Spittin’ cousins, queens at cross purposes. The willful, emotional, ultimately unlucky Mary Queen of Scots (Saoirse Ronan) vs. the coolly reasoned Queen Elizabeth (Margot Robbie) in the mid to late 1500s. Things don’t quite work out for Mary, but then you knew that. The Focus Features release opens on 12.4.

Yesterday I passed along praise for Ronan’s performance (“incredible, really gets to shine, a full range of emotions”). The flame-haired Robbie looks like a fright. (Cue junket-whore questions about how upsetting it was for the beautiful Robbie to ugly up for the sake of art.) The clips are handsome in a carefully-balanced, steady-as-she-goes, class-A fashion. The exquisite lighting is the work of dp John Mathiesen, a longtime Ridley Scott collaborator.

Directed by Josie Rourke, the trailer seeks to persuade that the film is primarily focused on character and conviction rather than blood and spectacle. The fact that Beau Willimon (House of Cards) wrote the screenplay suggests this. And yet the word around the campfire is that the Game of Thrones aesthetic was also an influence.

“Less stuffy literary biopic than ever-relevant female-empowerment saga, Wash Westmoreland‘s Colette ranks as one of the great roles for which Keira Knightley will be remembered. While hardly the first English-language feature to go behind the famous French byline (Danny Huston directed the much-derided Becoming Colette a quarter-century earlier), it succeeds in tying her story to the zeitgeist, while delving deeper into the love affairs she pursued with other women.” — from Peter Debruge‘s Sundance review, posted on 1.21.18.

Apple techies to Hollywood Elsewhere (received this morning at 6:30): “Thank you for your patience. We reviewed the documents you provided and [have] turned off the Activation Lock on your device.” The six-digit, two-step security code that’s been making life hell for the last six days, they mean. Ye gods and little fishes! There are two or three procedures that have to be carefully followed and implemented, but once this is done the phone will be in the pink and fully operational.

Thanks to everyone I reached out to for help, and to all the HE regulars who offered advice, thoughts and general sympathies. The last six days really have been horrid. While a couple of Apple reps were extremely helpful and in fact acted as God’s angels, a few others weren’t helpful at all. I was told last weekend by two senior Apple support reps as well as a Genius bar guy that there was no way to help me and that I was more or less screwed blue.

I’ve decided to sell the Yamaha as I’ve spotted something a little better as well as reasonably priced. Had it four years, bought it for $3750 plus paid for new windshield, mounted top case, Kryptonite lock. One estimate says it’s worth $3100 retail. Nada guides says it’s worth $2000, but if you add the top case, windshield and chain lock (at least $400) the price is $2400 firm. I’ve been maintaining it like a baby all along. Never took it on a long trip. Sticker on license plate is good until next February.

All hail the 88 year-old Clint Eastwood and his never-say-die work ethic. Clint has been directing and starring in The Mule since June 4th, shooting in various Georgia locations. The shoot will move later this month to Las Cruces, New Mexico, the town where Walter Matthau and two cohorts robbed a small bank in Charley Varrick some 45 years ago.

Eastwood costars with Bradley Cooper, Michael Pena, Laurence Fishburne, Dianne Wiest.

Pic is based on Sam Dolnick‘s June 2014 N.Y. Times Magazine piece, “The Sinaloa Cartel’s 90-Year-Old Drug Mule.” The screenplay is by Nick Schenk (Gran Torino). IMDB logline: “A 90-year-old horticulturist and WWII veteran is caught transporting $3 million worth of cocaine through Michigan for a Mexican drug cartel. Here’s some coverage from August’s WRDW.com.

Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Paramount, 7.27) screens tonight in Los Angeles for journo elites. (Reviews will pop tomorrow — Thursday, 7.12 at 2 pm Pacific.) The NYC and LA all-media screenings will happen on or about 7.23. You can’t trust the junket guys, but even if you dial down their praises by 30% or 40% it still sounds pretty good.

The branding has begun on Josie Rourke‘s Mary, Queen of Scots (Focus Features, 12.5), even though it won’t open for another five and a half months. I’ve heard that the film offers a kind of Game of Thrones aesthetic — hard R, vivid sex scenes, bloody battle sequences, unflinching. I’ve also heard that that Saoirse Ronan, playing the title role, delivers big-time. A guy who’s seen it says she’s “incredible, one of her very best performances, a physically demanding role that she throws herself into, really gets to shine, a full range of emotions.”

Nine years ago Neil Blomkamp was regarded as a hot visionary helmer in the wake of District 9, which was universally admired. Five years ago he was regarded as a somewhat less vital but nonetheless credible visionary craftsman (i.e., Jim Cameron wannabe) in the wake of Elysium, which the fanboys were iffy on. In the wake of Chappie three years ago he was regarded as a visionary craftsman who’ve been given his shot and hadn’t quite nailed it (Jar-Jar Binks comparisons were heard) but was still in the game. But Blomkamp paired with yet another MGM Robocop remake? Forget it.

via GIPHY

“I went to sleep dreaming life was beauty — I woke up knowing life is duty.” — written by David Mamet for a Hill Street Blues episode called “Wasted Weekend.”

