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The word is right there at the beginning of the headline, but I'll go ahead and say it again. This post includes spoilers. Do not read this post if you don't want to know the plot of Magneto. Fans of The X-Men beware or enjoy. Yes, over at Obsessed With Film, they've learned the entire plot of the X-Men spin-off, written by David S. Goyer, who will also direct. Deciding not to reveal every plot point, OWF's Will Reynolds provides the basics, including the fact that the film will have bookending scenes set in Poland at the 60th Anniversary of the Auschwitz Liberation. After the basically present-day opening, Magneto heads back in time to that prelude in X-Men, where young Erik Lehnsherr (aka Magneto) destroys the concentration camp's gates. He's then experimented on by Nazi scientists, including a Dr. Kleinman.

Fast forward to the Ukraine, where we see Erik married to Magda, with whom he has a daughter, Anya. So far, we're following the comics pretty well. Then, apparently both Magda and Anya are killed when townspeople burn down the Lehnsherr's home (it should only be Anya, right?). From there, the spin-off follows the plotline in which Magneto goes Nazi hunting. Erik ends up in Paris and then moves to Argentina, where he searches for Dr. Kleinman with the help of a CIA agent. Eventually the plot moves on to Israel, where Erik meets a soccer-playing Charles Xavier (aka Professor X), who is said to be good at helping Holocaust survivors. Will the duo gang up to fight Baron Von Strucker and HYDRA? We'll have to wait and see ...

Of course, there are more details over at OWF, as I think if you really don't mind spoilers, you might want to check out the site. From the description they've provided so far, the film seems more like a drama, like Munich, than a super-hero action flick. OWF also says Magneto, which may actually be fully titled X-Men Origins: Magneto, will feature Senator Kelly (young and old), Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth, who also shows up in the Wolverine spin-off -- good news for Tyler Mane) and Mystique.

This is a lot more information than I was able to provide last week, and I have to thank OWF for giving just enough of a synopsis to keep me excited without feeling like I don't need to see the movie (like I would ever think I didn't need to see this!). The site likens the screenplay to Goyer's script for Batman Begins, combined with The Boys from Brazil (which is being remade just in time to go head to head with Magneto) and, of course, the X-Men trilogy. Keep in mind, as always, these are only rumors and the completed film could always head in a different direction.

One of my favorite young actors, Jamie Bell, will be playing little brother to Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber in Ed Zwick's next project, Defiance. The war film, based on a true story, tells of Jewish brothers who escape Nazi-occupied Poland in order to fight alongside the Russians in the forests of Belarussia. We'd previously heard about Craig's involvement -- something that must have excited fans of both James Bond and Munich -- but despite Variety's story today focusing on Bell, I think this is also the first time we're officially hearing about Schreiber's involvement (over at The Hollywood Reporter the casting news spotlights both actors).

Although these three guys don't really look like they'd be related -- though they could pass better than the fraternal trio of The Darjeeling Limited -- each is a terrific actor, and together they should prove an enjoyable team to watch. And while the subject matter and the filmmaker are sure to warrant their own usual Oscar buzz, I'm really hopeful about the prospects of these three guys getting recognition, themselves. Zwick has directed a few actors to nominations (DiCaprio; Hounsou; Watanabe; Denzel Washington even won for Glory) and his resume as producer also features plenty of Oscar notices.

In addition to Bell and Schreiber, two others have joined the cast in supporting roles. Alexa Devalos (The Chronicles of Riddick) will play Craig's (much younger) love interest, a fellow Polish refugee, and Tomas Arana (Gladiator) will play a leader of Russian resistance fighters. However, I'm mostly excited for Bell, who I've been a fan of since his precious debut in Billy Elliot.

