Only days after I read about the new German-produced film about Sophie Scholl and the Nazi-era White Rose resistance movement, do I find a page on the Internet Movie Database that Hollywood is about to start shooting an English language version of her life starring that supreme thespian...Christina Ricci (who turns 26 today, incidentally), directed by Angelica Houston(!) and written by first-timer Allegra Huston, Anjelica's sister. Of course, the IMDB frequently lists films that are planned, and for whatever reason never actually begin production; so take their listing with a big grain of a salt.

While Christina is the right age to play Scholl (and can probably be made up to resemble her), it's worth remembering what Frederica Mathewes-Green had to say last year about the lack of gravitas of modern Hollywood actors.

But there may be some good that comes out of this film, if it's made: watching the staggering moral equivalence of the film's cast, crew and critics, as they succumb to the inevitable Bush=Hitler riffs (as this site, and Sid Blumenthal have done) and compare our involvement in Iraq to the hellish battle in Stalingrad, which killed nearly 800,000 Russian troops and civilians, and an approximately equal number of Germans and their allies.

But let me make the safest bet possible: that this film isn't going to be the second coming of Downfall, or The Diary of Anne Frank.