April Showers, Black Book

Dave from Victim of the Time again here... it seems I shower more at the weekend, for I'm supplying your Sunday night edition of April Showers too. We go from apparently unacceptable ass to... well, you'll see. I must atone for my sins after all.

When Nat posted on Changeling in this series, he gave you five types of "horror showers". We all know Paul Verhoeven's a bit of a nutjob, and in Black Book he can't just settle for one harrowing shower experience. He gives you three at once.

Ellis de Vries (the marvellous Carice van Houten), having spied from within on the Nazis, is now in a prison camp for collaborators, and, as you might expect, they aren't being treated nicely. Ever-resilient Ellis refuses to take off her clothes like the other obeying prisoners- which lands her in trouble with the drunken, angry officers. And beneath the drum full of excrement we've just seen the prisoners adding their bucket-loads to. Crouching on the floor after an aggressive beating, she thinks it's okay to rise... but the foreboding music says otherwise.


So beaten down by the sheer force of what just came from above, a bit like the blood-sodden Carrie, Ellis' face is covered by matted hair. Verhoeven, keen to emphasize the moment, even inserts a bird's eye view of the solitary, chalk-outline-esque posture of Ellis on the floor of the warehouse.

But the guards aren't done with her yet. The busty females on the balcony above gleefully pour their remaining spirits down on her head, barely rinsing the sludge off her.


Yet Ellis' punishment still isn't over with. Here's the familiar hose-down moment, complete with a close-up of the hose itself, and the humiliated Ellis shies from the blast of water even as it wipes the caked brown sludge off her. Her fellow former-spy Akkermans (Thom Hoffman) is here to rescue her, but, as Ellis looks up with as much pride as she can muster, you and she both know it's not quite over yet.

Black Book looks, from the outside, like another big WWII epic (except Dutch), but it strikes me as more Hitchcockian, in its strong, beautiful, deceptive heroine and twisting moralities. I've not explored Verhoeven's oeuvre beyond this and Showgirls- lament the heroine there, too, for fame's a bitch- but this scene, at the very least, is like Tippi Hedren being pecked half-to-death, or Janet Leigh getting chopped, or Marion Lorne getting strangled: she's had sex, she must be punished. Living in the 21st century as we now do, we don't need Ellis to suffer quite so much, and there's as much sympathy here as there is accusation- but this is still one of Black Book's key scenes, clearly a moment Verhoeven wants you to remember, and he probably had as much fun filming it as van Houten had annoyance at cleaning all the stuff off afterwards.

Trailer of the Valkyrie

JA from MNPP here, popping my head back into these parts to direct y'all over to Yahoo! where they've got the trailer for Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, in case you haven't lain your eyes upon it quite yet. Or... maybe you don't give a crap. I've heard a lot of that. Snark here, snark there, everywhere a snark snark. And I've certainly had my... doubts. Which is why I'm pretending that Valkyrie will really be something closer to this:

A love story for the ages between Thomas Kretschmann (swoon) and Carice van Houten (double swoon)! Now that's something I could unequivocally get behind... or in the middle of... where ever...

I sometimes think I'm the only person who saw Tropic Thunder and didn't think Tom Cruise was funny (at all; Mcconaughey either dammit) so I'm not quite sure I'm gonna be able to deal with Tom Cruise... like, ever again. Which... well, that concerns me when it comes to whether I will like this movie or not since, in reality (and not the fake Kretschmann/van Houten movie I'm playing in my deranged head) Cruise is in like 90% of the shots in that trailer. He's gonna be present, ya know? Other faces that give me hope do pop up - Pleasure to see you, Tom Wilkinson! Looking good, Bill Nighy! - but I've some very real, very deep soul searching to stumble through before I sit down to the task at hand, it seems.

Or, ya know, I could just shut the hell up, realize it's just a damn movie, and behave like a sane person. Whatevs!
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a lump of coal in your stocking?

As you have undoubtedly heard, Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, once meant to be a 2008 film, has abandoned its 2009 release date to debut around Christmas after all. 2008 here it comes!

