Once or twice a year a slack-off urge will take hold. I want to get it up but can’t quite. 24 hours of “off” energy. Today was such a day. It was complicated to some extent by having flown to New York Wednesday night (red-eye), and also due to various snarls, tangles and irritations, one of them being a $349 fraudulent charge to my business checking account. You don’t want to know. But I can feel myself starting to adjust to East Coast time. A voice is telling me Saturday will be better.

It’s not just which films are likely to play the Venice Film Festival (8.29 to 9.8), but which films aren’t. There’s always a reason when a presumed award-season hottie doesn’t get invited or decides against attending. It isn’t necessarily a downish harbinger when this happens, but it does tend to indicate that vague uncertainties may be stirring the pot.

In addition to Damien Chazelle‘s First Man taking the opening-night Venezia slot, the other likelies, to hear it from Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli and Deadline‘s Pete Hammond and Nancy Tartaglione, are as follows:

Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma will play Venice, but then most of as knew that. Paul Greengrass’s Norway, about the ghastly 2011 terrorist attack by a Norwegian rightwing loon who killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, is said to be more or less locked.

Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born — beloved by name-brand actors and exhibitors, but perhaps not as much by others — is said to be more or less firmed. (Nobody knows anything.) Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite, which I’ve heard is good but “maybe not so period.”

Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased, Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk and Francois Ozon’s Alexandre “will not be making the trip to Venice,” sources have told Vivarelli. Ditto Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy — probably won’t open this year, much less playing Venice.

Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake is an allegedly good bet; ditto Felix Van Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy, which stars Timothee Chalamet.

Saverio Costanzo‘s My Brilliant Friend, an Italian-language feature that will end up on HBO. Ditto Mario Martone’s Capri, Revolution.

Possibly Mike Leigh’s Peterloo; Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and Yann Demange’s White Boy Rick.

I thought perhaps Steve McQueen‘s Widows, an alleged mix of social relevance with a heist film, might debut in Venice, but maybe not.

Laszlo Nemes’ Sunset is an alleged Lido lock.

No mention of Terrence Malick‘s Radegund, which was recently speculated as a possible Venice debut.

Variety‘s Brent Lang is reporting that director James Gunn has been whacked as the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3. You know why two portly Disney execs led Gunn into a garage-level den and then popped him….you know it. Because of “a series of offensive tweets” about pedophelia and rape, except they date back to ’08, ’09 and ’10.

I’ve read the decade-old tweets in question, actually sent out in ’08, ’09 and ’10. Gunn was unwise to tweet flip-perverse remarks about man-boy contact, but he was (a) partly alluding to being in the company of convicted pedophile director Victor Salva and (b) being outrageous, like irreverent Type-A creative types are from time to time.

Disney, the studio behind the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, revealed the Gunn termination in the midst of San Diego Comic-Con. “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him,” said Disney chairman Alan Horn.

I don’t know Gunn personally but I know people who do, and I’ve never heard him described as some kind of intemperate, jabbering idiot. You don’t get to become a successful director of expensive, geek-friendly fantasy flicks unless you’re smart and careful and know how to play the game. Yesterday Paramount TV honcho Amy Powell went down for a similar-type offense — said wrong thing, exacerbated SJWs, etc. Maybe she and Gunn should get together this week and trade notes.

The Trump-boinked-and-paid-off-Stormy thing was diverting for three or four months. Ditto the Karen McDougal interview about her year-long affair with Trump. But they both pale next to the traitorous-Putin-lapdog thing.

One day we might hear a tape of Trump attorney-fixer Michael Cohen discussing a payoff with Trump a couple of months before the November 2016 presidential election…big deal. Will Trump and others be prosecuted for violating election campaign finance laws? Maybe. Will more embarassing or compromising details about Trump’s financial dealings come to light? Possibly. But none of this feels as sexy as it did last winter and early spring. All things must pass.