Ha ha ha ha ha! Woah! Is that really him? He looks so different when he's not scowling!

After discussing it with you, I checked out the film version of Mother Night again, for the first time in some time. Goebbels makes a bit appearance, played by a guy you probably know as Edward Norton's boss from Fight Club. He's okay-- no complaints on my part. It's only a little dinky cameo, though, so real nuance isn't required.

Here's a link to the trailer, by the way: http://videodetective.com/TitleDetails.aspx?publishedid=00005002

The film is in no way a replacement for the book, but, it should be noted, it's one of the few Vonnegut film adaptations that hasn't made me puke in my mouth.

When Goebbels was out and about, it seemed as though he was having a great time. This one is the first I found when opening up Die Woche:

I joked that the magazine would be filled with Nazis, and there he was. Everyone looks so delighted! The guy in front seems to be a bit shy.

And laughing it up:

The headline from that page was Reichstheater Festwoche in München.

I generally avoid film adaptations of books, but that trailer and the cast look promising.

It's actually pretty bloody good. Not exceptional, but it does a good job of taking what made the book good and putting it onscreen, and also with imbuing it with a bit of life of its own. The movie loses some of its punch and weirdness with the mostly chronological storytelling (the book was a bit Slaughterhouse Five-y in that regard-- jumping hither and yon), though. Kirsten Dunst is virtually unrecognizable; I saw it twice before I realized who she was, in the film.

Wow. Okay; as you can imagine, most of the photos I'd seen of Goebbels were of him with that "I NEVER EXPERIENCE JOY BECAUSE IT WOULD BE UNPROFESSIONAL" expression. I think I would have been an awful Nazi, by the way, at least outside of taking joy in dressing snappily.

The thing with the Goebbels children is one of those things that I can't think about without becoming at least a little upset.

I like to poke fun at Nick Nolte every now and then, but he is an impressive actor; I also can't resist watching John Goodman (I'll love him forever for Roseanne and his work with the Cohen brothers). I have far too many films and books to get to, but I'll gladly add Moth Night to the list.

The fact that he had such influence over film is still a bit of a shock to me, as I have time thinking of any of them enjoying anything, let alone having an eye for art. Apparently he was considered to be on the 'left' side of the Nazi party because he admired the Russians and some aspects of Communism.

The death of the Goebbels children is extremely unnerving, and I'm sure I've said it before, but going through those magazines and seeing all these children and young people bothers me because they were being indoctrinated and enlisted to support and fight for a future that never happened. By the end, they were dead or damaged.

Call me naive, but I had no idea that Triumph of the Will was available on DVD until just now looking it up. And the poster is available on moviegoods.com, with suggestions that I might be interested in posters for the Ilsa films and Profondo Rosso.