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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Tom Hooper’s 160-minute adaptation of Les Misérables, aka the Olympics of Piss-Holding, is a “sung-through” musical, meaning there’s no spoken dialog, only singing. In keeping with the style of the film, I decided to format my review to the tune of “All Star,” by San Jose’s finest sun-pop four piece, Smash Mouth. Enjoy.

(*clears throat, tunes guitar*) (*feedback noise*)

Sooome BODY once TOLD me, the SOOONGS were gonna BORE me, I AIN’T a cultured DUDE just a GUUUUUEST…
Anne was LOOKin kinda GLUM with her HAAAAIR up in a BUN, and some DIRT on her FACE, yeah she’s POOR, now… (*DJ scratching*)

Well, the songs start comin’ and they don’t stop comin, BLADDER ’bout to burst gonna piss my pants HONEY
Diggin’ that plot about RE-DEMPT-TION, their WIGS get gross and your HEART gets CHuUUuBBED..

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The trailer for Les Miserables is here, from The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper, and as you can see, it is going to win ALL OF THE OSCARS! Don’t believe me? This is only a partial list of the things you can expect to see in Les Miserables:

• POVERTY!

• SINGING!

• FRENCH!

• WHITE PEOPLE HAVING AFFAIRS!

• HATS!

• CRYING ANNE HATHAWAY!

• FAMOUS ACTORS LOOKING FILTHY!

• FINGERLESS GLOVES!

• A PRECOCIOUS CHILD!

• HELENA BONHAM CARTER LOOKING HOMELESS!

Sorry, other movies, Les Miserables is winning all of your awards. Somewhere, Ben Affleck is sadly putting his beard on a shelf saying to himself, “Next time, old friend. Next time.”

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I’m kind of an idiot, so when I hear “Les Mis,” my first thought is of a porn parody about a straight-laced librarian called “Lays Ms.,” or possibly “Lezz Ms.” But apparently it’s a famous novel by Victor Hugo! Which became a famous play! And now that play is a movie! What a world. Directed by The King’s Speech‘s Tom Hooper, Les Miserables stars Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, and supposedly Sacha Baron Cohen, though he’s nowhere to be found in the trailer. Anyway, I’m torn on this one, because while I love few things so much as period pieces with cannons and ships, I mostly hate musicals. As a general rule, I don’t want to watch people sing, unless the people are pirates, and the song is about rum and loose women.

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"5 Shirley Temples. I'm celebrating."

2010 may go down in history as the year of the movie movie, and when the dust settles, perhaps the moviest movie of them all was The King’s Speech (movier even, than The Social Network).  So far, it’s earned more than $100 million worldwide (not bad for a film shot on a gay porn set), so much that, according to “someone close” to director Tom Hooper, who was tragically born without lips, Marvel even asked him to direct Iron Man 3.  They say if you can do a period drama about stuttering, you can do anything.

According to a person who has worked closely with Hooper but who asked not to be identified because the director did not authorize this person to speak on his behalf, the Brit was offered the director’s chair on “Iron Man 3.” He turned it down, and “Lethal Weapon” writer Shane Black wound up landing the job several weeks ago.

While Hooper won’t be steering Stark Industries, another person who has worked closely with him said he was weighing an offer to direct “Les Miserables,” a new version of the classic novel and Broadway musical set in 19th-century France. The movie, which is being developed by “Atonement” producer Working Title, is conceived as a big-budget musical. [LATimes]

Lay Miz (MORE LIKE LAME IS, AMIRITE!) sounds like a better project for Hooper anyway. Directing an Iron Man movie for Marvel (probably before the script was finished) would be an insane hassle, and for what?  It wouldn’t buy Tom Hooper half the street cred at my mom’s dinner parties.  Just look at him.  You know he’s only in it for the post-menopause poon.  He’d throw on a Don Henley tape and rock your world.