Tom's nachtmare will dynamite Ralph's at the box office. Americans can relate better to blowing up bad guys than they can to German war guilt (though Americans don't relate nearly as well to guys who, like von Stauffenberg, try and fail to blow up bad guys -- see Bush vs. bin Laden). Ralph's career nachtmare is his ridiculously emo image. He's getting too tremulous for his own good. Tom's career nachtmare is his movie roles getting upstaged by his private life and his business moves, and maybe the fact that for the longest time his biggest hits have been cameos, like his fat-suit bootyshaker in Tropic Thunder. Valkyrie got poisonous buzz for many months, but on the eve of release, it suddenly got a lot better. If it fizzles anyhow, maybe he can ride his Tropic Thunder Golden Globe nomination to a whole new career as an Apatow-era clown.

You know who's not got a nachtmare these days? Kate Winslet. Formerly about the fattest actress with actual star power, she's weirdly reversed the standard actress nachtmare and aged into blazingly greater beauty, flaring along with her chronically sky-high, flop-proof talent ratings. She's also funny: check out this excellent anecdote, from her more voluminous period, about the day Harvey Keitel insisted that in rehearsal, he should play a dying, whimpering dog hit by a car, and she should comfort him and help him die. Keitel does get strange notions: he loves to improvise, and he told me he almost destroyed Reservoir Dogs by stealing all the good lines from the other actors for himself (prior to overruling himself and giving them all back). Winslet does a fine Keitel canine death-scene imitation, made funnier by the fact that they had to do it to the stylings of Enya, and Winslet had to suppress massive laughter. "I'm literally peeing my pants!" confesses Kate. No doubt the improv really helped Keitel nail the scene. But a recurrence of that experience would qualify as a nachtmare. --Tim Appelo