In your magic Monday media column: HuffPo hires some more, Elvis Mitchell loses another job, DC ladies discuss The New Yorker, MSNBC sloganizes, Brian Williams jokes, Katie Couric states the obvious, Adweek rhapsodizes, and Reader's Digest's CEO is out.
• Is Time Warner planning to shed its Time Inc. magazine division? [Crain's]
• Condé Nast is hunkering down for a big round of budget cuts, as you've probably heard. One Condé title that happens to be doing quite well: Vanity Fair's Italian edition, which having its best year ever, apparently.
• Saturday Night Live's Jenny Slate won't be punished for cursing on the air. But it's looking like Darrell Hammond may have been dropped from the show.
• Tina Brown's Daily Beast is planning to get into book publishing. [NYT]
• Former Times film critic (and Turner Classic Movies host) Elvis Mitchell is in financial trouble again: He reportedly owes $500,000 in back taxes. [P6]
• How much the cast of The Hills makes might make you nauseous. [TDB]
• Can Twitter ever earn enough in advertising revenue to justify its recent valuation of $1 billion? It's highly unlikely, say some observers. [AdAge]
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was No. 1 again this weekend. [LAT]
Tom Cruise spending some quality time with Suri over the weekend... Katie Holmes leaving her building in sunglasses and a scarf ... Michelle Williams and daughter Matilda bundled up for a walk in Brooklyn ... Sarah Jessica Parker taking a stroll with her son and dog ... Mariah Carey getting out of a car at an event in Midtown ... Uma Thurman walking with boyfriend Arki Busson ... Alec Baldwin and Elvis Mitchell attending the Hamptons International Film Festival's Golden Starfish Awards ... and Keira Knightly standing on the set of her new movie in SoHo, and later snuggling up with her boyfriend Rupert Friend.
Exchange Rate Flummoxes Elvis: Last we heard from former NY Times film critic and contributor Elvis Mitchell, he was explaining away the undeclared $12,000 that border agents seized from a cigar box last April in Detroit. All is forgiven, however, we're learning today — or rather, 51% percent is forgiven, as federal authorities agreed today to return exactly $5,880 to Mitchell. "If we believed it was from an unlawful source, or intended for an unlawful purpose, we would not have settled the case," said a prosecutor, who declined to say how the feds came to 51-49 split. A punitive lesson in currency exchange, perhaps? Guess away after the jump. [AP]
Movie critic Elvis Mitchell (remember him? crazy-but-readable Times crit in those glorious pre-Manohla fucking Dargis days?) had $12,000 seized by U.S. border guards as he tried to go back home to Detroit from Canada. Mitchell was hiding the money in a cigar box, along with some Cubans, and he declared only $80. When asked by border agents why he had $12,000 in a cigar box, "Mr. Mitchell told the ICE agent the money in the cigar box represented money he (Mitchell) had withdrawn from bank automatic teller machines over a two year period." We're not sure how that explains anything, but there you go. Agents allowed Mitchell to keep $117 of the $300 he had in his wallet. He'll need that to get back to the Turner Classic Movie studios to interview Peter Bogdanovich, right? Excerpts from the criminal complaint attached.
Let's take a moment to look at the fascinating crew that makes up the Big Three Times flick describers. There's Stephen Holden, who, when not busy starting beefs with Disney Channel talent, can be found working out his issues in public. There's Tony Scott, who does whatever the hell it is he does. And then, of course, there's Manohla. Ms. Dargis, brought in when Elvis Mitchell decided that spending time with Cambridge co-eds was preferable to drawing the short straw that forces you to share space in the screening room with Lou Lumenick, takes a look at new Jack Black vehicle Nacho Libre. The film, already noted elsewhere for its "implicit racism," inspires Dargis to ascend to this apogee of critical assessment:
Remember Times film critic Elvis Mitchell? Our obsessions are fleeting at best, but we vaguely recall virtually stalking him as he crawled away from the Times and towards Harvard — or whatever the fuck he was doing. For those of you wondering what 2006 brings to Elvis' doorstep, an interesting press release:
