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.

When it comes to lists, Cinematical likes to keep things brief. Some of you think the alliterative Cinematical Seven is a bit too small when it comes to movie lists. I can't count the times I've been asked to up my list to 10 to add a few here or there, which is why I try to refrain from titling them with words like "best." There is always something missing. However, I imagine it would be harder to miss something if you upped the count to 50, and make it a list spanning only one year. Yes, this is what Moviefone has done. Out of the few hundred movies that were released this year, they've come up with their Top 50 of 2007.

Starting off the list is Transformers, which our own Erik Davis described as "one of the biggest, baddest action flicks we've seen in a long time." From there, well, you can guess most of the films that made the list -- they're the big blockbusters that people flocked to, like 300, and the art flicks smaller groups raved about, like Lars and the Real Girl. Of course, I don't know if I'd keep all of the contenders in this best-of list (Hairspray); however, we're not talking about a list of 10, so not every film can be wondrous. The list is mainly North American offerings, although you will spot a few of the international biggies like The Lives of Others and Lust, Caution.

Check out the list and weigh in: did they get it right? Are there some glaring omissions? Travesties that shouldn't be on any list with the word "best" in it?

Unlike the film critics in American cities, who this week have been naming their year-end award winners, the folks across the pond are waiting until February 8 to reveal their favorites. But they have at least announced the nominees for their awards, many of which distinguish the importance of British filmmaking. See, the London Film Critics' Circle gives two separate awards each for the categories of best film, best director, actor and actress, so that one award is given to the best British film, director, actor and actress. Sometimes this leads to an overlap, as in the case of last year, when both Helen Mirren and Judi Dench were nominated for best actress and best British actress and The Queen was nominated for best film and best British film.

This year's nominees don't appear to have that overlap problem (see the full list here), which could very well mean the Circle has changed its rules since last year. Either that or there really is no clear enough front-runner this year in any of those categories. Or maybe the Circle just felt there were too many non-British films, directors and performers worthy of notice and didn't need to exclude any of them just to spotlight their own movies more than necessary. The one interesting thing is that while Daniel Day Lewis could be considered a British actor, he is only nominated in the more general Best Actor category. Also, it is interesting that Paul Greengrass is nominated as best British director for The Bourne Ultimatum, a movie nominated only in the more general Best Film category.

The best thing about having the British-only categories is the recognition the LFCC gives to terrific films like Control and This is England, which aren't on the radar enough in America to be given notice here. Also, the British-only directing category allows for the general best director nominees to include other foreign (non-American) directors like Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 weeks, 2 days) and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others).

Every Friday morning, when I'm surfing the new movie reviews and I flip over to Ebert's site, I'm always a little surprised to see a new review for some movie that came out back when he was sidelined by cancer. Atop each of these retro reviews -- which I think I own the copyright on -- he affixes the following simple tag: "Doubling back to pick up some titles I missed while ill." This past Friday, he panned Spider-Man 3, giving it a weak two-star review. He cites his displeasure with the film's lack of a compelling villain and goes into detail about his problems with the symbiote, which he didn't enjoy at all. He also doesn't like Mary Jane anymore.

Children of Men and the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut up and Sing have both been retro-awarded high marks -- I agree with the latter verdict. The Fountain, a movie that was on my top ten list of that year, is mildly panned although what's most interesting about the review is that Ebert spends much of it musing on the concept of a retro review in itself. "Although as a doctoral candidate in English I was advised to be familiar with the existing criticism on a work before venturing to write my own, as a film critic I am usually writing before other reviews have even been published," he writes.

The Lives of Others and Zodiac get four stars -- Ebert's been a little too generous with the four star rating since his return, by the way -- while Grindhouse is panned for being "an attempt to recreate a double feature that never existed for an audience that no longer exists." I haven't pinned down the exact dates that Ebert was absent, so I have no idea how long his retro-reviewing will go on, but it's fun to read.

I am very sad to report that Ulrich Mühe, the star of the Oscar-winning German film, The Lives Of Others, died in his German home this Sunday. Coincidentally, it was the same day that a German paper published an interview with the actor, where he confirmed that he was fighting stomach cancer. It seems that the immensely talented actor had been fighting the illness for a while, even when he had flown to Los Angeles with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck to see his drama win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

It's a bittersweet loss for the cinematic community. While Mühe, a veteran of German theater, wracked up 60 film and television credits over his career, and found considerable TV success with Letzte Zeuge, Der, Others was his true breakout role. The film won him acting awards from the Bavarian Film Awards, Copenhagen International Film Festival, European Film Awards, German Film Awards and German Film Critics Association Awards. I was lucky enough, like Martha Fischer, who reviewed Others for Cinematical at last year's TIFF, to see Mühe during the fest's screenings. During the Q&A, he talked about his work on the picture, and how he was watched by the Stasi in the days before unification -- something that definitely helped to bring his performance to a higher level in the film.

As Martha said at the end of her review: "both Mühe and The Lives of Others are unforgettable." I can only imagine what he would have accomplished with more time on screen. His final film, Nemesis, which he starred in with his wife, is currently in post-production.

It's a good thing that I don't have mafia connections, or I'd be too inclined to start requesting hits on certain Hollywood companies. In February, I was ruing over Universal's decision to remake the great, recent French comedy, Mon Meilleur Ami. Now, the news gets even worse. Just reading the title sent bile shooting into my mouth -- the brothers Weinstein have renewed a first-look deal with Mirage, which will give them the rights to remake the recent Oscar-winner, The Lives of Others.

According to Sydney Pollack, who is part of Mirage: "We would just desperately love for that film to be something that reaches more people... We haven't gotten locked into making it yet, but we're working hard at trying to get it going." The director of Tootsie is trying to reduce cinema down to its story. Sure, it would be great to get the film to reach more people, but it can't if you're going to remake it! I'm surprised that a filmmaker would use such reductive reasoning. If a film's power is all in its screenplay, then screenwriters would have a lot more power in Hollywood.

We're also talking about a story concerning the German Stasi! It's not like this is a story about people and some life struggles they are faced with. (Unless they plan to make this a Patriot Act re-visioning, which might be even worse.) Besides, will that many more people see the movie if they don't have to read subtitles? It's not some huge thriller or crazy action piece. The film is only getting a limited run, so from the get-go the audience would be bigger on a remake because there is a larger opportunity. Perhaps the efforts and money should be put into letting Lives reach a wider audience. According to Variety, after three weeks in a limited run, the feature has grossed $1.3 million.

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has had a very busy year. First, he promoted his film The Lives of Others on the fest circuit; now he's shepherding it through the awards season. For almost a year now, von Donnersmarck has worked tirelessly on behalf of his film. He very graciously took the time to sit down with Cinematical here in Seattle to chat about his film, his views on filmmaking ... and which actor he'd want as his commanding officer in an actual war situation.

The central theme that I got out of The Lives of Others was change and the capacity of people to change, and I wondered if you could talk a bit about that, and how you wove that theme throughout the film.

You're right that that's a central theme, because I think it's one of the big questions in life: can we change, or are we just what our horoscopes tell us that we will be? At Oxford I studied Scholastic Philosophy, which included studying the works of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas always formulates things as a statement, and then he'll have pros and cons about them and come to his own conclusion.

In one of these he debates the question of astrology. And he actually comes to the conclusion that astrology will tell you something about your future and where you are and where you're going -- maybe even tell you exactly. And he says that is why it's so hard to change, why change feels like swimming upstream, because you're fighting against all the stars and all the weight of that, against the current of the universe. I think it's important to realize that when people change it's always a legion of things that drive the change, not just one thing.

More after the jump ...

What is a person's capacity for change? What are the lines between right and wrong, and who decides where those lines are drawn? These are the questions at the heart of The Lives of Others, nominee for Best Foreign Picture, which comes into the Oscar race boasting seven Lola Awards (the German equivalent of the Academy Awards) and European Film Awards for Best Film, Best Actor (Ulrich Mühe) and Best Screenwriter. Set in East Germany about four-and-a-half years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Lives of Others follows Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a Stasi (Secret Police) officer who believes wholeheartedly that the job he does is in the best interest of the State and the ruling Party. Wiesler takes the Stasi's motto -- "To know everything." -- quite seriously. We meet Wiesler as, with eerie calm and a relentless --yet misleadingly gentle -- approach, he conducts an interrogation on a prisoner whose neighbor escaped to the West.

Wiesler, teaching the future generation of Stasi officers, uses a tape of the interrogation of this poor, unfortunate soul to demonstrate to his class how, by sleep-depriving prisoners for a period of days, one can break them and get them to confess. Wiesler does his jobs, both teaching and police work, with a calm detachment; he is a moral straight arrow, a man utterly convinced that what he is doing is right. He believes so deeply in the system, he no longer questions it at all -- if he ever did. The players and events that set the gears of the story in motion all come together one night when Wiesler is invited by his old Stasi school chum, Lt. Col. Grubitz (Ulrich Kukur) to attend the latest play written by Party golden boy Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), one of the few "intellectuals" who vocally supports the Party in spite of his close friendships with artists who are considered dangerously outspoken.

With only a week away from announcing the Oscar nominations, and with no apparent need to do so, the Academy has pared down its list of eligible foreign-language films from 61 to nine. This is the first time the Academy has shortlisted the category, but the decision to do so falls in line with a number of other changes pertaining to the category.

Those changes, which I told you about last summer, are a good thing for at least two of the nine films. Water and Black Book each would have been disqualified in previous years, but now their language issues are in full compliance with the rules. Of course, had they not made the cut, there might have been some happier countries in Asia or Australia, the two continents not represented (Antarctica may get some love from Happy Feet's animation nomination). It is too bad that Japan couldn't claim Golden Globe winner Letters From Iwo Jima and also too bad for Oz that Ten Canoes wasn't chosen.

Perhaps the secret to filmmaking is simplicity. Simple notions can open an array of doors and options, whereas a complex starting point doesn't have the same easily-accessible origins. This seems to be the case with The Lives of Others, which was an incredibly simple idea that grew into a complex and compelling story. The film was born when a scene popped into Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's head of a surveillance man who expects disloyalty, but instead finds himself moved by what he hears. It's the inextricable flaw of Big Brother -- when run by human hands, there is no guarantee that someone will remain impartial.

As Martha Fischer described in her review, Stasti officer Gerd Wiesler watches Georg Dreyman evolve from a hands-off citizen to passionate rebel. Wiesler begins to spot the flaws in what he previously saw as a flawless system, and begins to act accordingly. But there is also a power behind the film that becomes clear when you step behind the scenes. When I saw the film at TIFF, the Q&A made everything a little bit clearer, and the recent interview with Donnersmarck for The Hollywood Reporter does the same.

This is a film that draws power from personal experience. While research and consultants are well and good, Others has an understanding that fuels the piece and makes it seem all the more real. Donnersmarck did conduct extensive research to get it right, but he also had his memories of travelling to East Germany, and an actor who knew the Stasi first-hand. Now, after winning a flurry of awards in Germany, it is the country's submission to the Oscars.