My new  column, Goodbye Baquet, Hello O'Shea, [plus today's 1st update and 2nd update] features an interview with recently installed Los Angeles Times editor Jim O'Shea. (I'll be posting the full Q-and-A online here tomorrow.) And the Chicagoan came out fighting. He had some very angry words for his counterpart at The New York Times, Bill Keller, who's been trash-talkin' a lot in recent days. Another surprise is that O'Shea resisted the opportunity to expand his turf to include the editorial/opinion pages. LAT editor John Carroll had been in charge of that section, but not Dean Baquet. “And when I came here, the new publisher David Hiller said to me, ‘Do you think we ought to change that since the Chicago Tribune editor oversees it?” And I said ‘No.’” O’Shea explained he had “enough mud on my shoes” without navigating that terrain, too. (Meanwhile, I urge Dean Baquet to come clean about the real nature of the too-close relationship he had with the Billionaire Boys Club -- Burkle, Broad, Geffen, etc. -- whom he and/or his surrogates were actively wooing to return the LAT to local ownership.) Besides focused on fixing the LAT's state-of-disaster website and increasing its near nonexistent local coverage, O'Shea wants to do something about the paper's coma-inducing reporting and writing. “There’s some pretty well-written stuff in the paper. But my emphasis is on shorter articles. People don’t have a lot of time. So I’ve been saying to editors that we don’t work hard enough for readers. We need to give them the information up front and fast so they can make a decision about whether they want to read the story.” Also, I found it amusing how quickly O'Shea has adopted the SoCal lifestyle: He moved from a downtown hotel (“It was kinda depressing”) to a month-to-month furnished rental in Pasadena and now has leased a Manhattan Beach condo and a Lexus.  "I’ve even found myself sitting here and debating, ‘Should I go to Chicago this weekend?’ Because when I look at the ocean out there, I think, ‘What’s the point of going somewhere else?’' He rode along with the police one night into South-Central and Rampart and, admits that Los Angeles was 'a culture shock' but now says, 'Holy cow, how do you cover it?'. Here's how my column starts out:

"It’s a lot like those grainy tokusatsu kaiju, sci-fi horror films where the gigantic mutant dinosaurs — or, in this case, 'newsosaurs' — spend most of their screen time beating the crap out of each other when what they really should be doing is fighting those outside forces that threaten their very survival. So it was with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment that I watched The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times re-engage each other the past week in a battle for personnel within the incredibly shrinking world of print media. On Tuesday, the NYT made a big freaking deal about what was a foregone conclusion: bringing back fired LAT editor Dean Baquet, this time as Washington bureau chief and assistant managing editor. It followed New York Times executive editor Bill Keller’s very public boast about how anyone at the LAT was his for the taking. In reaction, new LAT editor Jim O’Shea (photo, left) angrily told me Tuesday he’s fed up with Keller (photo, below). 'Somebody sitting in New York isn’t a god of journalism. I personally don’t take shots at their paper. I don’t feel that enhances my stature as an editor. And, so, if someone feels that’s how they have to play big, then that’s their business,' said O’Shea. '“But it’s posturing. He thinks I’m going to let them pick me off? I’m telling you right now I’m going to fight hard to keep everyone I’ve got. We’re just as good as the NYT. Believe me, working there isn’t a walk in the park, either.' Yet how ironic that the future of both papers is similarly precarious now that Wall Street is pressuring their parent companies over lousy financial performances... 'For all their sense of superiority, the New York Times Company’s problems with the Boston Globe are not unlike Tribune’s problems with the L.A. Times,' O’Shea said. 'The only difference is that we still have the ownership situation uncertain. Until that’s clarified, I don’t know what the future holds. I should add, for the paper or for me.'"
Continued here...

LA Times entertainment biz reporter (and I use that term loosely) Claire Hoffman has given her proverbial two weeks' notice to go work for Portfolio, the Conde Nast monthly business magazine where Amy Wallace is working. Here's background.

News reports say several people were slightly injured in a small explosion inside the building that's CAA's new Century City digs. I hope everyone recovers fully.

On Saturday night, two tables of moguls and their wives were wined and dined at TV & movie producer Leonard Goldberg's swanky home at a dinner party in honor of that geriatric Viacom jerk Sumner Redstone. Among the guests were present or past major players Mike Medavoy, Joel Silver and Les Moonves. Well, it turns out today Hollywood is talking about Brad Grey -- because Sumner outed Brad during the meal. Sumner told the gathering that Brad explained to him that the reason Dreamgirls wasn't nominated for an Oscar was because "everyone hates David." As in Geffen, who controlled the rights to Dreamgirls and greenlit the project at DreamWorks. That the Viacom boss would be so indiscreet in such a public setting defies belief. To be fair, Grey made his comment in a private setting. [This corrects previous. To clarify, Grey himself was not at the dinner. Instead, Redstone at the dinner repeated what Grey had said to him.] But I've already warned Grey that the sharpest knives in Hollywood are out to get him, and that everything he does and says is being repeated around town. Even by his boss.

