However, Variety notes that:

That's not to say the revolution isn't brewing. The study also reported that online video usage is up 35% vs. a year ago, while DVR playback has jumped 21%.

Also surprising: The Olds (45-54) spend more time online than any other age group, at seven hours per week. (Which is, like, about half a day's worth for us.) [Variety]

•We are guessing the people who are actually awake for "Good Morning America" are bummed that Diane Sawyer is leaving the show Friday after nearly 3,000 shows. Sawyers is taking over "ABC World News Tonight" from Charles Gibson. While Chris Cuomo's name was initially floated as a possible replacement, it looks like George Stephanopoulos will be greeting all you early risers as you greet another productive, happy day. Jerks. [LAT]

•Kristin Wiig's character Gilly is hosting SNL's Dec. 17th Christmas special: "SNL Presents: A Very Gilly Christmas". Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin will be there. We are guardedly optimistic about this one. [THR]

•Reality show producers love wives: VH1 is starting production on "Basketball Wives," a reality show about women married to NBA stars, including Shaunie O'Neal—Shaq's wife. Is there any topical joke to be made about wife-based reality shows and/or athletes' spouses? Ho hum, guess not. World, keep on a-turning. [Vareity]

•Those super-convenient $1 DVD rental kiosks in supermarkets? They're costing Hollywood $1 billion and a lot of jobs! (according to a group with strong industry ties, of course!) [THR]

•Elijah Wood and Robin Williams will likely be reprising their roles as penguins in "Happy Feet 2". (Alternate title: "Why the World Needs Another Goddamn Movie About Penguins.") [THR]

•Only bloggers who don't own TVs care about Adam Lambert, apparently: Despite tons of face-humping, ABC-cancelling, GLAAD-bumbling controversy, Lambert's appearance on CBS' "The Early Show" did bupkis for ratings. [NYT]

(photo courtesy of Phrenzee's Flickr)

Nikke Finke broke the story ("TOLDJA!") on Wednesday, but the paper has confirmed the rumor. (She also, incidentally, reported that Variety's chief rival the Hollywood Reporter planned to kill its print edition, a claim that the Reporter's parent company has flatly denied.)

The return to a subscriber-only site is the end of a three-year experiment in free content for Variety, which charged for web access until early 2007. But the increase in traffic (it claims about 2.5 million visitors per month) didn't drive a sufficient rise in ad revenue: Publisher Brian Gott told the Associated Press that "the more traffic you get, the lower [rates] an ad buyer can demand and it's diminishing returns."

At first that made no sense to us—more traffic might mean a CPM discount, but it's more traffic, so ad revenue should go up. But Variety's traffic bump consisted of an audience of non-Hollywood rubes out there in America that none of its insider advertisers cared about reaching, while the brand advertisers that do want to reach all those rubes probably aren't interested in doing so via an elite niche publication.

So while the Los Angeles Times and AP suggest that Variety is a coal-mine canary and situate the move within the ongoing struggle for newspapers to make money online, we think it's more of a return to the mean for a paper that needs to charge a lot of money to a very few people in order to make any money. Niche works great online, but the number of advertisers who find an audience like Variety's useful is finite, and they're already paying to advertise in the print edition.

Anyway, now instead of linking to Variety's insider breaking news, a whole bunch of blogs will just be cutting-and-pasting or rewriting it.

The reviews are starting to come in and evidence is contradictory. On the positive side, Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly gives it a B and says it's, "cinematically dazzling, to be sure, 
 enhanced by an meticulously chosen retro soundtrack." In New York David Edelstein gushes.

Even more than his other genre mash-ups, this is a switchback journey through Tarantino's twisted inner landscape, where cinema and history, misogyny and feminism, sadism and romanticism collide and split and re-bond in bizarre new hybrids. The movie is an ungainly pastiche, yet on some wacked-out Jungian level it's all of a piece.

Oh, but his fellow Gothamite David Denby couldn't disagree more, and rails against it.

Like all the director's work after Jackie Brown, the movie is pure sensation. It's disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness-it's too shallow to be called nihilism-undermines even the best scenes.

Even the trades are split. Variety comes out in favor:

By turns surprising, nutty, windy, audacious and a bit caught up in its own cleverness, the picture is a completely distinctive piece of American pop art with a strong Euro flavor that's new for the director.

And The Hollywood Reporter against:

Otherwise the film lacks not only tension but those juicy sequences where actors deliver lines loaded with subtext and characters drip menace with icy wit. Tarantino never finds a way to introduce his vivid sense of pulp fiction within the context of a war movie. He is not kidding B movies as he was with Grindhouse nor riffing on cinema as with Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill films.

