HE’s favorite Coen Bros. comedy, and that’s saying something considering my endless love for Burn After Reading, which I’ve watched at least five or six times. Way better than The Ladykillers, needless to add.

From 8.11 N.Y. Times report by By Katie Benner, Danielle Ivory and Richard A. Oppel Jr.: “Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who apparently hanged himself in a federal jail in Manhattan, was supposed to have been checked by guards every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not being followed the night before he was found, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.

“In addition, the jail had transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone in a cell just two weeks after he had been taken off suicide watch, a decision that also violated the jail’s normal procedure, two officials said.”

Sunday afternoon N.Y. Post update: “There’s no surveillance video of the incident during which Jeffrey Epstein apparently hanged himself in a federal lockup in Lower Manhattan, law-enforcement officials told The Post on Sunday.

“Although there are cameras in the 9 South wing where the convicted pedophile was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, they are trained on the areas outside the cells and not inside, according to sources familiar with the setup there.”

On top of the simple, irrefutable “guns are cars” equation, Larry Wilmore brings it home:

"I'm not coming for your gun motherfucker. I'm coming for your weapon of mass destruction." On #LovettorLeaveIt, @larrywilmore talks about why we need to change the language we use when talking about guns. https://t.co/y8eUNQCYha pic.twitter.com/h1pgilPmXQ

— Crooked Media (@crookedmedia) August 11, 2019

Frank Capra‘s It Happened This Morning, as featured in the “Please, God” comment thread:

Children grooving to a violin, the shouting down of Moscow Mitch, or a guy catching a drone before it drowns?

For a year or so IMDb has peen posting screenplay videos, showing the difference between a famous script and how the dialogue finally came out when the actors got their teeth into it. I could watch these all night. I love, love, love Tilda Swinton‘s conversation with Mr. Verne, particularly the in-person one when Mr. Verne suggests “the other way.”

Please don’t permit the selection of a Democratic presidential nominee who will stumble over and over with senior-moment errors and lapses and misrememberings. And please make sure that the person who wins the nomination is smoothly articulate and whipsmart and never misses a trick. Someone, you know, like Pete Buttigieg. I know it can’t actually be Buttigieg himself because of an army of mule-stubborn African-American voters, but a presidential campaign defined by senior-moment gaffes will be devastating. Make that horrific. It’ll just break my heart.

Last month Collider‘s Jeff Sneider tweeted a way-out-there prediction about either Melina Matsoukas‘ Queen and Slim or Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy being fated to win the Best Picture Oscar in early 2020. I don’t know about Just Mercy but a couple of hours ago I heard from a guy who knows a guy who’s read Lena Waithe‘s Queen and Slim screenplay, and his assessment was that while this “black Thelma and Louise” reads like a relatively sturdy programmer it didn’t exactly leap off the page or feel like some kind of “holy moley!” Oscar contender. So due respect to Sneider and the Queen and Slim team but I’ve decided to remove it from my Gold Derby Best Picture roster. For now. Sorry.

…the conspiracy crowd always rushes in and sets up house. Earlier today a retweet by President Trump indicated that he, too, thinks something probably stinks in Denmark. Is it possible that the decision to take Jeffrey Epstein off suicide watch was a matter of simple stupidity and/or incompetence? Yes, I suppose. But highly unlikely.

No one in the left or right conspiracy camp will ever believe that Epstein wasn’t “allowed” in some bumbling bureaucratic way to take his life. Many super-wealthy types (including the Clintons) are breathing easy today, but the first order of business should be the prison cell video. If Epstein offed himself without assistance (as most believe), this was almost certainly captured on security cam. If it turns out the cell camera wasn’t working or had been turned off…c’mon!

N.Y. Times reporter Ali Watkins writes that after attempting suicide on 7.23, Epstein “was placed on suicide watch and received daily psychiatric evaluations, a person familiar with his detention said. But just six days later, on July 29, Mr. Epstein, 66, was taken off the watch for reasons that remained unclear on Saturday, the person said.”

The decision to yank The Hunt wasn’t unexpected. In the wake of last weekend’s mass murders and in view of the exacerbated cultural divide, public showings might have prompted volatile reactions…who knows?

Four days ago THR‘s Kim Masters reported that Universal was having second thoughts. Now it’ll leave the room and reappear on the streaming apps sometime next year, most likely. Craig Zobel, Jason Blum and Damon Lindelof‘s dark satire probably would’ve underperformed anyway — it didn’t look all that appealing. It’s just unfortunate that Universal made the call a day after President Trump complained about it (i.e., “Hollywood is really terrible…they’re treating conservatives very unfairly”).

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin, broadcast yesterday: