MSNBC’s The Scoop has some very, very unsettling reactions to a Valkyrie screening. For those of you that missed the drama, Valkyrie is a Tom Cruise/Bryan Singer film (marketed as a thriller) which saw many production delays, lost negatives and injuries to extras. After all that, the film was bumped up to a February release date, the month that movies go to die, then later moved up to December 26th of this year in an attempt to quash internet rumors that Valkyrie blew.

The fate of Cruise’s United Artists might hang in the balance with this film, so these quotes are all the more unsettling…

Katie “Robot” Holmes and Suri Cruise went to the Metropolitan Museum this weekend, and Suri seemed pretty cranky. Which is good, because Katie Holmes never seems pretty anything. We know that harping on the Scientology re-programming thing is old hat, so let’s just say we’re excited that Suri seems to display emotions of her own, especially when mom tries to comfort her.

We may not be able to save Katie, but we’re guessing we’ll see Suri go wild and crazy in about 13 years.

Though none of us may live to see that date if the Mayan calendar is right and the world ends in 2012, but if you use that end date as criteria for living, the only thing I’m doing properly is incurring debt I’ll never be able to pay back.

Lest we be called traitors, be warned, Valkyrie may not be the shit show we heard it once was. Whatever has changed in the rumor-and-buzz climate is sure to be the calculated work of some faceless marketing department, but occasionally those think-tanks work - thank God, because someone is paying them enough.

Though use of the SAW theme over the end of the trailer was a little obvious given it’s the week after SAW V opened and IS Halloween, but the premise behind the preview is solid…

Alright, Tom Cruise, what you got for us?…

Now that Valkyrie looks like it is going to make a serious run at the Oscars and the Box Office on behalf of its director and star, best to check in with United Artists, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner’s production company most recently pegged by us as in dangerous, shark-filled waters.

Looks like things might be worse for Paula Wagner than they are for Cruise, if that’s even possible. Rumor going around Hollywood is that Wagner has had difficulty greenlighting projects and meeting deadlines, putting some of UA’s $500 million Merrill Lynch financing in jeopardy.

As with all studio execs who lose the edge of risk, and it got Wagner ousted from United Artists, causing quite a bit of stir.

On one hand, Crusie and Wagner will remain co-owners of the company, but Wagner has completed negotiations to step down as UA’s CEO so parent company MGM can step in and greenlight some films under the United Artists banner before Merrill pulls some of Wagner’s credit line. If MGM can put a go-stamp on two pictures for UA by the trigger dates, they might be able to save the entire kitty, at least ensuring their survival through the Valkyrie release.

UA and their $500 million only managed to get 2 films off the ground, the aforementioned Valkyrie and Lions For Lambs (previously mentioned as a failure). This is highly frustrating for MGM which has sat back and watched half a billion dollars fester and rot, waiting for Wagner and Cruise to come up with another Cruise vanity project.

Wagner’s out, MGM is in and something is going to happen to UA soon.

Official statements from the concerned parties after the cut!

It looks like United Artists and Tom Cruise might be able to pull Tom’s career right back on track with a movie we were all expecting to suck: Valkyrie.

A few months ago, MGM took Valkyrie, the newest from Cruise and Bryan Singer, and buried it against the Friday the 13th remake bowing in this Februrary. Most people discounted Valkyrie at that point, us included. Mostly because you don’t spend millions of dollars on a Tom Cruise Nazi movie and then bury it in the boneyard of the release schedule.

Now, MGM has announced that Valkyrie will bow into theaters on December 26th, slamming it up against Frank Miller’s The Spirit, The Time Traveller’s Wife and – shudder – Marley and Me. MGM says that that movie will find a better audience at Christmas than it would have in February (true) and that this has nothing to do with awards season (a huge lie).

The important thing for Cruise and United Artists is Valkyrie’s box-office take. They are still about $50 million dollars in the hole after Lions For Lambs proved that people weren’t as in to political debate cinema as big stars expect.

Can eye-patched Cruise live to fight another day? Or is this the inevitable nail in his celebrity coffin, mere days after his Tropic Thunder performance has people claiming the man still has chops.

You wouldn’t know it the way we operate ourselves around here, but we get a lot of photos of celebrities and movie stars doing stuff. Like, boring stuff.

Correction: we find it boring, but we’re idiots.

We’re going to try to give you a smattering of photos in time for the early afternoon and see how it goes down.

Pictures 1&2 concern Miss Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes. Katie’s rehearsing for a Broadway play these days, which give her a nice long walk in the view of paparazzi every few days. The rumor going around this week is that Katie might be pregnant again (if you think she was actually pregnant the first time), and these pictures – one from the walk and one from the Tropic Thunder premiere just put undo focus on her midsection.

Speaking of Tropic Thunder, Alicia Silverstone made it to the premiere, reminding us that she exists while Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr and Christine Taylor (Stiller’s wife) try to sneak into a dinner at NYC’s Weaverly Inn on the west side.

And if you want to check out that DC Comics-bashing quote from RDJr up there, CLICK ON OVER.