The only people who can come to a consensus are the British where both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph hated it.

Damn, now it looks like we're going to have to save Harvey Weinstein from bankruptcy and pay our $12.50 to try to figure out for ourselves whether or not it's good. God, critics are even worse than Nazis.

Wordy but fun, overreaching yet accurate, Variety's Todd but McCarthy - who gives great analysis with sometimes decent box office projections - has mixed, yet succinct, feelings, to put it lightly. His lede, emphasis mine:

Candid but long-winded, well observed but undisciplined, "Funny People" feels like Judd Apatow's diploma picture marking his move from high school to college as a filmmaker. Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens. Adam Sandler's central performance as some version of himself is notable for its revelation of callowness and ambivalent self-regard, which will fascinate some fans and turn off others. Curiosity should spur a healthy opening, with likely widely divergent reactions suggesting questionable staying power.

Could've guessed that one, though: Apatow's making a movie with a big heart where the endgame is more than just some great dick jokes and a moral, and that's evident by the premise. How about that third act, when the movie inevitably gets all serious on us to show what an aueteur Apatow is?

While it has its moments, this long latter stretch drains the picture of what little momentum it had and switches the focus to [Leslie Mann's] Laura and her own marital problems, which are annoying and not entirely convincing.

Eegh. McCarthy goes on to slam Leslie Mann, and take us away from the Apatow and Sandler we want to see (like, incidentally, the last third of Funny People, apparently). But what'd the other trade in town think? Silly wittle Hollywood Reporter, show us what you've got:

Bottom Line: A more mature but still funny Judd Apatow comedy whose move into serious human relation issues nearly scuttles the third act...there is a serious side to this film that makes the second half go awry....George's [Adam Sandler's] disease goes into remission — and the air comes out of the movie.

Finally, what do the bloggahs have to say? Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, Keyboard Cat us out of here:

It's not a "great" film but for me it's a stunningly brave (by which I mean exceptionally candid and self-revealing) one. And funny as shit.

And we have a consensus! While it's funny and great and well, Apatow's noble attempts at painting deep, murky moral colors at the end of his film aren't as good as Apatow's skill at directing a good dick joke. And this is the problem I always had with people who would shove a boxed set of Freaks and Geeks DVDs in my face like it was the second coming of good television that I'd never seen: sure, it has its moments, but I can't see beyond the non-revelatory revelatory moments to understand why it's the best thing in dramedy since Edward Albee.

That being said, I'm willing to give Sandler and Apatow the chance, probably sometime in the next week. The 40 Year-Old Virgin was one of the best sad-clown comedies ever made, and Sandler's done this well, before (Punchdrunk Love). Will you? No? Uh...

Update: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone reviewed it as well, though the review isn't online yet. A point for the Ha-Ha camp, but Travers is known for his studio-happy reviews. He gave it a 3.5/4. Typical Travers, watch the kicker. Emphasis mine, again:

But no worries about this perceptive, deeply entertaining boundary-pusher. It's the work of a major talent. Apatow scores by crafting the film equivalent of a stand-up routine that encompasses the joy, pain, anger, loneliness and aching doubt that go into making an audience laugh. For his people, that really is a matter of life and death.

3:2 on at least one of those being clipped for an ad later this week. Takers? Talk about some awkward turtle.

Funny People Review [Variety]
Funny People Review [The Hollywood Reporter]
Apatow's Big Surge [Ed. WTF?] [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Awkward Turtle Wikipedia Entry [Wikipedia]

According to The Wrap, Reed Business Information, Variety's parent company, is laying off 7% of its total staff, and warning employees that unpaid furloughs may be coming next. Among the victims: Michael Speier, Variety's executive editor.

Update: All told, we hear that around eight or ten editorial jobs were cut in today's round of layoffs. Others to go include several copy editors, a web editor, an art department staffer, New York-based assistant managing editor Dade Hayes and L.A.-based reporter Dan Frankel. These follow a previous round of cuts in January.

Bart was a power broker as much as an editor, which helped keep him in charge even though he doesn't use those newfangled "computers" and whatnot. He was replaced with Tim Gray—which Bart says was his decision:

"There was a stipulation that I could step down at my 20-year mark if I wanted, and I did," he said on Monday in a telephone interview. Citing his age, Mr. Bart added, "The speculation on these blogs that there are intrigues behind this move is surreal."

