Today, we bring you Milkyrie—described by its makers as "Milk meets Valkyrie. Deal with it." Yes, they've gone and done it: With the help of an all-the-rage time-travel plot device, they've transposed late-70s Castro with late-WW2 Berlin, and let the two film's various heroes, anti-heroes, ruthless dictators, and tenaciously gayfro'd campaign managers mingle in a Milk-Nazi smoothie. Does it make sense? No. Did we laugh? Yes. Particularly when Cleve Jones assured Col. von Stauffenberg, "I don't do...losing."

The thriller padded its $80 million domestic gross with another $13.2 million overseas, led by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg's loyal and/or curious German countrymen, who delivered $3.4 million of that total. (We can't explain the South Korean aid package, however, which amounted to $2.7 million.) Better news for United Artists: The film opens in another 13 territories next weekend. The downside: A good number of them, including Russia, France and Spain, were pre-sold to foreign distributors, thus downgrading the venerable studio's economic forecast from the robust "Eat shit, Roger Friedman" to the decidedly more modest "January payroll should clear." All things considered, we think they'll take it.

• 'Valkyrie' tops foreign box office [Variety]

The meeting took place at last night's German premiere of Valkyrie, and we've got video of Cruise interacting with a particularly insistent Anonymous member who's far more interested in getting Cruise to autograph his mask than to chastise him on his evasive endorsement of earth-people pills. Cruise is remarkably obliging; however, we don't recommend attempting the same signature coup with samurai swords. That never ends well.

Friedman has had it out for Valkyrie for months, culminating in his omission from press-screening invitations issued around the beginning of December. Studio reps said at the time that Friedman had already made up his mind and MGM/UA didn't owe him anything ("Screenings are a privilege, not a right," marketing boss Mike Vollman told Patrick Goldstein); ever the professional, Friedman included Valkyrie among his Worst Films of 2008 despite not having seen it, forced to expense the ticket to Fox and join the unwashed masses on opening day.

Surprise! He hates it. Not that you should care, except for the part where he lies, perhaps libelously so. For your convenient reference, we've responded to some of Friedman's more outrageous claims with a bit of context and/or reality checks:

"I’m more concerned that Valkyrie could represent a new trend in filmmaking: Nazi apologia."

Yes, Valkyrie is a pretty gutsy move toward defending the honor of Nazis — particularly the central plot to deceive and kill Adolf Hitler and eradicate his leadership from Germany's governance. Way to call it, Rog.

"Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg — referred to in this film constantly as “Stauffenberg”— as if to make him sound less German or something."

Exactly. Reference to Cruise's character as "Stauffenberg" decidedly downplays his German heritage. Everyone involved should be ashamed for forcing this linguistic quirk down audience's throats.

On top of that, there is the matter of the uniforms and the set design. Suddenly, we have German officers in World War II who are not wearing arm bands. Their swastikas are now small tokens on chests of medals. They look more like airline pilots than Nazi soldiers. When they meet, it looks like they’re at a lovely retreat in the Adirondacks.

Indeed, the lack of Nazi insignia affirms the historical accuracy that Colonel von Stauffenberg was not a member of the Nazi party. Not all German soldiers were Nazis, nor all Nazis soldiers. As far as their meeting locations, Hitler did have a redoubt or 12 in the woods, of which vast portions of Germany are composed. Clearly from Hitler's depiction in Valkyrie, the setting did not assuage his paranoia, treachery, incompetence or sense of imminent doom.

Director Bryan Singer is so sparing with his Nazi flags, swastikas, etc that you’d think the Nazis hardly existed. What’s everyone so upset about anyway?

Unfamiliar with the act of purchasing a movie ticket, Friedman apparently arrived late to his Valkyrie screening, missing the title sequence's slow unveiling over the billowing red, white and black fabric of a Nazi flag. He may also have left early, skipping the [SPOILER ALERT] Nazi siege of Stauffenberg's coup HQ and their subsequent assassination of the resistance.

Because in Valkyrie Singer opens the door to a dangerous new thought: that the Holocaust and all the other atrocities could be of secondary important [sic] to the cause of German patriotism. Not once in Valkyrie do any of there [sic] “heroes” mention what’s happening around them, that any of them is appalled by or against what they know is happening or has happened: Hitler has systemically killed millions in the most barbaric ways possible to imagine.

