3:25 pm update: President Trump has finally whacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Whoever replaces Sessions will whack Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, of course, and then it’ll be Bob Mueller‘s head on the chopping block. When and if Mueller is discharged House Democrats are reportedly planning to have Mueller testify before Congress in an open televised hearing.

Beto O’Rourke vs. Ted Cruz “was political nitroglycerin from the minute this campaign started,” said Ted Delisi, a Republican political consultant in Austin. “Beto couldn’t have run this race against John Cornyn. He couldn’t have run this race against Greg Abbott. This race had to be run against Ted Cruz, and it had to be run this year. This was a once-every-20-years opportunity.”

Precisely the same dynamic awaits in ’19 and ’20 when Beto runs against Donald Trump for the Presidency, and wins. He’s the only guy with that vaguely Kennedy-esque quality, an Irishman with the right, scrappy stuff. A principled guy who can stand up to the beast. Seasoned, passionate. A charismatic, whoop-ass campaigner.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews mentioned Beto vs. Trump last night. It’s on a lot of people’s minds, trust me. Young enough to engage younger voters but not too young. Played in a band, knows how to skate-board. The perfect opposite of Bloated Orange Cheeto.

HE commenter “East Side Guy” wrote that Beto “certainly seems like a good guy, but I don’t see how he wins the presidency two years after losing the Senate. VP, maybe.”

Will you get this through your head? Barely losing a Senate race in a stubbornly deep-red state like Texas (no Democrat elected to the Senate since ’88) is not a reputation compromiser. Beto ran an inspirational, great-guns campaign that gained national attention and turned people on in all 50 states.

There’s no Presidential training school, no academy. Even those who begin the job with supposedly sufficient qualifications have to go through a learning curve.

The most destructive, no-account asshole to ever occupy the Oval Office — a moron, a tyrant-worshipping fatso, a bullshit salesman, a fake tycoon, an ex-reality-show host — is systematically dismantling our democracy and doing everything he can to carbon-suffocate the planet, and you’re hung up on whether Beto is sufficiently seasoned because he’s a Congressperson and not a Senator?

How was Dwight Eisenhower perfectly prepared for the Presidency after leading uniformed troops in WWII? How exactly was JFK totally prepared after being a U.S. Senator? JFK was elected because he had that X-factor, rock-star thing that people liked and wanted. Same deal with Beto.

Beto is three years older than JFK when elected, and roughly Obama’s age in ‘08. He’s obviously a bright, responsible-minded, articulate lefty legislator who knows how to handle himself.

What was it about Trump’s background that qualified him for the Oval Office? The man is an ADD simpleton. Beto would obviously be an upgrade. He’s the guy, I’m telling you.

Hollywood Elsewhere is due at a reputable Yale hospital for an 8:45 am appointment. You don’t want to know and I’d rather not share. And then down to Westport and into the city for some running around, a 5 pm podcast recording with Bill McCuddy, and finally a 7 pm screening of Mimi Leder‘s On The Basis of Sex (Focus Features, 12.25), the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic with Felicity Jones and Armie Hammer. I won’t be filing until early this afternoon when I’m on the NYC-bound train, but that’s a narrow window. Playing it by ear.

A house full of rabid, rightwing, Trump-supporting Jews at last night’s Israeli Film Festival award ceremony booed and heckled a liberal producer and award-recipient, Jason Blum (Get Out), because he was trashing Trump? In Los Angeles?

Yes, the Israeli Film Festival is sponsored by the Adelson Foundation, the rightwing charity launched by scumbag billionaire Sheldon Adelson, but how could a gathering of Jews do this in the wake of the Trump-inspired Pittsburgh synagogue massacre?

Watch: Jason Blum was booed and physically removed from the Israel Film Festival stage after making controversial political statements about Trump https://t.co/1nAyogEP8i pic.twitter.com/sH80NZVq7B

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 7, 2018

Nobody was seriously betting on the inspirational Beto O’Rourke beating the loathsome, toad-like Ted Cruz, not really. And in the end he didn’t. Too many Texas bumblefucks.

Why did Andrew Gillum, the Democratic rock-star candidate for the Florida governorship, lose to the repulsive Trump ally Ron DeSantis?

Why did Stacey Abrams, the brilliant Democratic gubernatorial candidate from Georgia, lose to her odious, vote-suppressing Republican opponent, Brian Kemp?

Yes, the Dems have won control of the House of Representatives — excellent news, and an overall victory against the Trump corrosion. A lot of diverse new Dems will be heading to Washington. But they’ve lost two seats in the Senate.