I've already written about Brad's boorish behavior before, during and after the Golden Globes dinner and the bad blood between his studio and Dreamworks. And all my reporting was backed up two weeks later by Claudia Eller's Los Angeles Times piece which ran on Monday. (Even down to my scoop back on September 5th that Geffen called up Redstone as soon as Tom Freston was axed and suggested that the Viacom octogenarian hire Jeffrey Katzenberg to run the whole she-bang. But that Redstone said, fuhgeddaboudit.) Meanwhile I disagree with Brad: though he posited that the Dreamgirls snub was due to dislike of Geffen, I opined in my Oscar nominations analysis that it was due to envy of Geffen. Big difference. But, more to the point, doesn't Brad know that everything he says will get back to David? "Does Brad have a death wish?" an insider asked rhetorically this morning. Indeed, few have taken on David Geffen and lived to tell the tale. (Just ask Robert Towne, John Branca and Mike Ovitz.) P.S. The person whom Brad Grey unseated at the Golden Globes' Babel table was none other than John Lesher, whose Paramount Vantage released the film.

We all heard the other day that Michael Eisner is an investor in the Internet TV network Veoh, an ad-supported YouTube-like consumer-generated video site that claims 4 million unique monthly users. Here's more on what FrankenEisner is up to during his post-Disney days. Business Week reports that, more than a year after leaving the rat hole following 21 years, "thanks to the more than $1 billion in salary, bonuses, and stock options he raked in during his 21 years as Head Mouse, Eisner, 64, is quietly building a private media company. Freed from the prying eyes of shareholders and board members, Eisner can be Eisner--inking deals, acting snarky, and, well, being master of his own universe." The mag says that universe is the five-person Tornante Co., staffed by an ex-Disney MBA and a coupla secretaries and dealmakers. Operating from Beverly Hills, Eisner, in addition to his stake in Veoh, "has gone all new media, plunking down an undisclosed sum to buy Team Baby Entertainment, which makes sport-themed DVDs for children... He got Regis Philbin and other buddies to lend their voices to Team Baby DVDs." For Veoh, Eisner reportedly tracked down Jann Wenner, a former Disney partner in Us magazine, and persuaded him to put its celebrity sightings on Veoh's new broadband Celebrity Channel. Interestingly, BW says it was Eisner who went to United Talent Agency and cut the deal whereby Veoh would create a special UTA site where aspiring filmmakers can post their work in the hopes that the agency will pick them up as clients. "The kicker for Veoh is that it will get a healthy piece of the site's ad revenues thanks to some muscular deal-making by Eisner, 'Hollywood people negotiate tough,' marvels Veoh Chief Executive Dmitry Shapiro." Eisner also is traveling the globe making speeches at about $100,000 a pop. One of his subjects: Leadership: Succeeding by Failing and Other Paradoxes.

UPDATED THROUGHOUT DAY: Dean Baquet, the fired editor of the Los Angeles Times, has landed at The New York Times as Washington Bureau Chief and Assistant Managing Editor. His return follows the Tribune Co.'s quiet rejection of the Broad/Burkle bid for the Chicago media company. (Broad and Burkle submitted their joint bid just a day after Baquet was forced out of his job November 7th and have been talking with him ever since. "Everybody liked him. There were lots of meetings," an insider told me earlier.) Realizing that his dream of returning to the LAT was dead, Baquet quickly made the move to the NYT. Once the Tribune board concluded that the Burkle/Broad offer for the company was not "an appropriate premium" above the current share value, insiders tell me, a management-led solution is now in progress. That meant there was no longer any reason for Baquet to wait on the sidelines because he'd been assured a return to the top spot at the paper by Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad after an expected takeover. (Then again, it's always a zero-sum game waiting on the whims of any billionaire and Baquet was placed in the awkward position of having to search for an LAT buyer among very rich locals.) Baquet told the NYT that he had met with Broad and Burkle, yet characterized the conversations as casual, and claimed he kept his personal distance, thinking that he might someday be in the position of directing news coverage of them if they won the paper. Nice try, Dean. My info shows Baquet through surrogates and on his own was actively and anxiously wooing Broad both before and after he was fired -- not only to make a bid for the LAT but then to bring him back as editor. It was indeed a very slippery slope for Baquet to be navigating ethically, and one which, in my opinion, undermined his crusade as Dean Of Arc to preserve the editorial integrity of the LAT in the face of Tribune Co.-ordered staff and budget cuts. 

