During the first half-hour of Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Paramount, 7.27), there’s a sequence in which Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill do a HALO jump (high altitude low open) over Paris. Before Monday night’s Lincoln Square screening director Chris McQuarrie explained that the sequence was shot for real — Cruise and a dp with a head-mounted camera did over 100 jumps at magic hour. The sequence is awesome in just about every respect.

Hollywood Elsewhere totally salutes this kind of commitment to realism, and especially Cruise’s moxie. The man is a machine. But let’s also be honest — this scene probably could have been faked with wires and green screen and nobody would have known the difference. Nobody trusts visual effects and stunts any more. Over the last quarter-century the trust factor has been totally blown. Everyone assumes they’re being deceived, at least to some extent. Especially in a big-studio adventure thriller.

In 2005, Werner Herzog said the following about conveying physical reality on-screen: “I tried to explain that I wanted to have the audience know that at the most fundamental level it was real. Today when you see mainstream movies, in many moments, even when it’s not really necessary, there are special effects. It’s a young audience, and at six and seven kids can identify them…they know it was a digital effect, and normally they even know how they were done. But I had the feeling I wanted to put the audience back in the position where they could trust their eyes.”

This is what McQuarrie and Cruise tried to do in the HALO scene — get us to trust the fact that the physical performing is 100% genuine, right there in the moment, three or four miles high. HE fully respects and salutes this effort, even if it doesn’t quite feel all-the-way honest.

Example: Cruise and Cavill’s plan is to parachute right onto the roof of the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysees. No high-pressure undertaking ever goes precisely according to plan, and yet they do exactly this. A more realistic scenario would have one of them missing the Palais and splashing into the Seine, or maybe landing in a nearby city park (Square Jean Perrin) and alarming a couple of pedestrians.

A high-def version of Hal Ashby‘s Shampoo has been streamable on Amazon for about three years, but on 10.16, for the first time, a Criterion Bluray of a “4K digital restoration” will go on sale. Given what’s recently happened with Criterion’s Midnight Cowboy and Bull Durham Blurays, I’m honestly scared that Criterion will add a strong teal tint to the color. Is a brand-new Warren Beatty interview among the extras? Or perhaps with screenwriter Robert Towne? Of course not. It will, however, include a video chat between critics Mark Harris and Frank Rich plus an essay by Rich.

According to the calculations of World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy, the following Canadian and international premieres at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival are probably Telluride-bound: Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War, Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, Olivier Assayas‘ Non-Fiction, Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s Shoplifters, Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Matteo Garrone‘s Dogman, Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun, Elizabeth Chomko‘s What They Had (an international premiere in Toronto because it premiered at Sundance, not because of Telluride) and Yann Demange‘s White Boy Rick.

Apparently not going to Telluride because they’re listed as TIFF world or international premieres: Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk (a surprise given that Jenkins is a longtime Telluride friend and former volunteer), Steve McQueen‘s Widows (latest pic from the winner of 2013 Best Picture Oscar gets the brushoff), Felix Von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy, Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born (Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger have reservations?), Lee Chang-dong‘s Burning, Nadine Labaki‘s Capernaum, Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows, Dan Fogelman‘s Life Itself, Laszlo Nemes‘ Sunset and Jacques Auduiard‘s The Sisters Brothers.

You can tell right off the bat that Jonah Hill‘s Mid ’90s (A24, 10.19) is an exception of one kind or another. It sure doesn’t feel like just another Los Angeles skateboard flick. You can sense a focus on character and kid culture and ’90s minutiae. Fast and loose and raggedy — the rhythms and the atmosphere feel right.

Pic is set in the lower West L.A. region — Palms, Culver City, Venice — and partly focused on a Motor Ave. skateboard shop. (Born in ’83, Hill grew up in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood or just north of these regions.) Sunny Suljic (The Killing of a Sacred Deer) has a certain X-factor thing going, and I love that Hill has Lucas Hedges playing a bit of a domineering-shit older brother instead of the usual gentle-sensitive guy from Lady Bird, Boy Erased and Manchester By The Sea. Katherine Waterston plays Suljic’s somewhat unstable mom.

Directed and written by Hill; shot by Christopher Blauvelt (Indignation) in HE’s own 1.37 aspect ratio (boxy is beautiful) and edited by Nick Houy.

Now that Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington‘s Equalizer 2 has earned a solid CinemaScore A and landed in first place with an estimated $35.8 million (which slightly tops the $34.1 million opening for the original Equalizer four years ago), the Hollywood Elsewhere community is free to assess the cinematic value. How right or wrong was I in calling EQ2 “much, much better than Fuqua’s 2014 original…this time I actually felt satisfied and marginally impressed…this time I said to myself, ‘I like this guy a little more, and I like that Fuqua has actually made a better-than-half-decent programmer for a change.'”

