Deadline‘s Pete Hammond is one of the more gracious, turn-the-other-cheek columnists around. He doesn’t miss a trick but his natural wont is to be charitable or at least not backhand a film if it all possible. So his measured, less-than-cartwheely comments about Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur (8.19) following yesterday’s Cinemacon presentation are instructive.

Referring to Paramount’s Las Vegas presentation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, Star Trek Beyond and Ben-Hur, Hammond wrote that he’s “not sure [if] any of these is necessary for anything but Par’s bottom line, but the crowd seemed happy to see them all.”

Then he said that Ben-Hur‘s “dog days of August opening gives one pause, but perhaps Paramount has discovered a faith-based audience dying to see a biblical epic like this at the end of summer.”

He added that Ben-Hur star Jack Huston, who showed up yesterday, “is trying to fill Charlton Heston’s shoes, and might come close based on the footage.” “Trying”? “Might”?

A week or so ago Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock told the Guardian‘s Rory Carroll that Sean Parker‘s Screening Room proposal (immediate access to new movies for $50 a pop) “is no doubt going to be the talk of the town at CinemaCon…this could be a massive game-changer.”

There’s talk about Parker and his crew offering some kind of presentation this week in Las Vegas, but not in any official capacity.

“If they’re coming because they have a hotel room…they are not on our official schedule,” CinemaCon managing director Mitch Neuhauser told TheWrap’s Matt Donnelly in a piece that posted last night. “CinemaCon is all about movies on the big screen.”

So when and where will the Big Debate occur? At what Cinemacon forum will voices be heard pro or con? If and when Parker shows up will anyone throw a drink in his face or trash Screening Room in some vocally demonstrative way, or is the whole Cinemacon-vs.-Screening Room brouhaha just a lot of hot journalistic air?

Like everyone else I was impressed — amused — by yesterday’s hole-in-one by Louis Oosthuizen. But he just got lucky is all. I’ve never felt any contact highs from golf. Those grotesque shirts, shoes, caps. An elitist sport for well-off conservatives, salesmen, clubby guys from the financial sector. A few years ago ago I met some business-affairs guy who was going to the Cannes Film Festival, but had decided to bring his golf clubs along so he could play 18 holes somewhere on the Cote d’Azur. I immediately said to myself “what an asshole.” I vaguely hate the idea that golf even exists. I respect the skills, of course, but the only time I even half-related was during that sequence in Kevin Costner‘s Tin Cup when he keeps whacking the same difficult shot and dropping the ball in a pond. I worked as a caddy a couple of times when I was 16 or 17 and I hated the vibe. If a woman tells me she plays golf, I immediately write her off.

There’s a kick-in-the-pants sequence in Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash that uses the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue.” Sing it, feel it…infectious. But it brought back a misheard-lyrics issue from way back. Go online and the song ostensibly begins as follows:

“Is there nothing I can say, nothing I can do?
Change your mind. I’m so in love with you.
You’re too deep in, you can’t get out.
You’re just a poor girl in a rich man’s house.”

I’ve never heard “too deep in.” Idiotic as it sounds, I’ve always heard “bootie bear.” Here’s how the opening stanza sounds to my ears:

“Is there nuttin’ I can say, nuttin’ I can do?
Change yo’ mind. Ahm so in love wit you.
Bootie bear, yuh can’t get out.
You’re just a poor girl…rich man’s house.”

All these years I’ve told myself that “bootie bear” was a romantic nickname that the guy had given the girl in question. People do this. A girlfriend from the mid ’80s used to call me “huggie bear” so it’s not that crazy.

Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash (Fox Searchlight, 5.13) is a noirish Mediterranean hothouse thing — a not-especially-sordid sex and betrayal story that builds so slowly and languidly it feels like there’s nothing going on except for the vibe, and honestly? It’s so lulling and flavorful and swoony and sun-baked that you just give in to it. The undercurrent is…well, gently mesmerizing, and that was enough for me. I can’t wait to see it again, or more precisely go there again. I felt like I was savoring a brief vacation. I’m not saying the dramatic ingredients are secondary, but they almost are.

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The title comes from a David Hockney painting, and that in itself should tell you where Guadagnino is coming from. A Bigger Splash is about island vibes and coolness and louche attitudes and to some extent the splendor of the druggy days, and particularly the legend of the Rolling Stones.

This is Guadagnino’s second collaboration with Tilda Swinton after I Am Love, the Milan-set family drama that opened seven years ago, and the newbie is…I don’t what it is exactly.

