This is… the story of a girl… who cried a river and drowned the whole world…

Director’s Guild president Taylor Hackford today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2012, which included Steven Spielberg and Les Misérables director Tom Hooper, but not Paul Thomas Anderson, Rian Johnson, Steven Soderbergh, or Quentin Tarantino. If you wonder why there are so many bad movies, that a voting majority of directors have boring, crappy taste may have something to do with it.

Argo – Ben Affleck

Zero Dark Thirty – Kathryn Bigelow

Les Misérables -Tom Hooper

Life of Pi – Ang Lee

Lincoln – Steven Spielberg [full press release]

This is Spielberg’s 11th DGA nomination, a record. I don’t know what’s worse, the DGA not recognizing The Master, Django Unchained, or Looper (all of which feature in my top five of the year), or that they honored Les Mis with anything but a Smash Mouth parody. Especially since the Les Mis haters were so vocal:

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"Ma'am? Can you put your coat back on, please, you've had too much Chardonnay."

Parker, the trailer for which you can watch below, looks like every Jason Statham movie ever, with the added benefit that this one also has Nick Nolte, the Commish, and that lady from the Fiat commercials.

Parker (Jason Statham) is a professional thief who lives by a personal code of ethics: Don’t steal from people who can’t afford it and don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it. But on his latest heist, his crew double crosses him, steals his stash, and leaves him for dead. Determined to make sure they regret it, Parker tracks them to PalmBeach, playground of the rich and famous, where the crew is planning their biggest heist ever. Donning the disguise of a rich Texan, Parker takes on an unlikely partner, Leslie (Jennifer Lopez), a savvy insider, who’s short on cash, but big on looks, smarts and ambition.

And ass. She’s big on looks, smarts, ambition, and ass. Big like Texas. Anyway, as always, I asked my friend The Stath for his commentary.

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UPDATE: NY Mag told me not to use their photo (even though I essentially used it as bait to link their website, but whatever), so instead of a relevant shot of Helen Mirren, you can enjoy zombie corgi here, sent in by a FilmDrunkard. DO NOT STEAL IT OR ELSE YOU’LL BE HEARING FROM MY CORGI LAWYER!

Helen Mirren stars in Love Ranch opposite Joe Pesci (opening June 30th), and all I  needed to know about that was “Joe Pesci plays a pimp.”  But as if that weren’t enough, Mirren recently sat down for a feature in New York Magazine and took some pictures where you can kinda see her jugs (NSFW one here).  I wouldn’t recommend it for all 64-year-olds, but hey, it’s Helen Mirren (I suggest a Google Image search of her earlier work).  British girls could really give American ones a lesson on not being so uptight (hint, hint, Mom).

Mirren signed up to play Grace Botempo, the madam of a booming seventies Reno whorehouse in her husband Taylor Hackford’s film Love Ranch.  “Interesting” is probably underselling Grace. Diagnosed with cancer and frustrated with an epically sleazy husband (Joe Pesci), Mirren’s madam begins a hot love affair with a beefy boxer 30 years her junior, played with abundant smolder by Spanish newcomer Sergio Peris-Mencheta. “He’s got a fabulous big-animal thing in that sort of raw, brutish, ugly-beautiful way,” says Mirren, who shares a steamy, and, because it’s her, entirely plausible love scene with Peris-Mencheta. In addition, she makes d*ck jokes, stomps on the throat of a misbehaving prostitute, and presides over the brothel with such swagger that Pesci shouts, “Who do ya think you are, the queen of f*ckin’ England?”

Sold.  Look, you had me at “stomps on the throat of a misbehaving prostitute,” okay?  You can put your boobs away now, this isn’t Europe.

Ever since Joe Pesci pulled the ultimate pimp move in Casino, where Sharon Stone was mid-sentence and he just pointed to his junk and guided her head there, I’ve wanted to see more of Joe Pesci being a pimp. The sight of it just warms my greasy dago heart.  It appears Pesci will doing more of just that in Love Ranch (for which you can watch the trailer below), the new movie from Ray director Taylor Hackford.

Pesci and Dame Helen Mirren (a DILF if I’ve ever seen one) play Charlie and Grace Bontempo, the husband and wife owner of the first legalized brothel in America outside Reno.  Charlie brings a heavyweight boxer in from South America (Spanish actor Sergio Peris–Mencheta) to train at the ranch, and he’s soon putting his hot Latin love inside Grace’s mature, but still- steamy empanada (oh God, remind me never to use this euphemism again).  Meanwhile, Bai Ling shows up in the role she was born to play, Mute Background Asian Whore Number 5.   Anyway, it looks pretty good. I’m so excited I can’t stop grabbing my crotch and talking too loudly.

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