If it was my call and I had absolute power (and I’m not exaggerating for exaggeration’s sake), I would put Donald Trump‘s fat, half-naked ass into a Roman Colisseum-like arena and make him face three ferocious tigers, just like Russell Crowe in Gladiator and Victor Mature in Demetrius and the Gladiators. Yes, I would allow Trump to defend himself with a short sword, but you know he’d die anyway.

It goes without saying that Steve Bannon should suffer the same fate.

I’m not kidding — these guys are sociopaths, animals…hellbent on anti-Democratic revolt and sparking anti-Democratic insanity among the rural bumblefucks. They’re truly insane, and the crimes they’re guilty of deserve the ultimate penalty. A firing squad would afford them too much dignity. They need to face what Christians faced under the rule of ancient Romans.

Alternate scenario: Trump is murdered — stabbed to death — by the Praetorian guard, and in a mimicking of John Hurt‘s death scene in I, Claudius, he weeps and wails as the knives plunge in and out.

From a q & a between Netflix honcho Ted Sarandos and Variety‘s Matt Donnelly, titled “‘I Screwed Up’: Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Addresses Dave Chappelle Fallout“:

Donnelly: “I want to circle back and ask definitively, do you personally and does Netflix feel that The Closer does not amount to hate speech?”

Sarandos: “Under the definition of ‘does it intend to cause physical harm?’ I do not believe it falls into hate speech.”

Donnelly: “So the special will remain on the service?”

Sarandos: “I don’t believe there have been many calls to remove it.”

Christine Ebersole is listed as playing Lucille Ball on the Licorice Pizza Wiki page so this lucylounge thing is apparently legit. (Thanks to worldofreel‘s Jordan Ruimy.)

The people who cut this Being The Ricardos teaser obviously had zero interest in highlighting Javier Bardem‘s performance as Desi Arnaz, which is odd as Bardem allegedly outshines costar Nicole Kidman.

The best part is the I Love Lucy theme at the end, played over the credits.

This is a situational set-up teaser. Wildly successful couple with a hit TV show, running their own production company, dealing with the attendant pressures. There’s one brief allusion to Desi’s adultery in a magazine headline. Nicole’s narration implies that director-writer Aaron Sorkin sees this as Lucy’s story with cheating Desi as the bad guy.

Boardner’s is not opposite the old Desilu Studios (846 No. Cahuenga) — why do filmmakers insist on trying to sell this bullshit?

I thought the chocolate assembly-line factory routine was the big classic I Love Lucy bit, rather than the grape-stomping thing.

Friendo: “Nicole’s speaking voice is a problem. That is not Lucy’s very identifiable tonality.”

HE: “Totally Nicole’s voice — no attempt to even vaguely simulate Lucy’s braying tone. Then again 97% of the audience has no idea what Lucy sounded like. Many if not most of those who watched the ’50s show are dead.”

Amazon will release Ricardos theatrically on Friday, 12.10.21. The film will begin streaming on Prime Video on Tuesday, 12.21.21.

Reaction to research screening of Being The Ricardos, posted by Jordan Ruimy on 8.20.21:

Please listen to Joe Rogan‘s impressions of what’s going on right now. It cuts right through. The awfuls won’t listen, of course, because they’re hysterical, defensive and blind to anything but their own agenda.

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, 15, attended last night’s Eternals premiere in a dress and looking like (gasp!) a young woman. Which is a switch, right? When she was two Shiloh told her illustrious parents that she wanted to be a boy named John. Kids with wealthy or stable parents do this, of course. They fiddle and faddle around with this or that fantasy or identity. And so Brangelina indulged her.

Now Shiloh is thinking she might be…well, who knows what she’s thinking? But “John” seems to be history.

Friendo: “Looks like little Shiloh is a female after all.”

HE: “Aided and abetted by insane parents, many kids these days decide their gender and sexual identity at very tender ages. Shiloh can always switch back in a year or two.”

Friendo: “I think she’s just outgrown it, as a lot of them do. Which is why parents should wait until after puberty to embrace or approve their children’s gender and sexual identity matters. This, of course, is totally verboten to say in woke circles.”

I’m happy to read that Rene Rodriguez is extra-double impressed with the new Taxi Driver 4K UHD Bluray, which is part of the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection, Volume 2, but is not yet purchasable as a stand-alone.

But really, how much better could the visual values be on this disc? Shot on 35mm Eastman color negative 100T 5254/7254 film using Arriflex 35 BL camera and Zeiss super speed lenses with portions captured on 16mm, Taxi Driver can only look as good as it can look.

I’ve seen it in theatres, on laser disc, DVD, Bluray and 4K streaming, and it looks fine but will never knock anyone’s eyeballs out.

The Amazon 4K streaming version looks pretty great, in fact.

It’s all well and good for the hearing-challenged community to have its own Marvel superhero. This plus CODA makes 2021 a banner year in this respect, but banner isn’t the word I’m really thinking of — it’s banal. As in “what a banal world we’re all living in”….representation matters, representation matters, representation matters. But shouldn’t other stuff matter when it comes to making gripping cinema? You know that because Ridloff is part of the Eternals family…aahh, forget it. Not worth going into.

Tomorrow the handicappers will sample their very first taste of Javier Bardem’s performance as Desi Arnaz in Being The Ricardos, and will thereafter decide, depending on how much tasty Desi footage is included, if it’s a possible Oscar-level thing or not. Pins and needles, fate of nations, etc.