He has had a few starring roles beyond that film, but nothing that has gotten him the same acclaim. He almost makes Chumscrubber and Dear Wendy tolerable, and he is fine -- though underused -- in Peter Jackson's terrible King Kong. But if you want to see him give another great performance in another great film, you have to go back to David Gordon Green's Undertow, which also admittedly may be too much an acquired taste for mainstream audiences. He also co-starred in last year's Flags of our Fathers, but I still haven't seen it and so can't judge his contribution. Hopefully, Defiance will allow him to break out more in terms of getting more prestigious gigs. Even if the film itself is as badly paced and as forcefully harrowing as Zwick's last, Blood Diamond, it will at least be, like that film, entertaining for its performances alone.

I have to admit, my appreciation of Richard Dreyfuss is mainly tied into two movies, Close Encounters of The Third Kind and Jaws. Other than that, it's the so-so movies like Down and Out In Beverly Hills, the corny feel-good pictures like Mr. Holland's Opus, and the downright awful like Krippendorf's Tribe that come to mind. Back in 2004, Dreyfuss announced that he was quitting films to concentrate on a theater career. It turns out that the theater wasn't the place for him either after he quit (or was fired depending on who you believe) the London production of The Producers. Since his so-called retirement, Dreyfuss has popped up in Silver City and Poseidon (2006).

So, in-between studying civics and democracy at the University Of Oxford in England, Dreyfuss has decided to give the movies yet another chance. Variety announced that Dreyfuss would star in the Hungarian production Flower of the Fence. The film will be the story of Herman Rosenblat; a man who meets a woman through the fences of a concentration camp and eventually falls in love -- also starring is Maia Morgenstern and Thomas Sangster. The film is set to go into production in 2007, and is being financed through a joint effort between the Hungarian government and private investors from Hollywood. This is hardly the big budget flick that Dreyfuss used to rail against, so maybe he has managed to find a film that is more his cup of tea.

• Breaking News - Hong Kong action director Johnny To delivers this watchable Woo-alike about a police force that loses the support of the public when a robbery goes bad and is covered by a local news program. The set pieces are pretty tight, even if the drama and the statement To tries to make about the power and responsibility of the media doesn't fully come through.
• Free Enterprise: Special Edition - A self-effacing turn akin to Marlon Brando's in The Freshman and Pauly Shore's in Pauly Shore Is Dead is William Shatner, sending up the cult of personality that has followed him since the original Star Trek series ended its five year mission two years early in 1969. When fanboys Rafer Wiegel and Eric McCormack meet their boyhood idol, he is far from the super-cool man for all seasons they have long worshiped. He's bent on staging a one-man musical version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a great running joke that culminates in the brilliant payoff that is the Shatner/The Rated R rap duet, "No Tears For Caesar". Writer-director Robert Meyer Burnett has created a love letter, not just to Trek, but to anyone who has ever loved anything with fanatical passion, and this long-overdue 2-disc treatment gives it the respect it was not afforded when it was first released in 1999. Check out the Pop-Up Video style trivia track, which annotates the geekery, new special effects, the making-of feature Where No Man Has Gone Before, and the unaired TV pilot, Café Fantastique, which features the real fans who inspired this smart, hardy-har-har trek. A sequel, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, has been listed on the IMDB for nearly 3 years now, and Mindfire Entertainment's website features a rudimentary mention of it, though no firm details are available as yet.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Special Edition - Death, and the gloomy heft that comes with it, visits Hogwarts in the fourth and most satisfying installment in the ongoing series so far. When an evil thought vanquished literally rears its ugly head again, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) team up to expose it. Like the overwhelmingly dark Revenge Of The Sith, this is the first to bear the PG-13 rating (for "sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images"), though its decidedly down ending makes it feel more like The Empire Strikes Back. It is not unreasonable to expect studio Warner Brothers to keep their three leads on through Harry Potter and the As-Yet-Unwritten-and-Untitled Year 7 Story. This, of course, is despite the fact that they will be in their early 20's by then, but let us not forget that at least one of the 90210 kids was practically eligible for Social Security by the end of that run. Even at 157 minutes, the book has still been truncated, but it is doubly encouraging to know that kids will know what is missing and will sit still for that long in order to be able to go on smartly about it. The second disc is chock-full-o' extra goodies, and is available in full- and widescreen editions. A single disc version is also available.