Baquet is replacing Phil Taubman, who will be moving to California for the NYT along with his wife, fellow NYT'er Felicity Barringer. (Taubman has many California connections, among them Stanford where he developed a friendship with Condoleeza Rice that continues to this day.) I understand there has been tension between the Washington bureau and the NYT headquarters for some time now. I'm told by NYT insiders that managing editor Jill Abramson disliked Taubman's running of the Washington bureau and actively pushed to remove him from the leadership position there. But Taubman and NYT executive editor Bill Keller go way back, having reported from Moscow together. Baquet, meanwhile, has told pals again and again over the years that he's always wanted to be the chief of a big, busy Washington bureau because "it was the one thing he had not done." Ironically, today's changes now mean that Baquet, still immensely popular with NYT's editors and reporters who remember him as National Editor, will be in direct competition with Abramson as well as editorial-page editor Andrew Rosenthal and deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman, to be heir apparent to Keller. It's a situation the paper's management is sure to shrug off but which will prove endlessly entertaining for NYT staffers in the forseeable future. Let the games begin. Meanwhile, I have no doubt that Baquet's arrival will lead to even more LAT defections to the NYT since he left behind a cadre of sycophants. Here is Keller's statement to the newsroom this morning:

      "Colleagues: After guiding The Times through toxic storms and rebuilding our bureau into a dominant force in Washington coverage, Phil Taubman is returning to his first love, the correspondent's life. Phil has chosen a new mission that capitalizes on his deep experience as a foreign correspondent, investigative reporter, military historian and editor. He will be taking on a special reporting assignment in the area of national security; we've decided to be a little secretive about the details for now for competitive reasons. He will be based in California. He will also be promoted to Associate Editor -- a title previously worn by one Times journalist, Johnny Apple. It signifies both Phil's stature as a counselor to the masthead and our expectation that he will return to senior management in the future.
       When Phil accepted my invitation to leave the Editorial Page masthead three and a half years ago and take over our largest bureau, he can hardly have imagined what a roller coaster ride awaited him. In the years that followed he helped the paper deal with the imprisonment of a reporter, the murder of a revered colleague, the faceoff with a hostile administration (including one tense session with the President), vilification by partisan critics, and the general anxiety of an industry in transition. His tenure also saw a succession of journalistic triumphs that shook the country and brought a shower of awards. Over the past year Phil presided over a period of ambitious rebuilding and still more ambitious journalism. He leaves behind a bureau in which a cadre of world-class bylines has been enriched by excellent new hires. He leaves behind a great editing team. And he leaves behind a bureau that has taken to heart a mandate for incisive, original, hard-hitting coverage.
      And the new chief of that high-octane bureau will be Dean Baquet.
      Back in 2005, when Dean moved into the top job in Los Angeles, I described him as "a world-class investigator, an inspiring editor and a barrel of fun." It was hard to miss the subtext: "And I miss him." Since then he has demonstrated that, in addition to being all of those things, he is a charismatic leader, an unflinching advocate of the value and values of professional journalism, and a cool character under fire. It's nice to have him back where he belongs, at a paper where he can devote his talents and enthusiasm fully to the practice of journalism, in a bureau that can rise to all of his expectations.
      The many of you who worked with Dean before he left us in the year 2000 know what to expect from a bureau under his leadership: tough-minded, aggressive, fearless reporting, original insights, great craftsmanship and the thrill of competition. He reminds you why you got into this business, and why it matters.
      Dean will take over March 5, allowing time for transition and for a little celebration of two great journalists. He will be an Assistant Managing Editor, reflecting both the depth of his experience in the upper echelons of our profession and the cross-departmental importance of the bureau.
      There are undoubtedly other consequences that will follow from all of this, and I can't begin to say what they are. But here's one: Felicity Barringer, Phil's accomplice in journalism and in just about everything else, will be taking her intrepid and prescient environmental reporting and beat to California -- which happens to be a kind of national laboratory for environmental policy."