We're certainly not here to downplay the Holocaust, but as it pertains to Valkyrie's plot — which is explicitly about terminating history's worst monster — Hitler and all that he stands for are the collective Scourge of German Honor. Would Friedman have preferred no conspiracy to kill Hitler, and thus a couple dozen fewer German politicians and officers wishing to end World War II and, thus, the Holocaust? And yes, not coincidentally, defend Germany from further disgrace. We know you're a fan of revisionist history, Rog, but seriously: From here, please leave the movies to the experts.

• Is Horrible 'Valkyrie' Tom Cruise's Nazi Apologia? [Fox News]

(All figures come from Big Hollywood.)

1. Marley & Me - $13.9 million
Jennifer Aniston's Marley P.R. blitz—featuring dozens of discomforting conversations about yoga positions, half-Windsor knots, and sexual uses for pureed liver—appears to have done the trick. The film, a heart string-tugging story of how a disobedient pet made one family's life immeasurably richer, has logged the highest Christmas Day opening of all time—surely giving Fox reason enough to proceed with its planned sequel, 101 Marleys & Us.

2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - $11.1 million
This meandering tale of man who was born smelling of VapoRub and egg salad sandwiches, and died smelling like powder and mashed bananas, is second-highest Xmas day opener of all time. It should be on track for a $45 million four-day weekend if its 2988 screens are expanded to the planned 3500, filling hundreds of abandoned ghost theaters once meant for the monkeysaur adventures of Delgo and friends.

3. Bedtime Stories - $9.75 million
Many expected this fantastical family film, featuring Adam Sandler as a loving uncle who discovers a remote control that can bring his wildest imaginings to life (wait—wrong omnipotent Sandler movie), to be the weekend's big earner. Still, expect Disney to act thrilled about its performance, with a statement gushing, "In a field crowded with major holiday releases, ours was the only film in the top five to feature both a gumball hailstorm, a chariot race, and Adam Sandler talking in that high-pitched baby voice that kills us every time. We couldn't be prouder."

4. Valkyrie - $7.35 million
Tom Cruise's latest starring vehicle seems to have indeed found an audience among history buffs, who craved a Führer-detonation thriller this Christmas. Estimates have the four-day take hitting as high as $30 million—a number robust enough to coax MGM employees off their Century City window ledges and onto New Year's Eve dance floors for champagne toasts to their favorite one-eyed, one-handed, Hitler-hunting superstar.

5. The Spirit - $3.15 million
You know your so-bad-it's-bad-unless-you're-tanked-and-then-it's-actually-pretty-good movie is underperforming when its star's snotty Kleenex is grossing higher than its per-screen average.

The Top Five Chinese Dishes Consumed Later by the Jews Who Saw Them:
1. Beef with Broccoli
2. Pork Fried Rice
3. Kung Pao Chicken
4. General Tsao's Chicken
5. Hot and Sour Soup

• Big Hollywood

WHAT'S NEW: High stakes are hardly unusual for a holiday frame, but their sheer volume in 2008 is slightly disturbing: Last week's new-movie nomads shall be consumed wholly by a pack of heavyweight predators in wide release. Their top grosser should be Disney's Bedtime Stories, a sizable stride in the slow Eddie Murphyfication of Adam Sandler, playing a novice storytelling uncle who is shocked when his tales come to life. Hijinks ensue while conjuring the most explicit double entendres he can imagine, thus leaving both the kiddies and himself fulfilled when the gumball rain outside yields a ball-gum flood requiring Keri Russell's careful attention. Expect Stories to win the long weekend with $39.9 million.

The bourgeois-white-assholes-and-their-crazy-fucking-dog tearjerker Marley & Me won't be that far behind at $35.7 million, defying Disney's covert spoiler ops to steer people to their own family offfering. Behind that, look for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to officially launch its Oscar crusade with $22.6 million, hindered by its nearly three-hour length and more-than-expected siphoning off by Valkyrie (which we'll get to in a bit). At the bottom of the scrum you'll find The Spirit, Frank Miller's spectacularly awful adaptation of Will Eisner's comics classic, pocketing $11.9 million for Lionsgate. Also opening in limited release: The Cannes darling, Oscar-probable animated documentary from Israel, Waltz With Bashir.

THE BIG LOSER: There aren't enough pejoratives in the world to pile onto Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes's misbegotten attempt to steal another Oscar while the Academy reaches for its collective Kleenex. Or checks its watch; the reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is an interminable slog that, with any justice, should see its early, positive numbers reverse dramatically as Los Angeles and New York audiences flee theaters in search of refunds. What more can we say? Oh — lots.