The assumption is that Gray will focus on strengthening Variety's online product, as its print edition continues to crumble ("several issues ran a scant eight pages and contained a lone quarter-page ad"). But Gray says he's a believer in print:

Gray said the paper is turning a profit, so there are no immediate plans to shutter the daily or weekly editions in favor of the online version. "Our goal is to give them different identities because they have different audiences," he said.

He echoes this "distinct identity" bit to The Wrap. And let's face it, it makes sense! Gray's main challenge is finding a business model that pays, in US currency; Bart's main challenge now is not to become a caricature of himself, without a huge amount of influence to wield. But any trade mag that can survive the next few years without folding is a winner, to us.

It was Bart's longtime rival Tad Smith who shunted him aside and gave him another title ("vice president and editorial director").

The bad blood between the relatively young Reed Business Information CEO, based in New York, and Bart goes back at least eight years, to Amy Wallace's devastating 2001 profile of Bart for the debut issue of Los Angeles magazine. Wallace alleged "Hollywood's Information Man" had trafficked in racist and homophobic comments over the years, and that he was in business with his sources; this earned him a suspension.

Bart could have been fired, but his standing at the paper and influence in Hollywood gave him the upper hand, not only in the dustup over the Los Angeles article but in the years to come, when the paper faced pressure from Reed to cut costs in the manner of its hollowed-out rival the Hollywood Reporter.

Between the tanking economy and the rise of Web publishing, Hollywood studios have lately been less inclined to advertise. Bart, 76 and notoriously hostile to the online world, has seen his influence shrink with the paper. In January, Reed laid off 30 Variety staffers.

Reed abandoned an effort to sell itself in December, after nearly a year on the block.

Now that Bart is gone, it has placed his nominal successor Tim Gray under Group Publisher Neil Stiles — abandoning a tradition where the editor and publisher of Variety were coequal and, one might plausibly speculate, leaving the paper far more vulnerable to Smith's whims, in terms of restructuring generally (a more aggressive online strategy is expected for starters) and layoffs specifically.

As for Gray, he's already made one Web-savvy move: rushing news of Bart's departure onto Variety.com before Nikki Finke could post it to her widely-read website. His reward? Finke is already trafficking in speculation he's placeholder for someone else.

Nikki Finke got a list of affected personnel a little while ago, and "disheartening" doesn't begin to describe it — especially with veteran industry reporter and columnist Anne Thompson leading the column out the door. She's followed by Diane Garrett, Mike Jones, Phil Gallo, Andrew Barker, Lisa Weinstein, Martha Hernandez, Alys Marshall, Byron Perry, Ben Fritz and Jeff Sneider — many of them among the tireless staffers most qualified to help the venerable trade transition to an online future.

Way to go, Variety. Only last week Thompson had the definitive scoop behind the 2009 Sundance Film Festival's hottest story. Now we are left to dab Peter Bart's spittle from our cheeks. Cancel our subscription.

• List Of Variety Layoffs [DHD]

Sara Nelson, the former Post books editor and columnist who got the top job at Publishers Weekly four years ago, has been laid off from PW. She was the most prominent victim of a 7% across-the-board cut at PW parent company Reed Business Information. The firing of Nelson, an alumnus of Inside.com, is probably a sign of the weak economic climate in the book publishing industry more than anything else. Full details of the RBI layoffs haven't emerged, but it's a safe bet that they'll affect their higher-profile trade mags—Variety in particular, is looking at a rumored 30 layoffs.


Former New York Times Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has launched her long-awaited new website, TheWrap.com, which will be "an exciting new space to cover Hollywood in the digital age." Though Sharon doesn't like us, we wish her luck in her quest to not be totally blown out of the water by Nikki Finke.


Bad news for big media: Deutsche Bank forecasts a 22% decline in earnings for News Corp this year; the last surviving member of the Reuter family dies; and bankrupt Tribune Co., where reckless memo writer Lee Abrams is threatening anyone who opposes the REVOLUTION, will now formally grade employees on their "positive attitude." Smile or die.

It's not all about the Great Magazine Die-Off. Hardcore Gamer magazine was able to successfully sell itself on eBay! Better than, you know, dying off! [NYT]

Public service announcement for fame-hungry romantics: a Good Morning America correspondent has sent out a request that the show is ""Looking for an attractive Cougar Couple to appear on Good Morning America Weekend Edition. Professional Couple - woman at least 10 years older than the guy. This show will air on Valentine's Day Weekend. Couple needs to live in California." The perfect Valentine's gift for your boy toy!

