"I said GET ON THE ARK, ZEBRAS."

So Darren Aronofsky is making a movie about the story of Noah, the Biblical figure who loaded up animals two by two on an ark when God got mad and flooded the world. I, for one, thought any and all ark-related movies had been made irrelevant by the cinematic masterpiece Evan Almighty, but I guess that’s Hollywood for you. Always pissing on the classics for a buck. Anyway, Aronofsky is getting ready to start casting, so the rumor mill is kicking into high gear. Throw some sh-t against the wall, Deadline.

Darren Aronofsky is ready to set sail on Noah, the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark. I’m hearing that the Black Swan director wants Russell Crowe to play the title role in the New Regency/Paramount film. I can’t tell you that this is all going to lead to a deal but signs are pointing that way. I have also heard Aronofsky wants The Grey star Liam Neeson for another role.

RUSSELL CROWE AND LIAM NEESON WRANGLE ANIMALS: THE MOVIE! Pleaseohpease let this be true. Everything about it is terrific, at least in the funhouse that is my brain right now. I mean, think of all the possibilities: stories leaking from the set about Russell Crowe yelling at animals on and off-camera and throwing tantrums about their lack off professionalism, a scene where the bears are being uncooperative so Liam Neeson punches them repeatedly in the face and drags their unconscious bodies onto the ark, Noah being a big fat guy who got hungry and ate the unicorns halfway through the flood (thus explaining their absence from the animal kingdom), etc. It’s all too perfect.

Make it so, universe.

"COME AT ME, YA MANGY FOOKERS!"

Was that last post about movie marketing, critics, and the New Yorker a little too intellectual for you? Well I’ve got just the palate cleanser — a new trailer for The Grey, a movie opening in January that’s about Liam Neeson fighting wolves. I would’ve loved to hear the pitch for this movie.

“Okay, so Liam Neeson plays this badass, right? And one day his plane goes down in the arctic.”

“And then what?”

“Well, that’s when the wolves come.”

“Wolves! Sweet! I’m loving this. Then what happens?”

“Uh, well, Liam Neeson fights them.”

“Say no more. I’m already writing you a check, Broheim.”

My only hope is that this has a scene where Liam Neeson gives a motivational speech in front of the other plane crash survivors. “If it’s food you’re after, I can tell you that I have none, and I certainly don’t have a GPS device. What I do have is a particular set of skills, skills that I’ve acquired over a lifetime of fighting wolves. Hopefully these skills will be enough to keep any of us from getting… Taken.” And then he’d wink and do a little gun fingers thing at the camera.

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Yahoo just dropped the new trailer for The Grey, from Smokin’ Aces director Joe Carnahan and Liam Neeson. The plot, and I stress, I am not making any of this up, is that Liam Neeson survives a plane crash, and wakes up in a frozen wasteland where he must use all of his skills in a fight for survival… AGAINST WOLVES!

“Hello, police? I think I’ve been incepted.”

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Click to animate (recommended)

After the jump, it’s the first trailer for Universal’s Battleship, which is loosely based on the board game and reportedly cost $200 million to make. I think it looks amazingly terrible, but then I could be biased because I’ve read the script. It stars the poor man’s Chris Pine, Taylor Kitsch as a cocky young blah blah something something aliens come and Rihanna is there. Liam Neeson reprises his role as Guy Who Likes Paychecks, and Alexander Skarsgård is all “HURRR, I’M HANDSOME.” Also, the aliens have jumping battleships in this one. That’s right, JUMPING BATTLESHIPS. It makes sense, because they’re aliens. Hey, Hollywood, maybe it’d be easier to just tell us which movies AREN’T about alien invasions from now on.

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"Baby, this is serious: when's lunch?"

For the unfamiliar, there’s this game we like to play.  We take a crappy movie we’re probably not going to see, and try piece together the plot using only exposition (NO ANALYSIS!) from the bored critics forced to suffer through it.  Usually the best targets are Nicholas Sparks-y type movies, with all their sea turtle nests and sailing scholarships to Stanford.  We haven’t had any of those in a while, but this weekend did see the release of Paul Haggis’ The Next Three Days, and what’s Paul Haggis if not a Hollywood Baby Boomer version of Nicholas Sparks?  You’d figure a movie from an Oscar-winning director starring an Oscar-winning actor would’ve gotten more attention than The Next Three Days, unless the studio really thought it sucked, and… well, let’s find out, shall we?

“Crowe plays John Brennan, a Pittsburgh community college literature teacher whose life is upended one morning when his wife, Lara (Elizabeth Banks), is arrested for the murder of her awful boss. The night before, Lara was ranting about how much she hated the soon-to-be-dead woman, so it’s tough to explain away the blood on her coat and her fingerprints at the scene.” -NY DailyNews

“There is just one “fateful” night where everything goes wrong. There’s a dinner, and Lara goes all postal about whether the friction at work is because her boss is a woman.” -LA Times

“Later, in the car, John and Lara enjoy an illicit moment of post-catfight sex. The next day, she’s charged with having murdered a co-worker just moments before arriving at the restaurant.” -Washington Post

“Flash forward to the cops breaking down the door to arrest Lara for the murder. Flash forward again to prison doors slamming. Flash forward yet again to the appeal being denied and her attorney saying to John, ‘Just look at the evidence.’” -LA Times

“But John, raising their 6-year-old son alone, hopes to win Lara an appeal even after three years. When her attorney tells him it’s hopeless, John devises a plan to bust Lara out himself.”  -NY Daily News

“John decides to plunge into the world of drug dealers and meth labs.” -Washington Post

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