Does this mean Santa thinks we've been bad? Early buzz suggests that this is a lump of coal. But then again... maybe not. Singer has gift wrapped some real choice goodies in the past.


The Nazi era flick stars everyone's favorite looney cult member and a red hot Dutch diva who happens to look exactly like Charlotte Gray Blanchett in this photo, don't you think?
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Stop-Link

Correct Opinion love this X-Files poster.
Cracked investigates 6 of Hollywood's favorite offensive 'types'
Cinematical great images from The Fall
Golden Fiddle has some fun at Kate Bosworth's expense
Popnography interviews one of my fav scene stealers Loretta Devine
Out in Hollywood has helpfully compiled a bunch of incarnations of Gypsy for you to decide who is best as Mama Rose. He also chats with Joseph Gordon-Levitt of Stop-Loss
Boy Culture celebrates Madonna's return to the Vanity Fair cover (it's been a loooong time) and the likely chart topping of Hard Candy to come.
Everything I Know... shares interesting buzz about the upcoming West Side Story revival on Broadway.
Filmonic real life actors cast as The Simpsons? Fun choices.
Popular Mechanics "Ten Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies" [tip: Glenn Kenny]
Empire has new photos from Bryan Singer's upcoming Valkyrie. I am really excited to see Carice Van Houten in another film (after her breakthrough in Black Book) but for some reason I feel like this still is from a superhero film and not a war drama...


er... maybe it's just the high saturation of the color that's leading my brain there. Or Tommyboy's eyepatch? I'm not sure. But I just think: superpowers!

And, finally, don't you just love low budget creativity. The following two videos would surely make Michel Gondry happy. Here's two you've probably seen but I love them so I'm sharing, like it or not. The first is a cardboard tribute to Tron (1982) [tip: Drawn] and the latter is a Harry Potter puppet show seen by gazillions already [tip: ModFab]. Both are so fun.

Tron
Uploaded by freres-hueon

Ubiquity: The 2008 Edition (Pt 2)

Last year about this time we investigated a group of actors who might dominate 2007, hard working SAG card holders with 3 or more movies arriving. Doing it again for 2008... (if you missed Part One ---which has been updated, click here)

Ubiquitous Actors
Part 2 ~ L-Z

This is part 2... Part 1 was lorded over by Cate Blanchett and the ruling spirit for Part 2 is sneaky Channing Tatum (a TFE favorite) who goes mosty AWOL this year after this month's Iraq drama Stop-Loss. So why is he mentioned? Well, he should have about 7...12...21 movies ready for release next year at the rate he's signing contracts. So, get used to that mug. 2009 belongs to him.

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Frank Langella, will be in three films. The most attention will be paid to his star turn in Frost/Nixon, a role for which he won a TONY already. Langella never quite became a movie star, preferring the stage, but the closest he got was in his Dracula stint in 1978 (a role he also incidentally did first on stage). He got a little bit of Oscar buzz last year for the indie Starting Out in the Evening, but this year he'll have more success with the Academy. What's baitier than playing a famous person? Nothing. Watch for abundant "OMG... FrankLangella IS RichardNixon" style reviews and an Oscar run for the Ron Howard film. Oh, there's more? Yes. He's in the next oddball Richard Kelly effort The Box which is a horror thriller of sorts (pssst. Never trust easy genre categories for Kelly who previously made Donnie Darko and Southland Tales). He's in a corporate corruption drama The Caller, too.

Sienna Miller, Jude Law's on & off girl and inexplicably very famous actress (quick: what's she famous for?) has five films due. There's the title role in the completed Camille where she takes a honeymoon with James Franco but there's no release date in sight yet. She has the principle female role in the bowdlerized adaptation of the great novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (I haven't seen it but I'm free to judge since I love the book and the reported changes are... ghastly. I may join the boycott). Sienna is also getting mixed up with Cillian Murphy in not one but two biopic period pieces. The first is The Edge of Love (Keira Knightley co-stars) which takes place in the 30s and 40s and the second is the British 60s counterculture story Hippie Hippie Shake. Finally, if they're quick about the adaptation of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, she could end the year with that.