THE UNDERDOG: We probably have no right to place a Tom Cruise film in this spot — especially one so expensively ubiquitous of late. But after all those months of speculation and dread surrounding Bryan Singer's $90 million thriller about the failed plot to kill Hitler, let's be fair: Valkyrie is a solid if weird popcorn thriller. The first act drags, Singer gets a little too cute for anyone's good (may we never again be subjected to his spinny Phonograph-Cam™), and you never do totally sink into Cruise and castmates Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Kenneth Branagh as English-speaking German officers. Still, the assassination conspiracy and its momentary glimmer of success is a captivating fluke of history handled articulately and tastefully — and sure, entertainingly — by Singer and Cruise. Even if you don't contribute to its $18.2 million opening, it's worth a look in the weeks ahead.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include the Statham-y holiday favorite Death Race, the underrated Coen Brothers caper Burn After Reading, Anna Faris's Playboy commercial-cum-college comedy The House Bunny, and a couple of the year's most notorious indie flops, The Women and Hamlet 2. Gather the family, and have a great holiday weekend!

Sure, the Cruise Fire appears to have been all but snuffed, as if the rigors of round-the-clock Valkyrie-pimping have finally gotten the best of him, draining all mystery and excitement from his story about Spaghetti alla Carbonara preparation. But why is Kimmel asking if Cruise feeds his children "porn pasta?" Is this what now passes for late show small talk with one of the world's most recognizable leading men? Is Kimmel starstruck? Bored? Was this just a case of "porn pasta" being the best comic copper Kimmel could spin out of depression-eater Cruise's life-unaffirming Italian cuisine anecdotes? Why are we suddenly so compelled to hit the Chianti, and hard? Children eating porn pasta makes us die a little inside. That is all. [Jimmy Kimmel Live!]

MGM is paying dearly for the rest according to the NY Post, which reports today that the studio has spent $70 million marketing the Tom Cruise thriller in advance of its Christmas opening. That's about twice the average promotional budget for a studio opening expected to gross less than $100 million, putting Valkyrie's total cost at close to $160 million. Remedial Hollywood math thus suggests that MGM and Cruise's United Artists require at least a $275 million theatrical gross to break even after exhibitors take their cut, which seems... unlikely, however much better the film is than we initially feared.

MGM tells the paper its spending is in line with the average, and the campaign will doubtless also trickle down to DVD and the studio's waning output deal with Showtime. Still, for what UA takes from MGM's coffers versus what it puts back, the Valkyrie returns hint that Cruise may yet have a $15 million Sundance entry in his future just to even things out. More on Valkyrie — including pinpoint-accurate opening-gross predictions, as always — in tomorrow's Defamer Attractions weekend preview.

• Doubling Down [NYP]

After Lopez told Cruise that he made his Broadway debut in the same theater Katie Holmes was currently performing in ("That's outstanding!" barked Cruise), he asked the actor why he chose the Valkyrie role of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. “I knew I was interested in the film," Cruise answered. "I always wanted to kill Hitler so Stauffenberg and I had that in common." Sadly, Lopez neglected to ask a follow-up about the four-year-old Cruise's elaborate fantasy to travel back in time and assassinate Hitler with a well-timed, sharpened Crayola crayon (periwinkle, natch) to the throat. [Extra]

How else to explain Cruise wandering into the shot two hours before his scheduled interview to unsettle Lauer and Meredith Vieira? As his offscreen underlings attempted to muster a "Great idea, Tom!", Cruise awkwardly interrupted the hosts' top-of-the-show news reading, prompting Vieira to ask him what he knew about Bush. The loaded question caused Cruise to flash back to an uncomfortable 1987 query from Mimi Rogers until Vieira helpfully added, "The President?" Later, Cruise would actually sit down for his Lauer tete-a-tete, a weirdly downbeat affair that saw Cruise virtually unable to complete a thought without a groggy digression. Glib? More like glub. Clip above.

• Today [NBC]

· Here's Variety's review of Valkyrie. We saw it yesterday, too, and are largely in agreement. Neither the movie or Cruise are a disaster by any stretch, but it's a pretty dry historical recreation best suited for the History Channel set. The Pianist this is not.
· If you haven't seen Jon Stewart corner Mike Huckabee like a frightened rodent over gay marriage, get thee to this page now. Watching him swat down Huckabee's ridiculous arguments is almost as satisfying as good same-sex.
· Ricky Martin's got himself two little Clay Juniors!
· Pitchfork's 20 Worst Album Covers of 2008.
· Don't let the Italian censors get their hands on your queer cowboy masterpiece: They'll slice and dice it into the story of two rigidly heterosexual spaghetti chefs who swap wives.

