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.

Is it just me, or are Nazis really popular right now? Never mind, I know the answer. Still, it feels like just yesterday I posted about a new Nazi-based documentary called My Enemy's Enemy (it was last week, in fact), and just a few months ago, Martha mentioned a remake of The Boys From Brazil that's in the works. Add those films to the recent Hitler-centered Downfall, and you've got a ... well, nothing resembling a trend at all, actually. But considering we in America like to think of Nazis as being anything but real, distinguishable and human, these sorts of films are more striking than, say, Indiana Jones and the Latest Adventure Involving Faceless Nazis or any number of WWII movies.

The latest addition to this non-trend of real-life Nazi movies is Eichmann, which begins shooting in Hungary next week. The film focuses on the life of Adolf Eichmann, an SS officer who was "Transportation Administrator" for the "Final Solution", meaning he organized all the trains sending Jews to their deaths. Not only was he responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Polish and Hungarian Jews, but he continued to carry out the Nazi's extermination plan even after Heinrich Himmler ordered its end. Like many Nazis, he fled to Argentina, and like Klaus Barbie, subject of My Enemy's Enemy, he was reportedly protected for some time by the CIA before being captured and put on trial. Eichmann will concentrate primarily on the his cross-examination by Israeli police officer Captain Avner Less with sequences from the war depicted in flashback.

Robert Young, who seems an unexpected choice for such serious drama after giving us Fierce Creatures and Splitting Heirs, is directing, and the two leads will be played by German superstar Thomas Kretchmann, playing his seventh Nazi officer, and Troy Garity. Also cast in an unrevealed role, is Stephen Fry.

For anyone familiar with Marcel Ophuls' Oscar-winning documentary Hôtel Terminus, it might seem strange that another filmmaker is taking a stab at the life of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, aka the "Butcher of Lyon." Kevin Macdonald, who also won a doc Oscar for One Day in September and who just recently released his non-doc debut, The Last King of Scotland, has made My Enemy's Enemy, which reportedly concentrates more on Barbie's employment by the CIA than with any other part of his life. He says the film, "is a version of history where, in contrast to what we were all told, fascist ideology prevailed." It is also more than likely meant to parallel other times in history when the U.S. collaborated with past or future enemies.

Just how bad was this guy, that the U.S. shouldn't have been working with him and aiding him? Barbie was called the "Butcher of Lyon" because while head of the Gestapo in the French city, he was responsible for 4,000 deaths. After World War II was over, he began working for British intelligence and the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corp. When his service for our government was over, he was able to flee, with help from the American government, to Bolivia, where he lived another thirty years until he was captured, brought to trial and sentenced to life in prison.

The Weinstein Co., which is always happy to release a controversial doc, picked up the film this past weekend at the American Film Market, but haven't made any announcements for time of release. The Weinsteins know a little about collaborating with the enemy, as they recently threw a gala for Wal-Mart.

More doc controversy from The Weinsteins:

NBC Loves Bush, Hates Dixie Chicks

Another election, another politician wanted out of office ... and yet another documentary. This chain of events is so common now that the presence of partisan docs is as easy to ignore as all the real campaign ads on television. Even one such film, about Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, would have passed under the radar if not for gaining a bit of controversy over the weekend. The film, Running with Arnold, is against the re-election of "The Governator" and has reportedly gone over the line as far as taste goes in order to attack the actor's qualifications for office.

One person who isn't happy with the finished product is its narrator, Alec Baldwin. He could sue the film makers after having gotten no cooperation from them regarding his request to be removed from the project or a cease and desist letter that he issued to them. On The Huffington Post, he wrote about his disapproval of the film, particularly the unfair association of Schwarzenegger with Nazis. He also says that the film makers can not accommodate his wishes because of a distribution deadline (I can't seem to find a release date for the film to back up this deadline, but seeing as how election day is in one week, I'm guessing it will play somewhere starting this Friday).

• Bloodrayne - Teutonic terror Uwe Boll directs movies no more than gravity directs objects to Earth. His grasp of pithy things like story and character development is nearly non-existent, and his penchant for adapting video games has earned him a reputation as a sort of idiot savant (only without the savant part), kind of like if the kid on the porch in Deliverance only knew how to play the riff that Vanilla Ice nicked from Queen's "Under Pressure". His latest, a shameless Blade ripoff about a half-human, half-vampire avenger (Kristianna Loken), is miscast, barely written and staged with the skill of a spastic with cataracts. Currently residing on the IMDB's Bottom 100 (at #34), it and Boll's rotting body of work have elevated the oeuvre of Ed Wood, whose non-charting Plan 9 From Outer Space was once considered the worst film ever made, to common hack status. At least the inclusion of the free PC version of the Bloodrayne 2 video game will help soothe buyer remorse.