Viggo Mortensen fans are thrilled that he finally got an Oscar nomination last season (for his second Cronenberg film, Eastern Promises). More meaty roles and challenges are coming his way. You may remember that celebrated Ed Harris directed himself and Marcia Gay Harden into the Oscar race for Pollock in 2000. He's finally made a follow up feature, a western named Appaloosa which stars Viggo, Harris himself, Jeremy Irons and Renée Zellweger. He'll play a novelist named "Halder" in Good who gets swept up in the rise of socialism in Germany. It's based on a stage play. Further away but possibly ready in 2008 will be his darkest role yet as "Father" in The Road. I've read the genius novel by Cormac McCarthy and its so bleak that No Country For Old Men's die hard fans will whimper. I have no idea how they'll make it work as a movie but the director of The Proposition (John Hillcoat) is the one who attempts it.


Cillian Murphy was everywhere a few years back but it's been quiet. Why? He was working. He has six films in the pipeline (though I'd be surprised if they all opened in the next 9 months). We've already discussed the two with Sienna Miller (The Edge of Love and Hippie Hippie Shake) but Murphy nuts will be happy to know that they're both biopics so he could end up with his first Oscar nomination. Edge... is about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (played by Matthew Rhys) and his rival William Killik (Murphy) for the women in his life. Counterculture figure Richard Neville is the focal point of Hippie. The biopic Oscar tactic seems to work best if the Academy is very familiar with who you're pretending to be. So maybe not... Murphy will be reprising his Scarecrow role (in cameo form?) for the Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight and you'll have to catch Watching the Detectives on DVD shortly. There are two more films (Telepathy and Dali & I: The Surreal Story) that are looking more like 2009 prospects. Remember, nothing is ever definitive with release dates.

Guy Pearce might have six (!) releases this year. He was originally reported to have replaced Viggo Mortensen in The Road but they're both still listed as cast members at IMDB and the movie is filming. Perhaps those rumors were erroneous. Even if we don't think he's quite the actor Viggo is, they can both certainly do the emaciated thing that will be crucial to this movie's post-apocalypse believability. (Where's Christian Bale?) Further along in production, i.e. already wrapped, are five films. They go by the names of Traitor (a CIA drama with an outstanding cast that includes Don Cheadle, Saïd Taghmaoui, Jeff Daniels and A Mighty Heart's Archie Panjabi), The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq thriller), How to Change in 9 Weeks (an Australian crime drama with Sam Neill and Miranda Otto), Winged Creatures (a post traumatic stress group therapy drama with an all star cast), and Death Defying Acts (as famous magician Harry Houdini. It played at Toronto last fall).

Dennis Quaid had a bit of a rocky patch in his career but two films in 2002, Far From Heaven and The Rookie, reminded people of his talent and charisma. He's in demand again, or thereabouts. His first 2008 film (in theaters now) is the action thriller Vantage Point. He'll follow that up next month opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in the comedy Smart People. He's got a big role in The Express due in October, the latest entry in the very crowded true life inspirational sports drama genre and he plays a bitter detective in the serial killer thriller The Horsemen which is due in May.

Eddie Redmayne was last seen flopping in his attempt to murder Cate Blanchett. The glow off of her Oscar winning costumes in Elizabeth the Golden Age temporarily blinded him. Seriously. She was bathed in white. The sunlight really reflects! He can currently be seen in the ensemble of The Other Boleyn Girl. He's paired up with Julianne Moore in the shocking true life 1972 murder of Savage Grace. And still two more movies await. Yellow Handkerchief finds him on a road trip through Louisiana with William Hurt and in Powder Blue he's got one of the four central roles in a Los Angeles set 'strangers colliding' drama -- we expect that we'll be seeing a lot of that subgenre in the coming years. Ahem.