Peter Bart wrote a column of his own (Headline: "Will fiscal funk trip kudo contenders?" WTF) bitching about the lack of Oscar-related ads from the studios in Variety. Patrick Goldstein appropriately tells him to shut it:

Anyone paying attention to the outside world knows we're in the midst of a hideous global economic recession, with corporate profits plunging, the biggest U.S. carmakers teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and tens of thousands of everyday Joes being laid off from their jobs. But Bart, like most Hollywood insiders, lives a life of privilege, putting those nice Campanile lunches on his expense account. So when he hears that GE's hurting or Sony's having a tough time, his reaction? "Hankies, please."

Ha ha! He just told Peter Bart to shut up. And also told him his magazine is poor. Goldstein even gets a quote from Harvey Weinstein about why studios should buy lots of Oscar-related ads, then goes on to dismiss it:

Imagine how you'd feel if you were one of the hundreds of employees that's been laid off at a media conglomerate, only to see that your company's film division still has plenty of dough left to run Oscar ads in Variety or the New York Times or my newspaper.

Of course, the LAT started its section "The Envelope" for the same exact purpose: to get Oscar ads. But whatever. Dude has balls! He can go into porn when he gets laid off because his newspaper didn't sell enough Oscar-related ads to pay his salary. [LAT]

Ms. Bierly points out that Ms. Thompson thinks some actors are "seasoning well" (Will Smith, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, George Clooney) but the studios still "outsource" "rugged" roles. But a post over at Sugarbutch Chronicles questions the American vision of "masculinity" itself. Does being "male" mean "strength" and "brawn"?

Just as we would probably dispute any argument which equates femininity with softness or weakness, shouldn't we also pause before believing that a "real" man is brawny and tough? Sugarbutch blog has a video by Sanjay Newton (posted below) examining masculinity in Disney films. These are movies that kids watch over and over; and the "real" men have huge biceps, aren't afraid to fight, and dominate their opponents easily. Male characters who are fat or skinny (and not the brawny ideal) are comic outcasts; male characters who refuse to fight are pathetic.

So instead of wondering where all the "manly" men are, shouldn't we just accept that what it means to be "masculine" is changing? Do you think American actors aren't "macho" enough? Would you rather see rugged, square-jawed imports like Clive Owen instead? (I think I already know the answer to that!)

This Just In: American Actors Not Manly Enough [EW]
U.S. Short On Tough Guy Actors [Variety]
Masculinity Depictions In Disney Films [Sugarbutch Chronicles]
Sexism, Strength and Dominance: Masculinity in Disney Films [You Tube]

Although the film has yet to be completed, several people I trust have seen Valkyrie and testify that it's a superb thriller. "Bryan Singer is back in form," says one source, referring to the Valkyrie director whose last film was Superman Returns.

Cruise will be shooting three scenes in North Africa within the next three weeks. In one, his character, Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg, is badly injured but survives, a key moment in the film's first act.

It gets really good from there, with 130 comments and counting by everyone from a disgruntled Joseph Stalin to a contrarian Adolf Hitler, who claims, "There is no way that someone so short as Tom Cruise nearly assassinated me. This film is a farce." Look for Hollywood's original blogger Army Archerd to crack the Rolodex and have a fully reported follow up by noon.

• Tom Cruise Dons His Eye Patch and Starts Shooting Again [PeterBart.com]

"We have a sense of humor and that's lacking in this business. People take things too seriously—some people are just whacked out. It should be a lot of fun, if I can make people smile."

After the jump, smile along with the highlights from Bart's first day — including a revisionist Sydney Pollack obit and Variety's latest round of Che-hating.

On Sydney Pollack: "Sydney Pollack was a gracious man and an accomplished director, but he never knew how to work the press. That was reflected (inadvertently) in the tributes extended by critics and film writers following his death last week."

On Che and Steven Soderbergh: "Che was a Communist thug who, through myth-making like Soderbergh's, has been transformed into an iconic hero, especially around Europe where Che caps and T-shirts are a major industry. ... Perhaps Soderbergh's next film will be a biopic about Stalin that, oops, forgets to mention certain trivialities like mass murder.

On Sex and the City: "Witness the shrill critical contradictions being hurled at each other by two journalistic doyennes. 'A movie for grownups of all ages,' enthuses Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. 'Vulgar, deeply shallow and totally "ick," ' rants Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. ... Sarah [Jessica Parker]'s not 'deeply shallow,' nor is her movie. In fact, I think any critic who uses that expression needs a better editor."

Hilarious! Traffic City, here we come!

