It’s always nice to see Robert DeNiro when he’s not starring alongside Katherine Heigl or getting stabbed in the penis (for laughs!), and by that measure, Being Flynn is already a success. Based on a memoir by Nick Flynn (which I didn’t read, but saw Flynn read an excerpt of once and it was excellent), it stars Paul Dano as Flynn, a 20-something dude who crosses paths with his estranged father while working at a homeless shelter. It’s a shame they couldn’t use the original title of the memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, because that’s about as good a title as you’re going to get without bringing in jetpacks or velociraptors.

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All year I’ve been sitting through movies like I Am Number Four, Cowboys and Aliens, Super 8, Monsters, Skyline, Transformers 3, Battleship, Battle: Los Angeles, Green Lantern, Attack the Block, Thor… thinking, “Jeez, when is someone finally going to make a movie about an alien invasion?”

It looks like director Chris Gorak and producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) have finally answered my prayers, with The Darkest Hour, from Summit Entertainment, starring Emile Hirsch and Olivia Thirlby (or as I like to call her, OLIVIA THRILLBY!). This time around, the aliens attack Moscow (they’re trying to steal our expensive whores!). The twist is, this time, the aliens are invisible! And they can see us with infrared heat vision! This new wrinkle really turns the idea on its head, doesn’t it? I mean, I’ve never seen something like that before. Except in Predator. Which they remade last year.

“ALIENS! CHICK SCIENTIST! ‘SPLOSIONS! THE MILITARY!” -Every movie for the last five years.

[HD Trailer at Apple]

I know the man-child thing is all the rage these days, especially for the vocationally pantless like me,  but I’ll be honest, it feels good to be excited about a trailer that doesn’t feature people in spandex shooting guns for once.  This one’s called A Solitary Man, featuring a cast of chicks nerds want to bang of all ages (Jenna Fischer, Mary Louise-Parker, Olivia Thirlby), not to mention Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Susan Sarandon, and Jesse Eisenberg, with direction by the guys who wrote Rounders.  Excited yet?  Here, try this cocaine.

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Rush Hour/X3 director Brett Ratner for the most part is a boring kissass (sample Tweet: “@MorganePolanski i love u more than Miley!!!!!!!”) who makes crappy movies.  But occasionally he’ll say pop up to say something ridiculous, like how he got his first BJ from a trannie, or more recently, that he lost his virginity to a paraplegic.

“When I sent the original script [for his segment of New York, I Love You] , which is autobiographical, the producers would not let me film it because, in the original ending, she (the girl) is a cripple, and they have sex as she’s hanging from a tree in Central Park.  Everyone was freaking out over my short, so I changed it to where she wasn’t a cripple, but an actress pretending to be a cripple.”

In the disturbing scene, the girl, played by Olivia Thirlby, insists Ratner’s character (Yelchin) makes love to her, while she is suspended from a tree.   [DailyExpress]

Brett Ratner also wrote a script about Hitler, but later had to change it to where it’d just be an actor pretending to be Hitler when he found out that the real Hitler was dead.

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The makers of Breaking Upwards, an indie romantic-dramedy (an iRom-Dram) playing at SXSW (that’s “South By Southwest,” grandpa), recently made this faux rap video to promote their film.  The film tells the story of a New York couple played by real-life couple Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones (omg, it’s so meta!).  Will he pop the question?  Will she become Zoe Lister-Jones-Wein? Will she divorce him and marry Christopher Mintz-Plasse, thus becoming Zoe Lister-Jones-Wein-Mintz-Plasse?  Only time will tell.

Anyway, I give them extra points for creativity, but minus 1000 for the line “My future vision is generally spot on / much like the comic timing, of Jen Aniston.” You really couldn’t write a worse rap line than that.  At least not without referencing Kierkegaard.

(Plus 100 points for Olivia Thirlby in a bra).

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