"There's a misperception about me that I just became this wallflower, this woman who doesn't have any control of her life. And that's pretty wrong. From the very beginning, I've made choices in my life that have been very strong."

"When I met Tom I was completely in love and, yes, I admired him growing up – he's Tom Cruise! … When I met him, he was so warm and I thought, Wow! You can be a superstar and a human being. He made me feel so amazing."

Who could ever assume that Katie Holmes had lost control of her life just because she's only been let out to make one film since meeting Cruise, who has long insisted on calling her by the completely different name "Kate"? Perhaps this well-timed set of interviews was no coincidence; after all, the magazine is dubbing the piece "Reinvention," and all around us today, Hollywood is being reinvented in the most soul-rendering fashion possible. Los Angeles, meet your new king and queen. All samurai swords will be confiscated.

• Katie Holmes: I'm No Wallflower [People]

• Tom Cruise: I Bought Katie Engagement Ring After First Date [Us]

Star-Ledger writer Stephen Whitty, the chair of the NY Film Critics Circle, suggested last week that MGM still wasn't serious about pushing Valkyrie for awards season despite moving its release up to Dec. 25. it was a better date than that Feb. 13, 2009, dump job planned before Paula Wagner's departure, but the release date was less important to critics than when they could see it for their own awards consideration.

And with the first official press screenings taking place after Whitty's organization votes, that can only mean one thing: MGM and United Artists have no faith in their $90 million Tom Cruise Nazi epic. Of course! Isn't that what you derived from that strategy?

Us neither. In fact, MGM has been screening Valkyrie informally for media on both coasts since at least September, and either way, the film was an awards-season write-off for months among many of the same newspaper and online critics whose senses of entitlement are now somehow offended. MGM can't win for losing, though its beleaguered marketing VP Mike Vollman can at least send along another spirited defense:

When did a december release date mean that a film exists first and foremost for award consideration? And when did film criticism become a competitive sport, with deadlines, rankings, winners and losers.? We want valkyrie to be judged on it's [sic] own, not as one of a cramped herd of dissimilar artistic endeavours lumped together unfairly due to the vagaries of the calendar and the marketplace. Valkyrie is eligible for every guild honor, from ampas to ves, and will be on every single nomination ballot. If members of the entertainment community wish to honor it, they will be able to do so. We hope they do as the work is excellent and deserves recognition.

Fine — they can sort it out themselves. And anyway, who cares? We're all really just waiting for Ben Lyons's take, anyway.

• `Valkyrie' surrenders [Star-Ledger]

• `Valkyrie' fires back [Star-Ledger]

Cruise doesn't spill much new information in his brief interview, though he does unveil a few of the careful calculations behind choosing both his pro-dance Tropic Thunder cameo and the role of an eyepatch-clad Nazi:

"When you make people reconsider something that they're so certain of ... I found it very compelling. It's the reason I'm doing it," Cruise says. "When I was a kid, we'd play war, you know, and it was always 'Kill the Nazis.' I wanted to kill Hitler." Cruise laughs. [...]

If he's in the mood to mock Hollywood, he can take an unbilled cameo as a balding, ball-busting studio exec in Tropic Thunder. "When I was working with Ben Stiller, I said, 'I want to play this character, but I've got to dance,'" says Cruise. "I haven't danced that much since Risky Business!"

But it wasn't enough to overtake the surprising stars above him in the always-baffling Power 40, including Barack Obama's Secret Service Agent at No. 1, "The Palin Bunch" at No. 5 and "The Bipolar Broker" at No. 6. Details didn't list any runners-up trailing pregnant 40th-placer Thomas Beatie, but we have a hunch that entities as far-flung as CNN's John King and The Banker on Deal or No Deal are fuming over their exclusion.

• The Power Issue: Tom Cruise [Details]

So who's in and who's out?

· The Soloist: OUT. The move to March 13 stings for everyone, especially with millions in marketing dollars already being spent ahead of the Jamie Foxx/Robert Downey Jr. drama's Nov. 21 release. Both men were on the bubble for actor nominations — Foxx as a schizophrenic cellist and RDJ as the journalist who chronicles his feel-good recovery journey — but Paramount's new conservatism (i.e. an intern hiding Brad Grey's checkbook) means it only has so many in-house resources to lend to its fall releases. The studio's semi-official insistence that the shifts have nothing to do with the film's quality or favoring its homegrown Benjamin Button and Scott Rudin/DreamWorks offering Revolutionary Road, but that's bullshit. It's not 2006 anymore; nobody can afford all this prestige at once.