I just want to say that Ryan Reynolds’ decision to talk about Deadpool’s pansexuality during yesterday’s Comic-Con panel is exactly the kind of inclusive, open-hearted approach to the superhero realm that we all need. I can’t honestly say that I’m waiting with bated breath for the first Deadpool-does-it-with-a-cute-guy scene, but Reynolds has possibly opened the door to all kinds of same-sex couplings within the Marvel and D.C. realm. Remember how Joel Schumacher fiddled with notions of a gay-friendly Batman 21 years ago in Batman and Robin? That didn’t lead anywhere, but now we’re talking about all kinds of possibilities. Which other Marvel superhero characters will open themselves to pansexual expressions? Will the D.C. fraternity follow suit? The sky’s the limit now, and the general superhero fraternity owes Reynolds a debt of gratitude.

If you’re a regular follower you know all about the iCloud sign-in blockage problem on my new iPhone 8 Plus, which I bought two and half weeks ago after my previous phone was stolen. (Here’s my latest report, filed on 7.17.) Five or six days ago I wrote a famous, well-connected hotshot director to see if he knows any powerful higher-ups in the Apple corporation. If so I was hoping he might ask this person to focus on my situation for five minutes and order some senior Apple iCloud technician to fix things once and for all, and no crapping around.

Mr. Hotshot doesn’t know Tim Cook or anyone in that realm, but he did turn me on to a smart guy named Michael Newman, who runs a company called Omegapoint-it.com. I called Newman right away. I’m not out of the woods yet, but Newman has been a godsend — a steady and responsible fellow in every imaginable way, and a shrewd and proactive analyst and problem-solver extraordinaire.

Mike and a colleague visited my West Hollywood abode yesterday morning to try and use an old iMac (which I purchased in 2009) to try and sidestep or outsmart an Apple passcode problem that has prevented me from accessing my iCloud info. This approach didn’t quite work as hoped, but Mike is still working the angles.

At his advice the stolen iPhone 6s Plus has been blacklisted (i.e., deactivated) through AT&T, and now it’s a matter of informing Apple iCloud technicians that this stolen phone is no longer a working device, much less a valid or trusted one.

Once this new reality is recognized by the Apple Empire, the Apple security passcode lockout problem (basically caused by Apple’s six-digit, second-step security code being continually if nonsensically sent to the thief who stole the iPhone on 7.5) will most likely disappear. Or so Mike believes. Who am I to doubt his optimism? He said yesterday that he thinks the problem will be eradicated before the end of the coming business week. Maybe.

I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’re hatched, but I certainly owe Mike and especially Mr. Hotshot a huge debt of gratitude. If this director hadn’t responded to my email and discussed the ins and outs and recommended Mike’s assistance, I would be in the same deep hole I’ve been stuck in for the last two and a half weeks. In my book Mr. Hotshot has racked up good karma points that will last him for at least the next couple of decades.

A few hours ago Paramount Pictures announced that Paramount Television president Amy Powell had been fired after making “racially charged” statements that were “inconsistent” with the studio’s values.

According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Kim Masters and Lesley Goldberg, “the inciting incident occurred during a studio notes call for Paramount Network’s First Wives Club reboot, which is being penned by Girls Trip co-writer Tracy Oliver and will feature a predominantly black cast.” Powell allegedly expressed “generalizations about black women that struck some on the call as offensive.”

“A complaint was filed to human resources” which investigated the claims with the legal department and those involved on the notes call. Sources say Paramount considered discipline but decided to to fire Powell after she denied the allegations.” In other words, if Powell had confessed to racial insensitivity and/or p.c. wrongdoing and then begged for forgiveness she might have been spared the guillotine.

(l.) Former Paramount Television prexy Amy Powell; (r.) First Wives Club writer Tracy Oliver.

 Nobody has ever attained a high position of power and influence within a big studio without being extra careful about what to say, how to say it and whom to say it to at all times. Especially in this highly sensitive era when a single clumsily chosen word or phrase or the slightest indication of a politically incorrect sentiment on Twitter can land you in a heap of trouble.

What could Powell have said that ignited such a tempest? Sooner or later someone has to leak what it was that Powell actually said along with some context about what she apparently meant and how she might have put it more cautiously or sensitively.

Powell quote to L.A. Times: “There is no truth to the allegation that I made insensitive comments in a professional setting, or in any setting,” she said in a statement. “The facts will come out and I will be vindicated.”

HE’s own Lisa Taback, generally regarded as one of the sharpest, shrewdest and best-connected award-season publicists and campaign strategists around, will become Netflix’s in-house campaigner as of 8.1. In other words she’s going to more or less orchestrate the awards-campaign for Netflix and Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, which will almost certainly be Best Picture-nominated. The following year Taback will presumably do the same for Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman.

Netflix is obviously proud and cranked about Roma and The Irishman. The Taback deal means they’ll be going great guns on both in terms of award-season campaigning. A Best Picture Oscar will bestow an aura of class — an image upgrade like nothing else. Netlix is all in, money on the table, this is it.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg reported the Taback news earlier today.

Does this mean that Taback and her staff will be 100% exclusive to Netflix, or is there a little wiggle room? Taback has been working for First Man director-writer Damien Chazelle, for instance. The last paragraph in Feinberg’s story addresses this angle: “Under the terms of her Netflix deal, Taback, who declined to comment, will continue to consult with a limited number of her existing clients through the end of the current Emmy season and possibly through the end of the coming Oscar season, as well.”