Mark Ruffalo has four films ready for you. Nah, let's make that three. I mean, does anyone believe that Kenneth Lonergan's (You Can Count on Me) Margaret is ever going to open? It's two years late. But we'll still get a triple fix of this almost big star (seriously, when will he "break"?). In no particular order we'll get the con-artist film from the director of Brick (Rian Johnson) which is called The Brothers Bloom. There's also Real Men Cry about Boston boys turning to crime (another subgenre that's hot in Hollywood). Finally, he'll play the Doctor in Fernando Meirelles adaptation of the classic novel Blindness which I've discussed a bunch already.

[source]

Amy Ryan was all smiles on Oscar night. It wasn't just because she was a nominee. She's been working a lot, too. And that's even before the after-effects of the Gone Baby Gone breakthrough have hit. The only way is up. She's got one unreleased film from last year's festival circuit called Neal Cassady (which is about the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"). We'll also see her in The Missing Person (her third film with Bug's Michael Shannon) and the comedy Bob Funk. The big dog in her 2008 roster is undoubtedly the Angelina Jolie drama Changeling. No word on who she is playing but she's in it. And since it's a Clint Eastwood picture, that alone is a big deal.

Terence Stamp, now in his 5th decade of screen stardom, is busier than ever. He's playing Siegfried in the Farrel/Hathaway adaptation of TV's Get Smart. His inimitable silver haired presence will assist Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise in Wanted and Valkyrie, respectively. At Christmas time he'll be part of the Jim Carrey comedy Yes Man. If I had to guess I would say that 2009 will be full of him, too.

Mark Strong was the most evil of the plentiful evil princes in Stardust and he's working the dangerous man angle in the period comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day too. It opens tomorrow. You'll also see him in five other films this year. Busy, busy, busy. The films: Good (that German nationalist drama with Viggo Mortensen), Babylon A.D. (Vin Diesel's summer action pic) RocknRolla (another Guy Ritchie crime film), Flashbacks of a Fool (a Hollywood memoir piece with Daniel Craig), and The Young Victoria (he plays "Conroy" to Emily Blunt's queen). If you've read all this and you're still scratching you're head saying "who the hell is Mark Strong?", here's an earlier post that explains.

Olivia Thirlby was the least famous of Juno's celebrated ensemble (she played Juno's BFF Leah) but she's aiming to correct that fame disparity this year. The beautiful New Yorker has a couple leftover films from last year that haven't opened in the States yet called Si j'étais toi and Love Comes Lately. First to find release this year will be Snow Angels, the David Gordon Green film. It opens tomorrow. You'll also see her in Margaret (if it ever gets released) as well as the comedy The Wackness. Finally there's two dramas coming from exciting directors. The first Uncertainty comes from the pair behind the Tilda Swinton film The Deep End, remember that? Her co-star is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And last but probably not least she'll be Jonathan Glatzer's (Birth, Sexy Beast) Safety Glass which is set in the 80s and centers around a group of students and the Challenger Space Shuttle launch.

Tilda Swinton follows her Oscar win for Michael Clayton by logging more time in Hollywoodland. She's reprising her White Witch role for summer's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. She's costarring with fellow 2007 Oscar nominees George Clooney (again) in the Coen Bros Burn After Reading which is opening wide in September and Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which opens in November.

For die hard Swintonians who may soon start to resent the post-Oscar silliness of "discovery" when she's already been famous for culturally savvy types for close to 20 years, there's arthouse fare too. The festival circuit has already seen her in Bela Tarr's The Man From London. She's the title character Julia who is extorting a bunch of money with a young boy as bait. Bad Tilda! The chief non-Tilda reason to be excited about that one is that Erick Zonca (The Dreamlife of Angels) is the director. She's got three other more art films lined up, too but don't expect these until 2009: a Lady Macbeth (!) turn in Come Like Shadows , teamed up with Marilyn Manson in the Alice in Wonderland derived Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll and a supporting turn in the new Jim Jarmusch picture The Limits of Control (with Bill Murray). The 47 year old (but ageless) icon is not going away anytime soon.