I heard this line once during the original broadcast of this episode on 1.13.87. The guy who said the line was Dennis Franz‘s Det. Sal Benedetto, and I’ve never forgotten it. 31 and 1/2 years ago. I was watching Steven Bochco‘s fabled series on a 21″ cable-connected color TV. I was living in a cool little pre-war studio on High Tower Drive, a few hundred yards from the Hollywood Bowl and just down the street from Elliott Gould‘s deco-moderne, elevator-accessible Long Goodbye apartment. Reanimator‘s Jeffrey Coombs lived in the same complex.

I was working for Cannon Films publicity at the time, writing press kits. My future wife Maggie and I had either just returned from Paris or were planning a trip there. We got married the following October, and Jett came along the following June. [Originally posted on 11.14.09.]

Two dramas about gay teenagers subjected to the ravages of conversion therapy will open soon. The presumed award-season contender is Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased (Focus Features, 11.2), based on Garrard Conley‘s true-life memoir. It costars Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) as the 19-year-old Conley, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe as his rigidly conventional parents, and Edgerton as a gay conversion therapist. Opening three months earlier is The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Film Rise/Vertigo, 8.3), set in 1993 and based on Emily M. Danforth’s 2012 novel. It’s about the teenaged Cameron Post (Chloe Grace Moretz) being sent to a Christian gay-conversion camp in Montana. Costarring Sasha Lane, John Gallagher Jr., Forrest Goodluck and Jennifer Ehle. Post won a Grand Jury Prize at last January’s Sundance Film Festival.

I’ve spent half of today and half of yesterday looking to connect with a distinguished, non-marginal, leather-shoe-wearing, Jaguar-driving iPhone hacker who really knows his/her stuff. As I explained on 7.6, I’m grappling with a terrible iPhone 8 Plus problem. I just bought one last Friday evening after my iPhone 6 was lost and then stolen, but I can’t get past a double security measure that iOS software insists upon.

Every new iPhone owner has to submit to a two-step verification security process. They need to input their Apple ID and password (no prob), followed by a six-digit passcode that Apple would normally text them. However, the thief who stole my iPhone 6 Plus has given it a new SIM card, and has somehow convinced Apple that his/her phone # (which ends in 14) is a legitimate trusted number. Somehow this d-bag has convinced Apple that he’s me, and the bottom line is that Apple is so far refusing to accept the usual verifications that prove I am the legitimate party and not the “14” guy. There must be some kind of workaround that would allow me to sidestep the usual protocols and allow me to input a valid six-digit code.

Right now I’m frozen in my tracks. After five days of trying to get past or around this problem, an Apple senior-level support rep told me yesterday in so many words that “there’s no way we can give you the six-digit code,” and that I’m more or less screwed as far as being able to use the new iPhone 8 Plus with my current #. Moreover, last Friday a senior iPhone support person named Priscilla promised I’d be hearing soon from “a senior Apple engineer,” except (a) the engineer never got in touch and (b) I’ve called Priscilla and left messages four or five times and no response. I’m calling her again now.

There must be a way to hack around this issue, so I’m making a last-ditch public effort to find a reputable gentleman hacker who can help me out. If anyone out there can connect me with the right person or knows a surefire way to manage this, please get in touch. This is very serious. I’ve never before tried to connect with iPhone hackers, but I’ll tell you right now it’s not easy. It’s like trying to find an upscale drug dealer. They’re out there, but it’s hard to find the right number or e-mail address. I’ve also reached out to iPhone jailbreakers — not the same line of country but close.

If I can’t find a solution I guess I’ll return the iPhone 8 Plus and buy an Android and accept a whole new phone #, and then I’ll figure some way to import my contact info, photos, music and all the rest of it. I know nothing about Androids. What a nightmare. Every facet of my life has been intertwined with iPhone technology for 11 years and now, suddenly, the Apple folks have essentially told me to go to hell.

A February ’18 Forbes article by Thomas Fox-Brewster mentioned Corellium co-founder David Wang, a big name in the Apple jailbreaker community” who has “previously ported Android and Linux onto the iPhone.”

So Joaquin Phoenix is going to play the D.C. Comics Joker in an origin film directed and co-written by Todd Phillips. Honestly, who cares? How many more Joker flicks are U.S. audiences going to be asked to sit through? Jokers to the left and right…Caesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Jared Leto. There’s no end to it. Variety‘s Justin Kroll reports that Leto “will not only be back for the Suicide Squad sequel [but] is also developing his own standalone movie that will be separate from Phoenix’s Joker project.” All three are Warner Bros. projects. No one’s ever going to top Ledger’s version in The Dark Knight…never.