· Defiance: IN. Barely. Paramount inherited the WWII-era Daniel Craig drama from its lopped-off Vantage arm; but unlike The Soloist, the studio didn't have it on its Oscar-season books until earlier this year. Pushed back from Dec. 12, it'll still get a qualifying run in New York and L.A. before opening wide on Jan. 16 — sort of an afterthought treatment that won't likely sit well with director/producer and biennial Oscar bridesmaid Ed Zwick, but hey: There's always the ShowEast Kodak Award. Congrats again, Ed!

And while we're at it, let's not forget the neglected Weinstein and MGM family:

· The Road: OUT. As noted yesterday, the Weinsteins took it back from MGM only to nudge it from Nov. 14 to an undisclosed release date in December. It's not finished, and the Weinsteins can't promote it; we foresee this one left wailing on someone's doorstep in a basket some time in mid-2009.

· The Reader: IN. It's apparently back on the Weinstein Web site, and Bob Weinstein thinks it's "terrific"! And now without Defiance to contend with, Harvey's Folly may actually have a shot at an audience on Dec. 12. Oscars, though? We're not so sure.

· Valkyrie: IN. Even the MGM Tower receptionist is pulling her weight on the campaign these days. If gold had a smell, Valkyrie would reek.

Valkyrie, Cruise's upcoming flick about the real-life failed attempt by high-ranking German officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler, has been screen-tested for regular ol' moviegoers in Nevada, I'm hearing.

The audiences weren't aware of what they would be seeing because they had been blindly solicited to attend a free movie at their local multiplex.

I'm told most of the audiences were really diggin' the flick. "They liked it," a source says. "Most people said it was a suspense thriller."

Indeed, 7 out of 10 Valkyrie viewers rated the film as "as good or better than Babylon A.D.," though a majority of comment cards also found themselves disappointed by the less-than-uplifting ending, in which a captured Tom Cruise is fed to the Führer's sows as punishment for his treasonous crimes. Look for a much more upbeat and high-octane climax when the film finally hits theaters this Christmas.

[Photo credit: MGM]

• Tom's New Flick Secretly Cruising Into Theaters [E Online]

'I LOVE Paula Wagner, but she wants to produce elsewhere and in her own venue, and I don't intend to stand in her way. I'll say this of her leaving United Artists - whatever Paula wants is what I want her to have! And I hope we'll continue working together on future projects."

So spoke Tom Cruise on the phone with me this week. He added, cryptically: "I don't run United Artists; I just own it."

WHEN I asked Tom why he felt so many people in the business have gone after the Valkyrie" project as if it's a bad idea or something historically obscene, he sighed: "It just doesn't make sense to me either. The moment I read the screenplay I knew it was an important story, and as it's a true tale of heroic resistance to one of the great villains of history, I can't imagine that people won't want to see it."

Cruise's unflappably sanguine outlook has, of course, been what has helped propel him to superstar heights, and never will it be of greater service to him than in this highly transitional period in his career. Still, we'd have expected more from Cruise in his "don't ask me, I just sign the checks!"-attitude in addressing UA's failings. In Hollywood, where blame is flung around like fistfuls of chimpanzee crap on the set of Speed Racer, a clear and focused Alpha-superstar such as himself should be expected to step up and shoulder the blame for development misfires like Lions For Lambs 2: Armaggedon Reckoning.

• A NICE LITTLE CHAT WITH CRUISE [NY Post]

The accident happened almost exactly one year ago and saw all 11, still wearing their Wehrmacht uniforms, sent to the hospital with an array of injuries, ranging from bumps and bruises to broken ribs and pulled ligaments. One extra was kept in the hospital for four days on suspicion of internal injuries.

The actors fell onto the street when a fold-down side-rail on the bed of the truck — against which the thespians were leaning — failed. The group's lawyer, Ariane Bluttner, says that United Studios knew that the trucks used in the filming were not entirely safe.

"The studio knew the trucks were rickety," Bluttner told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "There had even been an internal memo about the railings."

After representatives from Merrill Lynch determined that the "United Studios" referenced in the article was in fact United Artists, the investment firm interceded to curtail the disbursement of their precious Street funds to grimy Nazi extras. A tersely worded statement from Harry Sloan is expected by noon, beginning, "We would like to clarify a matter in the media that at all of our trucks carrying Nazi extras were soundly assembled and that any injuries were incurred by plain old German drunkenness."

• Nazi Extras Sue Tom Cruise's Film Studio for $11 Million [Spiegel Online via Deadline Hollywood Daily]