As spotted by an eagle-eyed Twitter user, here’s David O. Russell reacting hilariously to his Silver Linings Playbook actress Jennifer Lawrence losing her BAFTA Best Actress bid to Emmanuelle Riva in Amour. That’s the thing about David O. Russell, he might scream and call you a c*nt on set, but when push comes to shove, he’s got your back. I heard he once tried to knife fight a biker who pinched Amy Adams’ ass outside a bowling alley once. Heart of a lion, that guy. He also directed a movie that feels like a collection of bad indie rom-com tropes and was somehow still good. Silver Linings Playbook is like a damned magic trick.

You can see the full list of BAFTA winners and nominees below. No real surprises, other than Zero Dark Thirty getting shut out. Argo picked up another best picture win on the way to the Oscar every assumes it’s going to get. Ben Affleck won best director, which is fair, because why would a guy who directed the best picture not be the best director? That makes no sense.

I also enjoy that a movie about French poverty called “The Wretched” won an award for best hair and make-up. That really says it all. Derelicte is real, you guys.

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BEST FILM
X – “Argo”
“Life of Pi”
“Lincoln”
“Les Misérables”
“Zero Dark Thirty”

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I’m one of the biggest David O. Russell apologists you’ll ever meet. I will go to my grave defending I Heart Huckabees, and I was trying to put my finger on exactly what it is that I like so much about his movies despite the many, easily-made arguments to the contrary. My first thought was: how many other filmmakers could make your traditional two-attractive-white-people-fall-in-love rom-com, and still have you leaving the theater thinking, “God, what an odd film.” That’s what David O. Russell does with Silver Linings Playbook.

It helps some that the two attractive white people in question are Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, and I don’t think it’s too strong to say that I’d pay $500 to watch them f*ck. Still, getting me to want to watch them almost kiss for two hours requires a somewhat more skilled hand.

We open with Bradley Cooper’s character being released from a mental institution. An “undiagnosed bipolar,” he’s obsessed with his estranged wife, whose affair with a history teacher sent Cooper to the phunny pharm in the first place when he caught them in the act and beat the guy half to death, not to mention gave him a permanent crazy trigger in the form of “My Cherie Amour,” the song that was playing while they were screwing. He wakes up his parents (played by Jacki Weaver and Robert DeNiro) in the middle of the night to scream about Hemingway (he’s trying to read every book on his wife’s high school English class syllabus) and runs around the neighborhood wearing a shopping bag as a poncho “to help him sweat.” Now, I can tell you that there are few things I’d less rather watch than some Hollywood pretty boy with three-day stubble on his chiseled jaw and a tiny scar on his perfect nose battling some whitewashed version of mental illness that makes insanity look cute and quirky. And this from the director who got his start on a movie about a guy who f*cks his own mother with the title a masturbation reference?

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After the jump, I’ve got the trailer for David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, based on the novel by Matthew Quick, starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as former mental patients falling in love. Or as I like to call it, “Wow, Crazy People Are Really Really Ridiculously Good Looking.” If crazy guys looked like Brad Cooper, there’d be lines of eligible women around the block waiting to change his bedpan.

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In one of their better headlines, TMZ reports about The Fighter and I Heart Huckabees director David O. Russell, “Transgender Niece Tells Cops — He Groped My Breasts.” They go onto say that she’s not even a blood relative, so I don’t really see what the big deal is.

David O. Russell — the Oscar-nominated director behind “The Fighter” — is under investigation in Florida for copping a feel of his 19-year-old transgender niece … but Russell told cops it was totally consensual.

David O. Russell is a hyper-intellectual director raised in New York City by a Jewish father and Catholic mother. He’s in Florida for five minutes and BOOM! Busted for feeling up a tranny relative. Oh, Florida. (*sad trombone, banjo run*)

The Broward County Sheriff’s Dept. has confirmed … Russell has been accused of inappropriately grabbing his niece’s breasts during a workout session at a South Florida hotel gym on Dec. 30.
According to the police report taken 3 days after the incident, Russell’s niece … who was born a man and is currently in the preoperative phase of her transition … told cops the two had been doing abdominal exercises when he asked questions about her transformation.
The niece — who does NOT have a blood relation to Russell — told cops they began to talk about her breasts … and how certain hormones she’s taking have made them larger.
According to the report, the niece claims Russell then “put his hands under [her] top and felt both breasts.”
Cops say the woman said she felt “uncomfortable” … but admitted she “did not ask him to stop at any time.”

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Aside from being a pretty good director, David O. Russell has two main claims to fame: calling Lily Tomlin a c*nt, and always casting Mark Wahlberg in his movies (all of them since Three Kings — Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, and The Fighter). While he’ll always be the Lily Tomlin-c*nt guy, the latter has reportedly changed, and if TheWrap is to be believed, Marky Mark is none to pleased about it.

Hollywood heavyweight [and real-life welterweight -Ed.] Mark Wahlberg has fallen out with his buddy director David O. Russell over the director’s decision to cast someone else in the lead of his new film, “The Silver Linings Playbook,” according to two individuals with knowledge of the relationship.

What, ah you too good fa Maahk Wahlberg now, cawksuckah? I FACKIN MADE YOU!

“They went with Brad Cooper because they felt he was hungrier and would work for cheaper,” Matt Muzio, Russell’s cousin and frequent collaborator, told TheWrap.
Muzio also fell out with the director recently, but said he was with Russell this summer on Martha’s Vineyard when the decision was made. Another individual close to Wahlberg confirmed the information.

BRADLEY FACKIN’ COOPAH? YOAH GONNA BURN ME FOAH THAT PRETTY FACKIN’ BLUE-EYED MAWMMA’S BOY? …I shoulda known you’d do me just like ya done yoah cousin, Matty da Wawp.

Wahlberg’s deal provided that he was to be paid an additional $900,000 if Anne Hathaway fell out of the project, according to two individuals with knowledge of the deal. Hathaway did indeed drop out, making Cooper the less expensive option to Wahlberg.
Wahlberg was paid a fee anyway, though another executive said it was because of his creative contribution to the Weinstein Co. project.
The decision to cast Cooper surprised Muzio and others because Wahlberg has been one of Russell’s most loyal friends in Hollywood, bringing him in on his pet project, “The Fighter,” after years of Russell being sidelined.
“If it weren’t for ‘The Fighter,’ ‘Silver Linings’ wouldn’t exist,” Muzio said.

Yeah, and if it weren’t for David O. Russell, The Fighter probably wouldn’t have been any good, so…

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