You know how the old saying goes: Hollywood never met a Nazi it didn’t want to make a bunch of money off of. It’s true that no such saying exists but it sure seems like it might! The sheer number of Nazis in theaters right now make it seem like Hollywood’s love affair with Nazis is at it’s hottest and heaviest.

Perhaps the most hyped Nazi in ‘08 was Tom Cruise as Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (seriously, that’s his full name) aka the guy who almost killed Hitler in Valkyrie. The hype was mostly the bad kind as Germany was pretty vocal about how they didn’t want prominent Scientologist Tom Cruise playing their only national hero from WWII. Too bad, Germany. Tom Cruise is the spitting image of Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, so you are overruled.

The second most hyped Nazi is probably Kate Winslet’s character, Hanna Schmitz in The Reader. She plays a former SS guard who [SPOILER ALERT] never learned how to read (aw!). She seduces a literate young man into reading to her and eventually goes on trial for her war crimes. But not before she has a nude scene or two.

Two Nazis who barely got any attention at all but who stormed the box office in the same weekend were Daniel Craig & Co. in Defiance and Viggo Mortenson in Good. Technically, Craig and his merry band of brothers aren’t Nazis, they’re Polish Jews on the run from Nazis. (ed. note - Bear with me, I needed a trend.) Craig is in handsome company with Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell as his brothers. Together they conspire with the Russian resistance to make a not-concentration camp out in the wilderness away from the persecution of the Nazis - sort of like Robin Hood and Little John did in the Forest of Sherwood.

Like the title of the movie, Viggo Mortenson’s character, John Halder is supposed to be a good guy. He is just a simple literary professor in Germany when the Nazi party comes to power. He resists becoming a member (he openly calls Hitler a “jerk”) but eventually submits to pressure, despite his close Jewish friend who thinks it’s a bad idea. Once a full-fledged Nazi, he accidentally helps them spread their message of “compassionate euthanasia” - an idea he wrote about - as applied to the “Jewish problem.” Oops.

Who’s your favorite (fake) Nazi?

The end of the year is upon us, and as is custom, the years cinematic offerings are being broken down into “Top X Films of 2008″ lists. Everyone has a different number. Roger Ebert chose 20 films, and listed them in alphabetical order, presumably so that none of the films on the list would feel slighted.  New York Magazine and Time Magazine go the traditional route by listing their favorite ten. Times Online gets comprehensive  by listing it’s top 100.

After carefully reading each list, I’ve done a very complex mathematical analysis - 538 style - to bring you the Top 5 Movies of 2008:

1. Wall-E
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Rachel Getting Married
4. Waltz With Bashir
5. Happy-Go-Lucky

This list could also be called “The Best Movies of 2008 That I Have Not Seen”. In fact I think the biggest benefit to consuming these end-of-year lists is learning what excellent films I’ve missed out on and add to my queue. (Wall-E is at the top of my queue now, FYI.)

Take a gander at some of those lists and let me know in the comments what “cannot-miss” movies you’ve missed.

Ben and Katie discuss the prospect of seeing Jean Claude Van Damme have a fist fight with Mickey Rourke over who gets to take home Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar statue.

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I always love to hear a good bit of casting news and seeing it in action is even better. Today a photo surfaced from the set of X Men Origins: Wolverine of Taylor Kitsch as Gambit. Kitsch is best known as bad boy Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights. Gambit should prove to be a good transition for Kitsch as the character is a charismatic Canjun theif sharing some of the same tendencies as Riggins. As a bonus, Gambit can make inanimate objects explode by touching them. Oh and he’s a gambler:

From the January 2009 issue of EMPIRE MAGAZINE

In less-than-inspired casting news, Kristen Stewart of Twighlight fame has been picked to portray Joan Jett on the big screen. In the interest of full disclosure I have not seen Twighlight but the unenthusiasm she had for promoting the film left me with a particular sense of unenthusiasm for her. But maybe she’ll be in a much better mood when she’s finished playing Joan Jett dealing with the Twilight fan swarm?

Criterion Collection, the authority on classic film DVDs, has launched a new design of its website that includes a “watch now” feature, similar to that of Netflix. On criterion.com, you pay $5 for each streaming movie, which will be available to you for one week. After that, you can apply that $5 to purchase the same film on DVD. Right now their online offerings are slim, but they plan on adding more to their online library soon.

