Juliana Farrait-Rodriguez, the 70-year-old ex-wife of Frank Lucas—Denzel Washington's character in American Gangster—was arrested in Puerto Rico while trying sell two kilos of coke. Good for her, getting out and traveling like that, at her age. [NYDN]

Former drug kingpin Ike Atkinson, a soldier who smuggled tons of heroin out of Vietnam, is challenging American Gangster's account of Harlem heroin-smuggling kingpin Frank Lucas. Give Ike Atkinson credit for every last kilo he smuggled into America, patriotically.

As your Hollywood employer has probably decided that this Veterans Day doesn't warrant the show of respect of a day off (strike-related layoffs notwithstanding), celebrate the sacrifices of those who've served our country in the most meaningful way available to you: by observing a moment of silence as you review the weekend's box office numbers:

On this gloomy Monday morning, take a moment to review the weekend's studio strike fund box office results, allowing yourself to momentarily ignore the coordinated chants of the picketers outside your place of employment.

In this latest installment of Defamer Overheard Movie Reviews, an operative lets us know that the man who directed Spinal Tap, A Few Good Men and The Princess Bride—but much more recently Rumor Has It, The Story of Us and Alex & Emma—seems pretty difficult to please: "Just got out of the 12:00 showing of American Gangster at the Avco on Wilshire in Westwood along with The Bucket List director Rob Reiner, who, while exiting, remarked of the film, 'In terms of The Godfather, it doesn't come close.'" Of course, the unheard snippet of conversation immediately following might have been, "But it totally blows away Virtuosity, which I've always maintained was prettty fucking sweet," providing a little more context for Reiner's absurdly high cinematic standards.

When roughly $22 million worth of Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington fans show up at the multiplex on long-gestating, twice-aborted Universal feature American Gangster's opening weekend, not even the succession of credits reading "Produced by Brian Grazer," "Based On An Idea By Brian Grazer To Do A Movie About A Magazine Article About A Drug Kingpin From The 70s" and "A Ridley Scott Film Shepherded By Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer, Who Simply Refused To Let This Crazy Dream Die" will give moviegoers an adequate appreciation of the Herculean efforts undertaken by the spikey-haired superproducer to finally bring his passion project to the screen. The LAT chronicles the mogul's heroism in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles (budget overruns! eight-figure kill fees! cost-controlling script rewrites that ripped the very soul out of the story!), here recounting the dark moment when a momentarily defeated Grazer had to tell original director Antoine Fuqua that Gangster had been shelved: