Michael Antman in his review of Philip Roth's newest novel, says he finds the book's single least-believable detail in that its aging protaganist, Nathan Zuckerman, emerges from 11 years of rural seclusion and doesn't even know who Tom Cruise is. Certainly the same could be said of any literate citizen of Germany, a country that seized upon the national cause of preserving an anti-Nazi icon in the form of would-be Hitler assassin Claus von Stauffenberg from the twin evils of Hollywood and known Scientologist Tom Cruise.

Since the Berlin Defense Ministry loudly banned Cruise from filming Valkyrie (now it's called Rubicon) at the Bendler Block memorial in June, then changed its mind last month, the public debates of can-he/can't-he, should-he/shouldn't-he, from the tabloids up into the financial pages, have thrived.

The official that first blocked the Block has since read the script, found it "wonderful" and has apologized. Cruise, having won the right to hang up swastikas at the Bendler Block (where the assassination was planned and where Stauffenberg was later executed), dress up actors in historically-accurate SS uniforms, parade them around in military processions and generally freak out the local elderly population, finished filming at the controversial memorial late last month.

This just in: the Bendler Block film got damaged at the Munich lab (images were "wiped away") and so must be reshot. But no it was not sabotage, claim the producers. Which of course raises the distinct likelihood that is was in fact sabotage.