‘I’ll stop ‘SNL’ impersonation if Trump releases tax returns’

Aniston tries to stop Rachel impression

LOS ANGELES, Dec 5, (RTRS): Alec Baldwin has offered to stop doing his impersonation of Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live” if the president-elect releases his tax returns.

Baldwin’s offer came via Twitter shortly after midnight on Sunday after Trump sent a tweet critical of “SNL” in general and Baldwin’s portrayal of him in particular.

The question of Trump’s tax returns has been an issue since the start of his presidential campaign in June 2015. Trump has bucked political tradition by refusing to allow the public a deep look at his financial history. That prompted investigative reports into the track record of Trump’s businesses and his personal foundation.

In October, the New York Times reported that Trump recorded a $916 million business loss in 1995 that likely allowed him to avoid paying income taxes for as much as 18 years. In September, the Washington Post reported on the Donald J. Trump Foundation’s history of accepting donations from outside sources but making few charitable grants of its own.

The latest episode of “SNL” opened with Baldwin playing Trump goofing off and focusing on retweeting messages from random people while attending a security briefing. “SNL” trouper Kate McKinnon, who spent most of the year playing Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, limned Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.

The sketch ended with Trump calling for his chief strategist, the controversial former Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon, who was portrayed as a cross between the Grim Reaper and Darth Vader.

Can’t we all be “Friends”? This week’s “Saturday Night Live” featured a battle of dueling Rachels, as Vanessa Bayer brought back her impression of Jennifer Aniston’s “Friends” character to the Weekend Update desk. But Bayer, clad in a wig of Rachel’s iconic layered hairstyle and ‘90s-certified overalls, probably didn’t expect Rachel herself to show up.

“What are you doing here?” asked Bayer as Aniston made a surprise appearance on the segment.

“For the last 12 days you’ve been texting me every day to come and visit you,” Aniston, who stars with Bayer in the upcoming comedy “Office Christmas Party,” said. “Listen, honey, I know you love ‘Friends’ and we had such a great time making our movie together, but you gotta really try to stop texting me every day.”

“’Friends’ was like, five million and five years ago, so I think we’ve just gotta move on,” she added.

Aniston went on to critique Bayer’s take on the “Friends” character, even doing her own

impression of Bayer’s Rachel impression.

Sweet Christmas! “Marvel’s Luke Cage” is officially getting a second season.

Netflix announced the news on the show’s Twitter and Facebook pages on Sunday, posting a short video that featured a sign in Pop’s Barber Shop reading “Season 2 coming soon.” The posts are also accompanied by Pop’s own motto, which Luke Cage takes to heart in Season 1: “Always forward.”

“Luke Cage” is now the third Marvel show to get a second season on the streaming platform. “Daredevil” was first to be renewed for a second season, and has also received the greenlight for a third. “Jessica Jones” was also renewed after its critically acclaimed freshman season.

Next up in Netflix’s Marvel universe are “Iron Fist” and the crossover “The Defenders,” which will combine all four superheros that had their own shows on Netflix. A release date for “Luke Cage” Season 2 was not announced on Sunday.

Season 1 of “Luke Cage” was well received by critics and fans alike. In her review, Variety’s Maureen Ryan said, “Nothing is cooler than watching bullets bounce off Luke Cage as he brings the ruckus and schools all the fools.”

When Netflix introduced the ability to download content onto mobile devices for offline viewing earlier this week, it also debuted a few technical tweaks to make sure that those downloaded episodes of “Black Mirror” won’t eat up all of your phone’s storage. Eventually, Netflix wants to use the same technologies to optimize streaming to mobile devices as well.

One of the biggest differences between shows you download and shows you stream on Netflix is the video format, or codec, the company is using. For streaming, Netflix has been using H.264/AVC almost exclusively. However, users who download Netflix shows to most Android devices instead receive content encoded with VP9 — an open source video codec developed by Google that uses a bunch of advanced encoding tricks to deliver the same video quality with significantly less data, or a better video qualities with the same amount of data.

The problem with VP9 is that it isn’t supported by everyone in the industry. Given Google’s backing, it obviously runs on Android and in the company’s Chrome browser, and a growing number of consumer electronics devices are capable of playing VP9 videos as well. iPhones, however, can’t and Apple has given no indication that it plans to support VP9 any time soon.

That’s why Netflix is also encoding its downloadable videos with a different flavor of H.264/AVC, which is also known as a different profile.