"Like Casting Judas as Jesus"

Tom Cruise is a blowhard and an obvious nut, but I did think he was pretty good playing a megalomaniacal charlatan in "Magnolia." But "Magnolia" is an exception in the Cruise ouevre. For everything this guy lacks in talent he makes up for in an uncanny ability to make people hate him. This time, it's the Germans, who think there are better choices to play a guy they revere: Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a key player in a 1944 plot to kill Hitler and seize power from the Nazis. Apparently, Germans have a beef with Scientology. They consider it a cult at best and "totalitarian and exploitative" at worst, and, well, you see the problem. Anyway, it's one thing to irritate Brook Shields and Matt Lauer, quite another to piss off an entire country. Still, I guess it could have been worse. He could have gone to Germany and manhandled the Chancellor or something.