One of the producers of dyslexic Nazi drama The Reader is set to produce a biopic about Eva Braun, the girl who rode Hitler’s mustache all the way to a Russian mortar shell.

Michael Simon de Normier has optioned the film rights to the new biography “Eva Braun Life with Hitler.” which provides a radically different portrayal of the Fuehrer’s mistress.
“She was not the little dumb blond that she is usually shown to be,” author Heike Goertemaker told The Hollywood Reporter. “She was a key member of Hitler’s inner circle and an important part of the Nazi propaganda machine.”
De Normier said he is currently scouting for a director and screenwriter, and hopes the film will be an international production budgeted in the $20 million-$30 million range. He is also planning an English-language adaptation of the book. [Reuters]

I hope there’ll be love scenes.  Ja, ja, take mein schvanz greedily, like eina dirty juden.   Jawol, mein fuhrer, invade mein fotze like Poland. What?  I can’t make Nazi sex jokes now?  Anyway, I’m thinking the front runner for this part has to be Katherine Heigl.  Something about that bitch just screams “I’d bang Hitler.”

What can I say, folks, I consider it a good day any time I get to use “vag” in the headline.  The occasion is a story about The Reader, in which Kate Winslet had a nude scene like she always does. And as she told Allure, she had grow out her beef whiskers in order for her chatch to look more period-appropriate.  …

Winslet tells Allure in the June issue that when filming “The Reader,” she had to grow in the hair “down there,” so to speak. She tells Allure, “because of years of waxing, as all of us girls know, it doesn’t come back quite the way it used to. They even made me a merkin because they were so concerned that I might not be able to grow enough.” [MSNBC]

Wigs or no wigs, It’s a good thing they got it right.  I can totally picture myself standing up in the theater yelling, “EXCUSE ME, THIS DYSLEXIC NAZI’S PUSSY ISN’T HAIRY ENOUGH!”  But I do that at most movies.

With Valkyrie (trailer, review), The Reader, Adam Resurrected (“the story of a man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy.”), Defiance, Good, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas all hitting theaters and making headlines around the same time, it’s hard to know just which holocaust movie to see when you really need to masturbate never forget important historical epochs.  Luckily, NY Mag has put together this handy flow chart.  Click here for the answers.  I’m a little disappointed they didn’t mention Defiance‘s ridiculous Dracula accents.  I mean, I hate Nazis as much as the next guy, but don’t make me choose between them and vampires.

Marley & Me remained “top dog” at the box office and came in “best in show” with $21 million over the weekend.  Bedtime Stories number two even though everyone agrees how much it sucks, Curious Case of Benjamin Button number three, nothing new came out this weekend, blah blah blah who cares (full top ten after the jump).

In a season loaded with wartime stories, two more Nazi-themed films opened in limited release.  Paramount Vantage’s “Defiance” debuted with $121,000 in two theaters for a whopping average of $60,500 a cinema.
ThinkFilm’s “Good” opened with $9,300 in two theaters, averaging $4,650. The film casts Viggo Mortensen as an upright German academic gradually seduced into the Nazi fold as World War II approaches.

Meanwhile Valkyrie has been out for two weeks and The Reader opens in a week.  It reminds me of that book my mom used to read to me when I was a little kid, The Day of Too Many Nazis! On that note, I don’t know where these pictures came from, but I love them. If you have any pictures I can use in lieu of having anything intelligent to contribute to boring stories, feel free to send them on over.

1. “Marley & Me,” $24.1 million.

2. “Bedtime Stories,” $20.3 million.

3. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” $18.4 million.

4. “Valkyrie,” $14 million.

5. “Yes Man,” $13.9 million.

6. “Seven Pounds,” $10 million.

7. “The Tale of Despereaux,” $7 million.

8. “Doubt,” $5 million.

9. “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” $4.9 million.

10. “Slumdog Millionaire,” $4.8 million.

Weekend Preview is back this week by popular demand because I’m finally not too lazy to finish writing it.  Click on titles to watch trailers.

Opening this week:

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Keanu Reeves has been waiting his whole career to play an emotionless alien. All the critics say it sucks but mark my words, before the year is out, a celebrity will name their baby “Klaatu”.

Delgo
This looks f-cking terrifying.  Modeling all the aliens after Liza Minnelli probably wasn’t the best idea.

