"If an audience is seeing a movie to live another life - which I think is one of the attractions of seeing movies; you get to be out of your own life and live some other life that maybe you [wouldn't] ever really want to live but you're curious about - so, I'm saying, if you're a Nikolai in the movie, then you're going to experience this. I'm not going to throw it away, do it off camera, and do it frivolously. All the hard work and the difficulty of killing someone, if that's what this character has to do, I want you to feel it and see it."

That's David Cronenberg, talking to Michael Guillé/a> about his new film, Eastern Promises. Also on hand to talk about this character, Nikolai, is the man who plays him, Viggo Mortensen.

Eastern Promises is now out on DVD.

By Sean Axmaker

In Christopher Boe's Allegro [official site], a world acclaimed concert pianist (played by Ulrich Thomsen) is formally invited to reclaim his lost past. You see, it's preserved in an impenetrable and inexplicable bubble in the center of Copenhagen. Imagine a cross between Andrei Tarkovksy and The Matrix, with a whimsical flair and a mischievous narrator (Henning Moritzen) who may be a guardian angel, an ironic devil, or simply an existential master of ceremonies.

Boe's latest feature Allegro is now on DVD.

Interview By David D'Arcy

Paul Verhoeven should not be so misunderstood, since his films are efforts to tell simple truths, usually in the simplest cinematic language. The truths are painfully simple in the case of Black Book, which looks at survival and betrayal in the Dutch resistance to the Germans, as World War II was drawing to a close and the Dutch were preparing to govern themselves once again. The title comes from a black book in which the names of Dutch collaborators with the Nazis are listed. Let's just say that the top priorities as the war ends are not truth and reconciliation.

Black Book is now out on DVD.