Criterion partnered with an online film community called The Auteurs to launch this feature. Together, they will host a series of online film festivals, which are free. Their first festival is called “Cruel Stories of Youth.” Fun!

These stories of children in extremis take the popular genre of the childhood film to new levels of horror, abjection, and surreality. From Louis Malle’s tragic wartime memoir Au revoir les enfants to Peter Brooks’s adaptation of the classic parable of cruel youth Lord of the Flies to Catherine Breillat’s shocking Fat Girl, these quirky, beautiful films all depict young people on the edge—and feature some pretty astonishing performances too.

I can only hope that their future festivals won’t be such beautiful, beautiful downers.  If you’d like to know even more about the new features of its website, Criterion made a lil’ video for you.

Remember last year when all the writers in Hollywood decided to strike to get a better contract for themselves and how fun it wasn’t for us viewers? Well this year it’s the actors who aren’t getting what they want in their contracts with major studios. The Screen Actors Guild met with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers last week and it didn’t end particularly well. SAG is now seeking a strike authorization from its members. From the AP:

The talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), brokered by federal mediator Juan Carlos Gonzalez, ended shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday.

“We will now launch a full-scale education campaign in support of a strike-authorization referendum,” SAG said. “We will further inform our members about the core, critical issues unique to actors that remain in dispute.”

“Make no mistake about this: If SAG members authorize a strike, then a strike is all but guaranteed because SAG has shown no willingness to compromise on its unrealistic demands,” the organization told its members.

Ugh, it doesn’t sound like the two parties are trying to get along. So make preparations: update your Netflix queue and be prepared to savor the upcoming new episodes of your favorite television show, because they might be the only new fare you’ll see for a while.

There are two new trailers floating around the ‘nets that have everyone in a tizzy: Star Trek and Watchmen. The tizzy is understandable because both of these movies were supposed to be in theaters this December, and both have been pushed back to 2009, though for different reasons.

Watchmen is the film based on the very popular graphic novel by Alan Moore. In fact it is the most celebrated graphic novel of all time (according to the trailer) and so it’s legions of fans have been anticipating this film ever since they finished the novel. Add to that the fact that the movie rights have come under dispute and the actual release of the film is still up in the air, even though the studio claims it will definitely be March 6, 2009. But fans can soothe themselves by watching their favorite group of superheroes over and over again in this two minute clip:

If you were able to see Quantum of Solace in theaters last weekend, then you got to see the new Star Trek trailer on the big screen. It begins in Thelma and Louise-ville but ends up in Awesome-town. J.J. Abrams has his fair share of critics at this point in his career, and he has a pretty big legacy to live up to with this film. Star Trek was originally scheduled for a Christmas release, but was pushed back to May 2009 so that it could get a bigger audience. Everyone knows that space travel is more believable in warmer climes.

This week’s podcast (episode 30!) is about Quantum of Solace, because it’s the only movie coming out this week in wide release! We’re pretty excited about this movie - and you should come see it with us if you live in Austin! Click here for details!

For more of Ben and Katie’s opinions about Quantum of Solace and all the Bond films, listen to this weeks Slashfilms Filmcast After Dark, which we recorded LIVE this past Monday. It was super fun, and now we are BPFs (best podcast friends) with the Slashfilm guys.

Finally, a shout out to Jesse Keyes, who did the intro to this episode! Thanks, Jesse!

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Last week, Netflix expanded it’s “instant watching” feature to include Mac users. (No more separate but equal status for the macs!) They now have some of their catalog available to stream online. By providing flix that you can watch on the ‘net, they have finally lived up to their name!

To celebrate this, we at HoorayMovies got straight to coding and have added a feature so that you, our users, can easily find movies you’ve already marked as those you want to see that are available to watch online right now.

If you’re already a Netflix subscriber, there is no additional cost to watch movies online. But you do have to download and install Microsoft’s DRM-a-licious Silverlight on which to play the movies.

Tonight at 11pm EST, Ben and I will be guests on /Film’s After Dark podcast. /Film is a super film blog, run by super film fans. We’ll be chatting with David Chen, Devindra Hardwar and Adam Quigley about the upcoming release of Quantum of Solace and all things Bond. You can download it from iTunes or listen to it live here.