Charlize Theron is a smart woman. Once known mostly for her astonishing beauty she worked ferocious deglam magic in Monster to win very own Oscar @ 28. So here she is in her early 30s, already firmly established as a seriously talented actress --perfect timing. I expect she'll be in demand until at least until 2020. The first of her three '08 pictures is Sleepwalking in which a young girl most cope with her mother's abandonment. She'll co-star in the Will Smith superpowered vehicle Hancock... And if they're quick about it, she'll play "wife" in the apocalyptic drama The Road. It's not a big role but it's bound to be a devastating one. 2009 looks even better but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

South African supertstar Theron and Dutch sensation van Houten

Carice Van Houten found her international breakthrough last year with Paul Verhoeven's Black Book and offers apparently starting pouring in. I have no idea if her Dutch romantic comedy Love is All will find release but why not? People are curious about her. Strike while the iron is hot, distributors. But even if that's just something to track down on DVD eventually, Carice speaks four languages so she's totally mobile for the good roles. She's playing a German in the Bryan Singer WW II picture Valkyrie opposite Tom Cruise. She's got the lead role of the psychiatrist dealing with a troubled girl in the English language thriller Dorothy Mills and in October she'll be supporting two mega stars (Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe) in Ridley Scott's CIA drama Body of Lies.

Sigourney Weaver. Sigweavy for short... only she's very tall. Will this post ever end? I miss her and hopefully her gut busting turn in The TV Set reminded Hollywood was a unique and valuable assett she is too films. Films already in theaters include Be Kind Rewind and Vantage Point. Still to come: the drama The Girl in the Park (delayed from last year) and the Tina Fey surrogate mom comedy Baby Mama.

Rachel Weisz has been flirting with the supporting actress Oscar curse since winning for The Constant Gardener doing films like Fred Claus and as the voice of the dragon in the silly Eragon. But 2008 looks pretty good, 2009 even better. But why am I always jumping ahead? This year we'll see in the promising sounding The Brothers Bloom, the long delayed Wong Kar Wai road trip movie My Blueberry Nights and she's already in theaters as one of the women opposite Ryan Reynolds in Definitely, Maybe

David Wenham. If you're saying "who" just think "Faramir" in Lord of the Rings or one of those oiled and ab'ed warriors in 300. The talented and handsome Australian will be seen in the Baz Luhrman Nicole Kidman epic Australia... (see previous posts). He's part of the strong cast of the the China set orphanage / war drama called The Children of Huang Shi (which co-stars Jonathan Rhys Meyes and both Michelle Yeoh & Chow Yun Fat of Crouching Tiger fame). Last but not least, he's delicious in a relatively small role in Married Life (opposite Patty Clarkson) which is about to open.

Michelle Williams was last seen as a socialite having a complicated affair with Cate Blanchett's Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. The former Brokeback Mountain Oscar nominee's face will adorn screens throughout the year. She's one of a bevy of beautiful women involved with Hugh Jackman and Ewan MacGregor in the sex club thriller The List. And proving once again that she's got a taste for dark and serious filmmaking, she'll be seen in Incendiary (about a suicide bombing), Lukas Moodyson's new film Mammoth with Gael Garcia Bernal and something a little lighter but still intelligent: Charlie Kauffman's ensemble film Synecdoche, New York (previously discussed here... my god what a cast)

Patrick Wilson, Kate Winslet seducer par excellence (Little Children), is still working for A list leading man status. Why is it so elusive? Neither Brothers Three: An American Gothic or the Ed Burns romantic drama Purple Violets found suitable release last year but you can maybe pick them up on DVD soon. Violets is on iTunes. Later this year, this looker will be part of the ensemble of the grief counselling drama Passengers (with Dianne Wiest and Anne Hathaway), he's a troubled architect in Life in Flight and he's the husband in the potentially buzzy Neil LaBute picture Lakeview Terrace which is about an interracial couple (Wilson & the ever-wondrous and gobsmackingly gorgeous Kerry Washington, a TFE favorite) who are being harassed by a cop (Samuel L Jackson). But what I want to know is why on earth isn't Mr. Wilson being cast in any of these new movie musicals? They're making them again and that's how he got famous in the first place. It's a head scratcher. The voice is as beautiful as the face.

and we're done. WHEW.
[Back to Part 1 if you missed it]

more at twiigs.com...

