far more cringe-inducing? I realize this is a complaint brought by a human rights group, not the German government, but it's just odd that the Jew routine wouldn't have someone over there filling out reams of paperwork at the state prosecutor's office.

[ via Movie City News ]

Mark reported last week on Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, the anti-American, anti-Jewish movie about the war in Iraq that was rampaging through the Turkish box office. It's slowly being released around Europe now, and responses have been complex to say the least. In Germany, which has a substantial Turkish population, the film sold 200,000 tickets and finish its opening week as the fifth most-seen film in the country, despite demands from Jewish groups and conservative politicians that it be pulled from theaters.

Now, though, after almost two weeks of showing the film, Cinemaxx - the biggest theater chain the country - has decided to remove Valley from its screens. Though some liberal politicians in Germany are unsettled by the decision, the country's large Turkish population makes the issue a complicated one. According to reports, "The film comes at a time when the integration of Turks into German society is lagging due to high levels of crime, unemployment and failures in education — and critics say that the movie offers little to improve the dialogue." Additionally, fears about possible racial conflicts are high in the wake of the recent riots in France, and many people who normally support free speech are not sure it's worth the risk in this case.

Despite the move by Cinemaxx, however, Valley remains on screens in Germany. It cannot be officially banned unless it's found to violate laws against hate speech or the glorification of intense violence, neither of which seems likely at this point.

Bernd Eichinger, the writer-producer whose masterful Downfall broke the long-held German taboo against the portrayal of Adolf Hitler on the big screen, will be undertaking another source of national shame for his next project. According to Variety, Eichinger is currently working with writer Stefan Aust on an adaptation of the latter's Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, an examination of the 1970s terrorist group (also known as the Red Army Faction, or RAF) that has been described as "the most important standard work for the history of the left-revolutionary terrorism in Germany."

Though Eichinger spent nearly two decades in total on Downfall, he says the Baader Meinhof project is coming along with surprising speed, and feels the film will be made "in the foreseeable future." The producer suggests that the immediacy of this new film's subject matter may make it ultimately even more controversial than his Hitler work, if only because "This is a chapter in German history that's not really been dealt with and a lot of historical facts are only being discovered or disclosed now."

Eichinger has a LOT on his plate right now and is notorious for his slow script-development, so it's anyone's guess when Baader Meinhof will start shooting. That said, however, given the depth and seriousness of Downfall, he seems to be the prefect man to undertake this issue, and his effort will probably be well worth the wait.