Yes, many Dems have triumphed in many tough races all over. But while American voters generally leaned blue in many regions, they didn’t tip blue in a big, decisive way. Too many rural assholes voted in favor of the Asshole-in-Chief.

Dan Lavoie on Twitter: “Tens of millions of Americans looked at what has happened in this country the past two years and said, ‘Yes, more of this, please!'”

Beto ran a world-class campaign, and he could make the difference in 2020. He needs to return to El Paso and flop for a couple of weeks, but starting in early ’19 he needs to take a long hard look at running against President Trump. He could do it — he could win it — he really could. What other prospective Democratic presidential candidate is generating that crackling Beto excitement? Nobody.

Repeated: Nadine Labaki‘s Capernaum (Sony Pictures Classics, 12.14) is about a 12 year-old Lebanese kid (and a small-framed one at that, making him look eight or nine) going through hard-knocks destitution on the streets of Beirut.

Does it get you emotionally to watch a raw verite depiction of a parent-less, penniless kid struggle to survive while trying to take care of an infant boy in diapers? Of course it does, but I didn’t see Capernaum as manipulative because I didn’t sense any lying or exaggerating on the part of Labaki, the kid (Zain Al-Rafeea), the infant or any of the supporting characters.

What other way could a director possibly depict extreme poverty except in a plain, matter-of-fact way?

Capernaum isn’t really about a child who files a lawsuit against his parents for giving him birth, as the point is never vigorously or extensively argued in a courtroom setting. It is, however, a deeply affecting hard-knocks, street-urchin survival tale in the vein of Pixote or Slumdog Millionaire.

For three days in early October 2009 I visited the set of Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs in Shreveport, Louisiana. The time I spent chatting with the cast and crew and watching a couple of scenes being shot was interesting and occasionally fascinating. I was mezzo-mezzo with the film that resulted (no one thought it approached the level of Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 original) but we’ll let that go for now.

I actually don’t know why I’m mentioning Lurie or the film because the defining event of my Shreveport visit was hooking up with a 39 year-old blonde from Florida. Let’s call her Melissa.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

No firm opinion about Scott Mantz‘s prediction, but I’ve heard the same from others (including a top-tier critic friend) and it wouldn’t surprise me if things break this way. Mantz, however, should have double-checked the Green Book release date — Friday, 11.16, not Wednesday, 11.21. So no birthday convergence.

I’m sorry but I have to go vote now (straight Democratic) so I can cancel out the preferences of some person I don’t agree with.

On 11.9 a six-CD deluxe re-issue of the Beatles’ White Album will go on sale. Boilerplate: “The album’s 30 tracks are newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and mix engineer Sam Okell in stereo and 5.1 surround audio, joined by 27 early acoustic demos and 50 session takes, most of which are previously unreleased in any form.”

The late George Martin once remarked that there were too many sub-par tracks on the White Album, and that it would have been a better package if the chaff had been removed. I agree with him. The White Album is an angry, jagged, bloated thing — constantly arguing with itself and indeed the very concept of unity. It’s full of ego wars and me-me-me.

Here’s the HE version of a better, pruned-down version — a single disc, 14 tracks, and in this order:

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

I can report directly that on the new 4K 2001 disc, the Discovery tunnel wall is indeed a kind of light rose-beige color. And yet the tunnel in the 2007 2001 Bluray, which I looked at this morning, is straight white. And I’m doubting the rose-beige thing. As I wrote a few days ago, “After watching 2001 in theatres at least 14 or 15 times over the last half-century, I’ve never once seen a print with a faint rosey-orange tint in the passageway scene. Not once, not ever.”

You have to wonder why Stanley Kubrick would have said to his set designer, “I don’t want the walls to be plain white or bone white…I want a William Haines feeling…I want a warmer, gentler, more feminine color.” I could see George Cukor or Vincent Minnelli requesting this, but not Kubrick.

from 2007 Bluray.

from 2018 4K Bluray (second generation capture).

I can also report that the MGM logo on the 2007 Bluray is indeed bright blue with white lettering, and that the same image on the 4K disc is dark blue with amber lettering. I’ve seen them both with my own eyes, and only one is correct. I think it’s the former. I think the dark blue-with-yellow-lettering logo is bullshit.

If you haven’t signed change.org’s “keep Filmstruck alive” petition, please do so. It was launched about a week and a half ago, and is now shooting for 50,000 subscribers.