Carice van Houten is a Star

Today's Hump Day Hottie post is brought to you by my screening of Black Book a few weeks back. Yes, it's still playing in my head. It won't leave.

I think we all need to read blogs more carefully. I regularly find people asking things in comments that indicate that they didn't actually read what they were commenting on. I'm even guilty of it myself... on my own blog. Months ago when I was interviewing Arjan Writes for the blog interview series, he urged us to check out the Dutch film Black Book and called Carice van Houten "amazing".

I hate getting to parties late but boy was that three syllables of understatement. And it was in one ear and out the other at the time. I didn't go to the theater and see the movie. What's wrong with me?

Anybody who sees Black Book is inevitably wowed by van Houten's fire. Verhoeven is a naughty auteur. Just look at The 4th Man, Starship Troopers, Turkish Delight, Showgirls. This isn't the first time he's asked his female star to spread 'em. Remember Sharon Stone's pantyless in Basic Instinct? But here's the thing: Stone later played naive about it. It's impossible to imagine this 30 year-old Dutch goddess telling the press afterwards that she was "tricked" into it like the American star did. In every scene in Black Book you can feel her game spirit. "What now?" you imagine her asking enthusiastically, never "How dare you?"

Recently the new Bond girls were announced and they were, as per usual, young beautiful European things. All I could think was Carice! Why isn't CvH rolling around in the sheets with Daniel Craig in Bond 22 ? Maybe Craig on top would be beneath her, though. She's already a star. Americans just don't know her name yet is all. They might soon. Turns out I'm still catching up with her sudden international rise: after my Bond girl fantasy ended I learned that she has four films already in post-production (Dorothy Mills which she headlines, Valkyrie opposite Tom Cruise, Body of Lies opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Repossession Mambo opposite Jude Law) and another one (Vivaldi, a biopic, opposite Joseph Fiennes) soon to start filming.

Damn girl, slow down.

On second thought: Faster! Give us more.


And, you saw this coming, Carice van Houten is one of the nominees for the FB "Breakthrough" Award for her work in Black Book
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Filmmakers, please don't kill off sexy characters mere minutes after you've introduced them

It's just not right.

(This message has been brought to you by Nathaniel's recent screening of Black Book)

Can someone please find some more work for Michiel Huisman, pronto? Thanks for listening.
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Blogosphere Multiplex: Arjan Writes

A blogger that needs little introduction. Arjan Writes is one of the best music blogs on the net. I talked to Arjan last week about the movies...

10+ Questions with Arjan

Nathaniel: How often do you go to the movies and what's the biggest draw for you?

Arjan: I go to the movies once a month on average, but I travel quite a bit and often end up watching in-flight movies. Biggest draws are certain actors and subtitles. I love subtitles!

Nathaniel: Subtitles do rule --I prefer mine in yellow under the widescreen image. But you're already teasing. "Certain" actors Arjan? We want names. Do share.

Arjan: Mmmm. I love Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett. And Jake, of course. I remember not being so fond of Nicole until I met her backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2001. We literally ran into each other. Boom! She was so beautiful. I was completely mesmerized. It is her fairy dust.

Nathaniel: I am bright green with envy. I have not met her but I have witnessed the fairy dust live (Dogville premiere Lincoln Center) and it is something. She's nearly alien what with all the glowing. Tell me how much you love Moulin Rouge! (fake it if you don't, I'm obsessed)

Arjan: She's supernatural. I am telling you. The way she commanded her entourage was spellbinding. I chatted with her about her duet with Kylie Minogue, which was a hot topic at the time. Moulin Rouge! is one of my favorite music movies of all time. Visual eye candy.