• PeterBart.com [Variety]
• Variety Chief's Blog Spicing up Life [Portfolio via Anne Thompson]

A Fox spokesman sent over the studio's official response late Tuesday:

The Defamer.com story about the Studio banning CAA from the Fox lot, is categorically untrue. The exchange, which took place well over a year ago, between a Fox executive and a CAA agent — that supposedly triggered the "ban" — never at any point escalated to the level and language as reported on Defamer.com.

Oh, that clears everything up. A few hours later the exact same non-denial denial showed up on Deadline Hollywood Daily. There, infallible attack creep Nikki Finke scarfed down a plate of face-value spin while attributing bad agency reporting to everyone from Anne Thompson to Patrick Goldstein to Kim Masters and finally yours truly, to whom she attributed a Gossip Apocalypse that pierced the fragile, fledgling Death Star to its very soul. She had already sent us a bullying note about the veracity of our Aloni item, much like previous harassments that accused us of misleading our readers and "fudging the truth for just a few more dollars" — this from someone we've caught whitewashing any of her own gossip that bothered to stand still for her. "Whatever," we thought. "You can't fix crazy."

This morning we had a look at Tuesday evening's Variety headlines, one of which read, "CAA Agent on Defamer's Radar." The accompanying excerpt was... interesting:

"Business News: Dan Aloni in rumored Fox beef with Atomic CEO — In the cutthroat world of agenting, power reps make plenty of enemies. CAA agent Dan Aloni is no exception, but he appears to be the target of an exceptional Internet smear campaign."

So on one side we've got Nikki Finke cursing a gossip blog for, you know, gossiping; on another we've got Fox, vaguely acknowledging an "exchange" almost despite itself; and on yet another we've got the industry's biggest trade publication quietly pulling back accusations of our "exceptional Internet smear campaign." Ever curious, we hopped on the phone with the only people we thought might know something about all this.

"I'll let Fox's statement stand for itself," said the CAA spokesman we contacted this morning, who declined to specify if the agent cited was in fact Aloni. Did anyone at CAA call Variety? "I didn't call Variety, and I'm not aware of any smear campaign," he said. "I can't speak for everybody at the company, but I didn't call them."

OK! Well, it's back to you, readers. If we're so wrong, why does it seem like we're the only ones not on the defensive?

The most controversial American film of the fest, meanwhile — Steven Soderbergh's as-yet-unsold epic Che — won only a best actor prize for Benicio Del Toro after critics predicted (and/or prayed for) much more. Critics everywhere but Variety, that is, which has us wondering: What did Che ever do to these guys anyway?

It all started after last Wednesday's marathon press screening, when Todd McCarthy's screed credited "scattered partisans" with contrarian buzz before suggesting "the pic in its current form is a commercial impossibility, except on television or DVD." Fair enough, although a survey of reviews suggests McCarthy himself is the most vocal of the anti-Che minority. Which is fine, right? OK! So we thought we'd let it go, but then came Anne Thompson with her all-caps admonition, "DON'T TAKE AN UNFINISHED MOVIE TO CANNES!!!!" But NY Times critic A.O. Scott, while hardly over the moon, later echoed most of his peers when we spoke elegantly and persuasively on the open-ended film's behalf:

This is one of the frustrations of Cannes, for American critics at least. We see lots of fascinating movies — not all good, but very few completely worthless — and then wonder if we, or our readers, will ever see them again. I'm not in the movie business (a mutually beneficial arrangement, believe me), and not inclined to speculate with someone else's money. I do hope, however, that sometime in the near future I can take part in the long and contentious conversation that Che deserves, and also see how my own initial ambivalence about the film resolves itself.

Got it. Adults agree to disagree. But then came Mike Jones's dispatch on Variety's festival blog The Circuit, citing everything from long bathroom lines to the film's bad party to anti-Che commenters on his and other Variety blogs calling out the film's "mass murderer" subject. Now that's just hateful.

Coincidence? Perhaps; these are pretty independent thinkers, but it's a rare concentration of venom to seen directed at one film that doesn't even have American distribution yet. We wish they'd have saved some for that Eastwood backlash we know is coming.

Yahoo even reportedly bailed on the project. Spielberg has other, better projects in new media like his decent-looking video game, so why dabble in the sad world of vanity social networks?

Launching a social network is nothing special; there are scads of bad ones, including several big-budget failures. The Financial Times has its media-execs-only network. Variety has the Biz, a "social network" that's little more than a job board. None of this little world screams "big-time movie producer" to me. The only thing that could justify this is if Spielberg ties the site to his next paranormal film. Sadly his next sci-fi deals with black holes, not UFOs.