SebastianKoch Tagged Articles at Cinematical

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.

Many know Jack London for The Call of the Wild, but there is another, The Sea Wolf, which has captured cinematic attention again and again. Since it was written in 1904, it has had a ton of big-screen and television adaptations. Ten are listed at IMDb. Now we're getting another, with a sweet cast that is sure to do wonders with the story.

Variety reports that Tim Roth and Neve Campbell have signed on to the miniseries, and this teams them up with star Sebastian Koch -- who played Georg Dreyman in The Lives of Others. While it might not boast a crew like that of John Adams, I can definitely see these actors nailing their parts. A lad named Humphrey (was he perhaps aged into Roth?) is on a San Francisco ferry when it collides with a ship and sinks. He is picked up by Wolf Larsen (I'd presume Koch), the brutal captain of a ship called Ghost, and they later pick up Maud Brewster, a famous poet (Neve?) that Humphrey falls for. From there, it's not just happy sailing on the seas, or honorable releases from Penzance.

The script comes from Nigel Williams, and the production has a long shoot set, beginning now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and to be completed by the end of the year.

If you don't know Sebastian Koch yet, it's probably time to get familiar with him. For a while, most of his fame rested in Germany, making waves with really successful television stints. In fact, in 2002 he accomplished something new to the world of German television -- he won two Adolf Grimme awards for his roles in two historical pieces -- one about the Oetker abduction and another about the Manns literary family. Since those days, his success in historical pieces is garnering world-wide attention. He was one of the stars of the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others, and he also had a part in Paul Verhoeven's Black Book.

The latest word from Cannes is that he is already gearing up for his next historical, true-story feature to be released in 2008 -- first-time director Pascal Verdosci's The Interrogation of Harry Wind. The movie will pit him against Klaus Maria Brandauer, whose U.S. films include White Fang and Out of Africa. He's also played a slew of recognizable names on film, like a visual encyclopedia -- Nebuchadnezzar, Otto Preminger, Vladimir Lenin and Julius Ceasar. A true story set in Zurich during the 1950's, Interrogation is about a special agent named Rappold (Brandauer) -- a man who is about to retire when he gets a huge espionage assignment. It seems that one of Switzerland's top PR guys is Harry Wind (Koch), an accused spy that Rappold has to bring down. (Sounds a bit like Others, eh?) This might seem like a rut, but he's had lots of success with history and spies in the past. Besides, he's also attached to Eleanor & Colette, the upcoming film about a psychiatry patient that teams him with Helena Bonham Carter and Susan Sarandon. So it isn't all in the past!

One of my favorite interviews of last year was Julia Jentsch, a young German actress on the rise, who was at the time starring as Nazi-resistance hero Sophie Scholl in the under-appreciated film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Anyone who has seen the film is hard-pressed to forget it -- it follows the young freedom fighter as a minor screw-up in her daily routine lands her in the hands of the local police. If they find out who she really is, she'll be executed as fast as she can be dragged to the gallows. There really was no better suspense film released last year, and I highly recommend it to anyone. However, after the film absurdly lost the Best Foreign Language Oscar, I wondered if Jentsch would fade back into the obscurity of German stage work, which she was doing when I interviewed her, but now comes news that she's snagged the lead in a major helming of the German literary classic Effi Briest, which many consider one of the finest novels ever written.

The story, by Theodor Fontane, is about a young woman who is living a miserable existence in an arranged marriage to a man somewhat above her station in life and eventually takes on a lover who is equally unsuitable for her. Juliane Koehler, who was memorable as Eva Braun in 2004's Hitler saga Downfall, will play Effi's mother and Sebastian Koch, who starred in Verhoeven's incredible Dutch epic Black Book, will be playing one of the film's male leads. So in other words, the leading lights of German cinema are on this thing. The film is being directed by Hermine Huntgeburth, who I confess to knowing absolutely nothing about, but hopefully I'll learn more after this film sees the light of day. The pic is ramping up for a Berlin start date on September 3rd, exactly. Very precise -- that's Germans for you.

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.

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.

Through machinations surely too complicated for peons like us to comprehend, German film and TV director Rolf Schübel managed to land both Susan Sarandon and Helena Bonham Carter for Eleanor and Colette, his English language debut. I bet there are a whole lot of Hollywood mainstays wondering how the hell that happened, since they can't get either woman to return their in-fluent-English calls. I wonder if the thing actually has a quality screenplay, or something -- how crazy would that be? Said screenplay was written by newcomer Marc Bruce Rosin and tells the story, not surprisingly, of the relationship between its title characters. Sarandon will play Eleanor, "a patient at a psychiatric institute, who retains Colette (Bonham Carter), an attorney to represents her complaint against the hospital, which has been prescribing her psychopharmacological drugs." The male lead will be played by German actor Sebastian Koch.

Production doesn't begin until next spring, so don't expect to see this one in theaters any time soon.