My first reaction…no, everyone‘s first reaction to the recently revealed poster for the 2016 Telluride Film Festival was, of course, that it used the image of Mighty Joe Young, or at the very least of a very strong ape lifting the top of a mountain. So the ape is a metaphor for what or whom? Sasha Stone called the image “beautiful.” Interesting interpretation, but in what way exactly?

I cast my California Presidential Primary vote for Bernie Sanders about 80 minutes ago, or around 3:45 pm. Speaking as a loyal Democrat almost all of my life, I’ve never felt more fire in the belly for anyone than I do for Sanders or less passion than I currently feel for the braying, cackling, ultra-secretive, constantly conniving Hillary Clinton. I can’t wait to give her my half-hearted vote next November.

The Bernie-bot ballerina was telling me how proud she is about her tomato-red 1970 Volkswagen, which she’s driven half her life.

I’d like to talk to just one Millennial who will look me in the eye and say, “Yeah, I’m into the whole Tarzan thing…I’ve read two or three of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and I’ve seen a couple of the Johnny Weismuller films and even one with Lex Barker or Gordon Scott or one of those guys, and I also saw Greystoke and even the Bo Derek version, which I think is a total hoot…so yeah, I’m totally invested in the whole thing. So I’m dying to see this new version, especially with the great Christoph Waltz playing the bad guy.”

The Broad Green guys are asking U.S. critics to refrain from posting about Nicholas Winding-Refn‘s The Neon Demon until just prior to the 6.24 opening. I only saw it last night, but since I was at the Cannes Film Festival when it screened there on 5.19, striding around with my pink-with-yellow dot press badge and slurping the cappucino, and because I happened to miss it only because I was caught up in writing something and forgot to notice the time….I think I’m entitled to say at least a couple of things.

While it was booed to high heaven by many Cannes critics I found The Neon Demon irritating but nowhere near as unwatchable as Only God Forgives. It’s slow as molasses and under-written to a fare-thee-well, but it has a certain integrity. It holds back, holds back, holds back…and then it doesn’t really pay off. Well, it does but in an underwhelming, “is that all there is?” kind of way. And that, as Tony Montana would say, takes balls.

NWR knew exactly what he was doing when he shot and cut this thing, and it’s clear that he simply decided “fuck it…this movie is going to play the game with a very, very slow clock. Because this is who I am and where I’m at.”

The Neon Demon has what could coarsely be described as “some hot lesbo action”, a little necrophilia, a little touch of cannibalism in the night…and all in the service of a rather mundane observation about models in the fashion industry being bent out of shape by highly competitive feelings about each other.

You can call it this or that, but it’s basically a haute couture, high-concept, high-gloss Elle Fanning wank-off movie for men and women with a certain cultured urban attitude (i.e., people who live online, who know all about that thousand-yard stare, who once did drugs but no longer, and who like the feeling of concrete and asphalt under their sneakered feet). Which is to say that NWR employs a certain restraint.

Fanning (who was 17 during filming — she was born on 4.8.98) is told during a photography studio scene to take everything off, and she does…but NWR keeps the camera focused on her face and upper chest area the entire time. He’s obviously “going there” but at the same time he’s teasing, you see.

This morning Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan posted a sensible-sounding speculation piece about the ’50s fashion drama that Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis are going to make. Buchanan believes the film will be about the legendary egomaniacal fashion designer Charles James (1906-1978), who, to judge by a recent A.G. Nauta character profile, didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone except what he wanted, what he dreamt of and needed to create, and where his hunger for conquest and excitement led him.

A Dali-esque portrait of designer Charles James, snapped sometime in (I’m guessing) the 1930s, as James appears to be no older than 30 here and was born in ’06.

In short, Anderson and Lewis may (I say “may”) be contemplating a revisit to the terrain of crazy Daniel Plainview, only this time with a gay Plainview doing whatever and conquering whomever (including the occasional woman) amid the metaphorical oil fields of midtown Manhattan in the 1950s. Instead of “I drink your milkshake!”, think “I swallow your horse cock while designing a dress for Babe Paley!….viff-viff-viff-viff-viff!”