Nothing Like the Holidays
Debra Messing goes home for the holidays to meet her new Puerto Rican in-laws.  Who directed this, Tylermo Perez?  I still say it needs más Trejo.  Somewhere, Lou Dobbs is pissed they took “Christmas” out of the title.

The Reader
See Ralph Fiennes track down the SS officer he had an affair with!  See the film that spawned a thousand Jew fights! …As long as you live in New York or LA.

Gran Torino
See Clint Eastwood befriend an Asian!  Hear him sing! …But again, only if you live in New York or LA.  Everyone else can suck rocks.

Doubt
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep are priests and nuns.  Hoffmour may or may not have diddled someone.  …I said. I want you to act me. as hard. as you can. …But again, only if you live in NY or LA.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Che
If you live in New York or LA, you can see Benicio Del Tor- oh who even cares.

If you’ll remember, The Reader was the movie that caused the big fight between Les Grossman look-alikes Harvey Weinstein and Scott Rudin – a Jewhaha, if you will.  The movie will be out January 9th (not in time for awards season like Harvey wanted) and the trailer just hit today.

It stars Ralph Fiennes as a German who discovers the older woman (Kate Winslet) who touched his ding dong when he was younger is on trial for being a member of the SS.  She liked it when he read to her – from “The Odyssey”, “Huck Finn”, and “The Lady with the Little Dog” – hence the title.  It was adapted from the book by Bernhard Schlink.  Meanwhile, The Lady with the Little Dog was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Linda Lovelace.

^{Weinstein and Rudin tied for first in the Les Grossman Lookalike Contest}

So despite the fact that studio head Harvey Weinstein (left) and producer Scott Rudin (right) are basically the same person, they’re in the middle of a big fight.  At issue is The Reader, a movie Billy Elliot director Steven Daldry did for The Weinstein Company.  The film was first delayed 8 weeks by Nicole Kidman’s pregnancy, then faced another, even sexier delay when they had to wait for one of the actors to turn 18 so she could shoot a sex scene.  Even though it started shooting four months behind schedule, Harvey still wanted it finished in time for awards season (deadline is in November), despite that the director, who officially had creative control, said that was basically impossible. Rudin, who backed the director, claims Weinstein explored a number of sleazy options for forcing him to finish earlier, including claiming recently deceased producers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella “would have wanted” the movie finished in 2008 (I use that strategy with chicks all the time).  But this is all backstory.  You can get the full rundown here.

Today’s news is that Weinstein offered to give $1 million to charity if someone could produce the supposed email in which Rudin accused him of mistreating Anthony Minghella’s and Sydney Pollack’s families.  It seems a charity is in luck, because Nikki Finke just published it:

[From Scott Rudin, who apparently writes just like Variety]
Also HW [Harvey Weinstein] went to Minghella’s widow and tried to insert himself into Mirage’s editorial rights so as to insist the film be released this year – which Sydney stopped just before he died. [Harvey] Harrassed Sydney on his deathbed until the family asked him to stop because he wanted Sydney to warrant that we would deliver for release this year.

[Adds Finke] As for Scott Rudin, he confirmed to me Monday night that it is his email and claimed that Weinstein’s people pestered him “to protect Harvey and deny the email and lie to Page Six” — so he said he did “in order to keep peace for the next weeks that the two of us still have to work together on The Reader.” [DHD]

Phew.  So there you have it.  You can see coverage of all this and more on my upcoming reality series Jew Fight: It’s Complicated.

Kate Winslet will be replacing newly pregnant Nicole Kidman in The Reader.

The film is based on German author Bernhard Schlink‘s 1995 bestseller, which Oprah Winfrey also picked for her book club… The movie adaptation is to be directed by Stephen Daldry, who directed Kidman on her way to an Oscar-winning performance as author Virginia Woolf in "The Hours."  [Yahoo]

So let me get this straight, Winslet is replacing Kidman in an Oprah Book Club movie directed by the guy who did The Hours?  I don’t think this could be more boring if it was called Lord and Lady Sussexshire Discuss Gardening Whilst Drinking Chamomile.  

On an unrelated note, the source article had one of these ads.  Uh, who the hell designs these things? They’re terrifying. I can just imagine someone sitting at work thinking, "Fiddlesticks, I can’t afford my house! Maybe you can help, dancing halter-top lady!"  Way to go guys, I really wanna take financial advice from a drunk chick who’s alone at a karaoke bar alone on a Wednesday. (I didn’t mean you, mom, stop pouting).