Movie pain now, and the most horrible buzz attends Valkyrie, in which Tom Cruise is to bring his rapidly oxidising screen charm to the story of Claus von Stauffenberg, the German army officer whose plot to blow up Hitler was foiled by a sturdy wooden table. Cruise plays Von Stauffenberg; the table role is thought to be have been given to an unknown after Eva Longoria failed to impress at an early read-through.
But these are all minor details, now, because the movie's release was not just recently postponed from this summer to October, but was this week shunted yet again to February 2009.
Frankly, to spin this one successfully would take quite the most fiendish propaganda expert in memory - I think we all know who it would take, and he's likely to get more than a namecheck in the movie itself - so it's all the more poignant to find Tom's people hinting weakly that the second shift will make it better timed "for the awards season".
Of course, the thought of a lengthy Cruise acceptance speech is delicious in the extreme, but ironists are advised not to send out invitations to those Oscar night "Thetans and Captive Brides" parties just yet.