Nathaniel: You mentioned subtitles a minute ago. What are you favorite foreign films? Are you a Francophile, an Asian cinema nut? Or do you just like them all?

Arjan: My favorite foreign films have to be Dutch. I was born and raised in Amsterdam so I'm a bit biased. Dutch filmmakers have been winning some Oscars in the last ten years. And may I remind you of Rutger Hauer?

Nathaniel: You may and please do. I think if you're of a certain age (30something) the Rutger thing is hard to miss. I mean, Michelle Pfeiffer was cursed with him, Harrison Ford played cat and mouse with him ("time to die"), Anne Rice wanted him.

Who should we all be obsessed with now from Dutch cinema?

Arjan: You should be obsessed with Famke Janssen, the leading lady of Dutch film. Also, Paul Verhoeven's new Dutch-language film Black Book is getting raving reviews. The movie features an amazing performance by Carice Van Housten. The movie is now playing in select cities in the U.S. NPR loved it, too.

Nathaniel: I've been meaning to see that. Since you write about music, I'm curious to hear your reactions on musicians turned actors. Or vice versa. Any thoughts on the medium hopping of Beyonce, Rufus Wainwright, etc... Do you like Juliette Lewis and the Licks? Will you listen to Scarlett Johansson's record when it comes out?

Arjan: Singers are creative beings. Actors are creative beings. So I think it is only natural for them to try to mix it up a little. It doesn't make less or more of an effort. I saw Scarlett perform with the Jesus & Mary Chain at Coachella this year. I wasn't impressed, but I think she's a wonderful actress. I think Juliette Lewis shows off a lot passion in her performance, both on stage and on screen. I totally love that. Don't count out Mandy Moore. I loved her in Saved! and her new album will suprise you.


Nathaniel: I'm sure you've heard of the Kirsten Dunst/Debbie Harry project. Though I'm not particularly fond of the biopic genre, I think Debbie Harry is a great choice for a feature. I'm also really excited to see the Todd Haynes Bob Dylan film I'm Not There. Since you have so much contact with the music world, I'm wondering which musician or band, famous or otherwise, you'd love to see a film about? Or put another way...who is entertaining enough backstage to warrant their own Truth or Dare?

Arjan: Really tough one to answer. I'd love to see a good movie about Fleetwood Mac. A great band with a lot of drama. I would also be interested in seeing a movie about Fischerspooner with the lead character played by Casey Spooner himself. Very compelling group rooted in the avant-garde NYC art scene that would hopefully make for a very enlightening movie experience.

Nathaniel: What's your favorite movie of all time?

Arjan: Character

Nathaniel: That was so intense. I remember being surprised when it won the Oscar in that it's less sentimental than what they usually go for.

OK what's one thing we haven't discussed that might surprise your readers about your movie tastes?

Arjan: I am sucker for sci-fi movies. I love to dream about galaxies far, far away. I caught the original Planet Of The Apes a few weeks ago and loved it. Music movies don't always hit the right note with me, but classics for me are The Who's Tommy, Flashdance (gritty and empowering) and the bio pic What's Love Got To Do With It with that powerful performance by Angela Bassett.

Nathaniel: They make a movie of your life. Tell us the title, director, tagline --who composes the score and who plays you?

Arjan: Impossible to answer this one! But if you ask me right here, right now... I'd have to go with Ben Affleck or Tom Cruise playing Arjan in a movie directed by Paul Verhoeven or Pedro Almovodar that is called Green Fields which is about a young man who had a dream and made it happen. With two small bags in hand jumping on a plane to start living his childhood dream in a far away county with nothing but the passion to make something of his life. Soundtrack by Darren Hayes and Mylo.

Nathaniel: I can't imagine a world where Verhoeven and Almodovar are an either/or. So let's have both: an Arjan double feature.

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Thanks to Arjan for answering all these questions. I hope that gave you a movie taste of a music man. Once again readers: I probably don't have to ask but you're already reading what Arjan Writes... right?