I have a quote in Tim Appelo’s 7.16 AARP magazine piece about digital de-aging of older movie stars. The de-aged actors are Michelle Pfeiffer in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Samuel L. Jackson in next year’s Captain Marvel, Will Smith in Gemini Man, and Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.

Appelo mentions a 3.13.18 HE report that “de-aging tech will help push The Irishman’s budget to $250 million. He has me saying that’s quite a tab “for a straight-goombah period crime drama that will most likely appeal to 35-and-overs.”

Here’s what I sent to Appelo when he asked me for some thoughts a week ago:

“26 years ago I exhaustively researched and wrote an Empire article called ‘Reanimator,’ about how emerging digital technologies will one day be able to bring back actors from the grave and put them in new movies in a highly believable fashion. That’s a far more interesting angle, I feel, than merely de-aging actors. I would love, love, love to watch a new film costarring Cary Grant and Jennifer Lawrence. Okay, maybe that would be too costly, but at least one in which Grant plays a significant supporting role.

“De-aging? Meh, fine, whatever.

“I was genuinely impressed by the de-aging of Michael Douglas in a single scene from 2015’s Ant-Man. But at the same time I’m rather pessimistic about this technology given the enormous cost and the many, many months of work that are being devoted to the de-aging of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and (presumably) Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman. (The film is apparently loaded with glow-of-youth flashbacks.)

“The de-aging process is the reason The Irishman, which finished shooting last March, won’t be released until the fall of 2019, and the reason it’s costing Netflix an arm and a leg. Any technology this expensive and this cumbersome isn’t worth getting wound up about.

“Last February it was reported that the Irishman budget was at ‘$140 million and climbing.’ Last March Page Six‘s Richard Johnson reported that the cost had ballooned to $175 million. Add standard marketing costs (usually $85 to $100 million for a major feature) and you’re looking at a conservative tab of $250 million. All this for a non-fantasy, straight-goombah period crime drama that will most likely appeal to 35-and-overs.

Six days ago (7.11) I reported that my horrific iPhone 8Plus sign-in passcode problem was about to be solved. That morning a senior Apple tech person had written the following to Hollywood Elsewhere: “Thank you for your patience. We reviewed the documents you provided and [have] turned off the Activation Lock on your device.” I took that to mean that the six-digit, two-step security code that had been making my life hell since my iPhone 6s Plus was stolen would be sidestepped or neutered.

False alarm! The “activation lock turn-off” was some kind of red-herring or misunderstanding. Worse, all my contact information is now gone from the new iPhone 8 Plus.

I bought the new iPhone 8 Plus three hours after the 7.5 theft of the iPhone 6s Plus. I tried to Cloud-synch it right away, and was partially successful due to the thief not having fully persuaded Apple that his/her phone (ending in 14) was a trusted second device. So at least I had my contacts and notes. But when I showed up for a Genius Bar appointment at the Grove Apple store on 7.12, a guy wiped my iPhone clean, taking it back to factory settings. And then the info download failed because the “activation lock turn-off” was a non-starter.

I’ve been in fresh hell ever since. I’m in a slightly better place now in terms of history and receipts, granted, but I’m still unable to find the right Apple techie who can not only shrewdly assess the particulars but stay with me until the problem has been put to bed.

That’s almost the most difficult part — finding a high-end Apple support professional who not only has the smarts to understand and diagnose the problem (I’ve so far spoken to three people who fit this description) but one who won’t abandon me after two or three exchanges of information. This is what Apple people have done so far — helpfully engage and then vaporize — and I don’t mind saying I’ve become very perturbed about this.

I’ve dealt with two Apple senior consumer-tech-support persons — Stephanie Owen, who told me that she’s based in Hamilton outside of Toronto, and Charnae Shorter, who told me she’s based in Virginia. They were both very focused, constructive, caring and helpful until they flaked. Since then I’ve written and called repeatedly, pleading for follow-up — silencio.

I also spoke to an Apple iCloud engineer named Arryon Maiden, a bright and friendly guy (only 23) who’s based in Austin. As of last Saturday I’d sent him all the pertinent information that I had at that time (including copies of five email messages between Apple and the thief who took my phone — a guy who persuaded Apple’s system that his phone number, ending in 14, is a trusted second number of mine). Arryon said in a breezy, light-hearted way that he was satisfied that the problem would soon be taken care of, and that he’d be speaking to senior staffers and would probably be back to me “within a couple of hours.”

That was the last I ever heard from Arryon Maiden. I’m written and left phone messages, asking again and again, down on my knees…nothing.

I’m now back to square one, trying to find a responsible iCloud whizkid who can step in and solve the problem, and who won’t abandon me to fate and happenstance after a couple of encounters.

I’m now thinking my only prayer is to persuade a big-time tech or consumer-support columnist to write about this. Maybe David Lazarus, the “Consumer Confidential” guy for the L.A. Times. Or Walter Mossberg, former tech columnist with The Wall Street Journal, currently with of The Verge and Recode. I don’t know this realm very well, but the right columnist would only have to double-check my facts and then rewrite what I’ve already posted about this nightmare — article #1, article #2, article #3 and article #4.