About 100 minutes ago roughly 40 Cannes journos were shown longish reels from three late ’12 Weinstein hot tamales — Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master (10.12), David O. Russell‘s The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21) and Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained (12.25). A screening of No starts in 30 minutes so this has to be quick. Can’t-think, can’t-breathe quick. Okay, here goes…the clock is ticking.

The Master reel was exciting but it’s clearly going to be a complex, somewhat-out-there drama that doesn’t play the game. An “audience film” if the audience is filled with people like myself, Drew McWeeny, James Rocchi, Sasha Stone, Ira Parks, Anne Thompson and Pete Howell, but I don’t know about Joe Popcorn…but who knows? The sound was too loud. I couldn’t hear half the things that Phillip Seymour Hoffman was saying. The footage was longer and more varied than the currently-up teaser. Hoffman is clearly going to be the charismatic megalomaniac — confidence, swagger, drill-bit eyes. Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams , it appears, are going to fully alive and beating with the heart pump.

The Silver Linings Playbook looks fast and sharp — a raggedy-jazz comedy about caustic humor, family, sex, anxiety, therapy, hurt, healing…all of that. Directed and written by Russell, and adapted from the serio-comic novel by Matthew Quick. Agitated and lacking-in-people-skills Bradley Cooper falls in love with Jennifer Lawrence. It feels edgy and crackling and push-pushy and what-the-fucky. Robert De Niro, Julia Stiles, Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker costar. Looks good for guys like me and Joe Popcorn, but we’ll see.

Django Unchained played the hottest of the three — big laughs, applause, whoops. Popcorn-plus entertainment in an old-Southern setting. Audacious attitude, swagger dialogue, fast gunplay and best of all, a former slave (Jamie Foxx) coming back to the plantation and whoopin’ on the overweight slave master who made his slave life hell. An audience film in spades. Can’t miss. Big money in all markets, thumbs-up reviews, the whole shot. That’s it, no more time.