Michael Bay‘s The Rock opened on 6.7.96. It was co-produced by Don Simpson (whom I used to speak to late at night while half-bombed on vodka and lemonade, and who died five months before it opened) and Jerry Bruckheimer. I’m a serious fan of some of the smart-ass action films produced or co-produced by Bruckheimer between ’94 and ’02 (Dangerous Minds, Crimson Tide, Con Air, Enemy of the State, Armageddon, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Black Hawk Down) but I’ve never been a huge Rock admirer. Yes, I’ll remember to my dying day Sean Connery‘s “your best?” line but that’s just one line, man…c’mon. All that aside, here’s a Rock tribute piece by Nick “Action Man” Clement.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (’69) is certainly Sydney Pollack‘s darkest film, but also his finest and flintiest, one could argue. Released a year after his almost-as-interesting Castle Keep, Horses was Pollack’s first and last truly ballsy “take it or leave it…life sucks” drama. Three years later he began his swoony Robert Redford partnership with Jeremiah Johnson (’72), The Way We Were (’73) and Three Days of the Condor (’75). These set the tone for the undeniably well-crafted Hollywood mainstream films that followed — The Yakuza, Bobby Deerfield, The Electric Horseman, Absence of Malice, Tootsie, Out of Africa. Horses was also the first big dramatic breakout film for Jane Fonda. There’s no Horses Bluray and it’s not streaming in high-def either — there’s only a 2004 MGM/UA DVD.

We all know what a Danny McBride movie (or series) is. It’s a movie or series in which McBride gets to play the same asshole he’s played since The Foot Fist Way, the only exception so far being the semi-human, semi-relatable guy he played in Jason Reitman‘s Up in The Air. The only interesting thing about Vice Principals, which is obviously more of the same, is that Walton Goggins, whom everyone (including Rod Lurie) was calling the hot new cool guy when The Hateful 8 was on the promotion trail last year, has decided to build on that heat by playing McBride’s dumbshit sidekick.

Just after noon I was making my way south down Robertson, heading toward the Culver City Arclight for a 12:30 pm LAFF screening of Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss‘s The View From Tall. Bright sunlight, blue sky, mildly heavy traffic. I was doing my usual weaving and bobbing between lanes, and suddenly there was a guy driving a small black SUV who was angry about my having cut in front of him. Dickhead thought balloon: “Whoa, hey…you don’t cut in front of me! My girlfriend just broke up with me and I’m paying $479 a month plus tax to drive this brand-new SUV, and if anyone’s cutting anyone off it’s me…I cut you off, Steve McQueen!” The next thing I know he’s roaring alongside, determined to go faster and maybe cut me off in the bargain when all of a sudden the traffic stops dead and Mr. Aggression slams on the brakes and just barely avoids crashing into the guy in front of him. I kept going, of course, weaving through the traffic and leaving this pathetic dick fuming behind the wheel. As I was being careful in my driving I didn’t have the chance to flip him the bird. I don’t think that was necessary, given what happened.

Just reminding that while we sit and sprawl our way through the annual ritual of cinematic soul-draining known as the summer season, 57 films of at least some adult intrigue or constitution are sitting in the bullpen and waiting for the annual award season to open. Not 20, 30, 40 or 50 films — the number is 57, and all slated to open during a 14-week period between mid September and New Year’s Eve, which works out to three per week and closer to four.

What I’m basically doing is re-posting the Oscar Balloon rundown to ask about any disputes or write-downs that may have surfaced over the last several weeks. Please advise about anything I should add or subtract.

Straight from Oscar Balloon (in order of confidence or expectation): 1. Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester-by-the-Sea [locked Best Actor nomination for Casey Affleck]; 2. Martin Scorsese‘s Silence; 3. Steven Gaghan‘s Gold (Matthew McConaughey, Bryce Dallas Howard, Edgar Ramírez); 4. Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; 5. Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals; 6. David Frankel‘s Collateral Beauty (Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton); 7. Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper (Kristen Stewart); 8. Clint Eastwood‘s Sully (Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney); 9. Denzel Washington‘s Fences (Washington, Viola Davis, Mykelti Williamson, Russell Hornsby). (9)

Every Monday I try to remind myself that I have not only a life but a semblance of a pulse, and one of the ways I do that is to review screening lists. Right now I have Nicholas Winding Refn‘s The Neon Demon (Broad Green, 6.24), 7:30 pm tonight. Michael Grandage‘s Genius (Summit, 6.10, costarring Colin Firth, Jude Law) tomorrow night. On Wednesday night is the all-media for James Wan‘s The Conjuring 2 (Warner Bros., 6.10). Thursday night is a screening of Susanna White‘s Our Kind of Traitor (Lionsgate, 7.1).