In my mind the island of Pantelleria, which is halfway between Tunisia and the southwest coast of Sicily, isn’t just the setting but a kind of lead character. It colors and tonalizes and blows little mood gusts.

Swinton plays Marianne, a late 40ish rock star (a sort of female David Bowie type) who’s vacationing there with boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), a distinctly younger fellow who’s a rock-industry photographer/filmmaker.

So Devin Faraci‘s 3.31 report about Suicide Squad doing extra shooting to add “more humor and lightness” is incorrect, according to a tweet posted by director David Ayer this morning. And yet additional shooting has occured, according to costar Jai Courtney. His comment to Entertainment Tonight: “I wouldn’t say we’re trying to make it funny…there’s some additional action stuff that we’ve been doing that’s pretty dark.” HE comment #1: The Suicide Squad trailer footage has been fairly arch and meta-jokey so it seems unlikely that any kind of additional material would be “pretty dark.” Faraci wrote that “[they’re] not inserting jokes left and right but that they’re beefing up fun character moments and interactions.” HE comment #2: With Suicide Squad not opening until 8.5.16, Warner Bros. will presumably be carpet-bombing with promotional materials for the next five months…right? I’m already half-sick of this thing.

If Bernie Sanders hadn’t decided to run for President against Hillary Clinton, the despair and depression out there right now would be overwhelming. Heroin use would be three or four times what it is now. Sanders will not win the Democratic nomination but he’s ignited fresh political kindling, a communal sense that “the old ways are only going to keep pushing us down so we have to get rid of them,” and a belief in fundamental fairness and corporate pushback that never would have happened if Hillary had run more or less unchallenged. She’s a smart, driven, reasonably decent person whom I intend to vote for in the fall, but she’s a corporate player who is glomming on to the Sanders spiritual wave because it benefits her campaign. God knows what she’d be saying or proposing (or what she’ll try to do as President) if Sanders hadn’t come along. Sidenote: Documentarian Matthew Cooke smiles and nods too eagerly when Mark Ruffalo is expressing a thought. Tone that shit down.

Who will historians point to 100 or even 80 years hence, when the waters of the Hudson and East River will have begun to lap onto the streets of Manhattan, as the most rancid and villainous figures of early 21st Century culture? Indeed, who at the moment of their deaths are sure to be seized by feral, growling, sharp-clawed demons and plunged into the hottest caverns of hell? Climate-change denialists, for openers, but even more deserving of damnation will be the anti-climate-change propagandists. And so I dream of Sarah Palin, naked and howling and roasting on a spit. But with her glasses on. Palin and her ilk just keep coming, keep spewing. Not God Herself nor the wonders of all creation will get in their way.

No offense but I don’t trust Antoine fucking Fuqua — he lacks discipline, he’s popcorn, he’s cheeseball and he damn sure is no Akira Kurosawa or John Sturges. But I still feel a certain lust in my heart for The Magnificent Seven (Columbia, 9.23). Boilerplate: “With the town of Rose Creek under the deadly control of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), the desperate townspeople employ protection from seven outlaws, bounty hunters, gamblers and hired guns — Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), Josh Farraday (Chris Pratt), Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), Billy Rocks (Byung-Hun Lee…swords!), Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier). As they prepare the town for the violent showdown that they know is coming, these seven mercenaries find themselves fighting for more than money.” [Poster image captured at Ceasar’s Palace in Las Vegas by Collider‘s Steve Weintraub.]

For whatever reason the film’s URL is inactive as we speak.

Now that Karyn Kusama‘s The Invitation (Drafthouse) has opened with a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score and done pretty well and has been viewable on iTunes and Vudu for a couple of days, what’s the verdict? I didn’t say a damn thing the other day for fear of giving anyone the slightest hint of what it’s about, but…well, I can say this. It’s an expert slow-burner, and all the more impressive because it’s all about hints…about what you can sense might be happening without anything in the way of precise evidence. But when it all starts to pay off with some third-act violence, I have to say I felt a teeny bit let down. It seemed a little too familiar. But then came the finale and I thought “wow.”

I stopped watching Season #1 of Netflix’s Bloodline after four or five episodes because I couldn’t stand the company of Ben Mendehlson‘s “Danny”, a sweating, slithering, low-rent, cigarette-smoking slug. Yes, I’m aware that Mendehlson will “return” in Season #2 via flashbacks and whatnot, but unlike Game of Throne‘s Jon Snow the guy is really and truly dead. Regulars Kyle Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Jacinda Barrett and Sissy Spacek are being joined by newcomers John Leguizamo and Andrea Riseborough.