Former Saturday Night Live comedian and bestselling political author Al Franken announced on his radio show this morning that struggling Air America has been saved by the New York real estate developer brother of Manhattan politician Mark Green. At the same time, Franken announced that he will be leaving his radio show on February 14th to consider a run for the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota. In Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings since October, the progressive radio network will be bankrolled by Stephen Green, who is chairman of SL Green Realty Corp, a real estate investment trust specializing in office buildings with a market cap of $12 billion. Franken described him as a multibillionaire. Later, Air America CEO Scott Elberg confirmed the sale, which will be finalized in a week. "This is a great thing, for our affiliates, the company, the audience and every employee in our organization," Elberg told The Huffington Post. Personally, I'm very disappointed that none of Hollywood's many rich liberals stepped up to the plate individually or collectively to rescue Air America and put it on firm financial footing. This piece I wrote about Air America in 2005 outlines some of its problems back then. But recently, the radio network has had trouble hanging on to its stations in major markets. Franken's leaving is a big blow to the network since he is its most famous host. But he recently moved his show from New York to Minnesota where the U.S. Senate seat occupied by Republican Norm Coleman has always interested him. he will decide in the next weeks whether to set up an exploratory committee to weigh a run for office. Franken's replacement on Air America will be his friend Thom Hartmann.

I'm told that the Wall Street Journal's very good showbiz reporter in the Los Angeles Bureau, Kate Kelly, is heading back to the NYC headquarters to cover Wall Street. Family reasons are behind the move. I'll miss her Hollywood news and insights. On the other hand, one of the least savvy entertainment biz reporters at the Los Angeles Times is Claire Hoffman. So I'm surprised that LAObserved.com today reports on an LAT-NYT tug of war over her. "The NYT is said to be offering a pretty good starter gig in the Business section in New York, and the LAT might be countering with talk of a Las Vegas beat." (NYT editor Bill Keller is predicting more LAT pick-offs.) The way I see it, she's a features writer, not a business reporter. She should pen more self-involved magazine pieces similar to her well-hyped run-in with Girls Gone Wild jerk Joe Francis. But, on the Hollywood beat, Hoffman has allowed herself to be spoon-fed repeatedly and doesn't bother to do homework or break news. Given her personal and professional style, she'd do well on the Vegas beat. In case you missed it Monday, see my NYT Hollywood coverage shake-up post.

Just when you think the news out of Washington can't get any more bewildering... I hear that Tom Cruise's name, and that of his then girlfriend Penelope Cruz, have surfaced during testimony in the recently begun Scooter Libby trial. A CIA official who appeared as a witness recalled a June 14th, 2003, intelligence briefing with Libby where the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney bragged about just having had a sitdown with Tom and Penelope. Libby told Craig Schmall, who was responsible for putting together the material for the daily morning briefings from the Agency for Libby, how excited he was that he had just met the actors, according to the briefing notations. The subject of the tête-à-tête was Cruise's concern about Germany's treatment of Scientology. Meanwhile, it was revealed last August that former State Department No. 2 Richard Armitage had a private afternoon appointment with Cruise the day before the sitdown with Libby in 2003. (See photo) Here's what I find so utterly nauseating about this news: that the meetings coincided with a first wave of media stories about how morale was plummeting among U.S. soldiers three months after crossing into Iraq because there seemed to be no American postwar plan to control the chaos. I'm also infuriated by the obvious hypocrisy: after all, no White House has publicly hated Hollywood more than the Bush administration, yet here were its highest ranking officials privately star-struck by movie celebs. Nor can I forget that these meetings followed by just a few months the GOP's mid-term election strategy of taunting the Democrats for being "too Hollywood." (See my LA Weekly column, The Bully Pulpit, from that time.) Remember, one of Libby's defenses is that he was too busy dealing with national security issues to pay attention to Valerie Plame Wilson. Yet he made time for Cruise and Cruz. (Who knew that my satirical LA Weekly column, Strange Love, imagining a GOP/Hollywood embrace, would turn out to be true.) Libby/Cheney illustration ©CL/TalkLeft.com

Fair Warning: I'll be heading out of town for a few days beginning Friday. DHD posting will be lighter. Please communicate all news tips to me through email rather than phone until I'm back. (My public email is nikkifinke@deadlinehollywood.com) 

My new  column, The Scars Of Oscars, adds some fresh analysis to my previous online posting. Do read the whole column, but here are some excerpts:

"The negatives, not positives, will decide this year’s Academy Awards. That’s par for the course in Hollywood, where nastiness rules and niceness gets rolled. So, if you want to handicap the Oscars, just figure out who is envied most by the Academy voters and bet that those names probably won’t get called onstage at the Kodak Theater. Take Clint Eastwood (Letters From Iwo Jima), who scored Best Director and Best Picture noms. He deserves both, and the geriatrics who still make up the majority of Oscar balloters love the guy cuz he’s still got a prostate and balls. But Hollywood is also jealous of him because he’s won too many times. His Best Picture nominee Letters wasn’t anointed by any of the four major guilds (DGA, PGA, SAG and WGA). That hasn’t happened for eons. Give him more Golden Boys and the awards might as well be renamed the Clints (and remade with a big swingin’ dick besides). Problem is, this worshiped and wrinkly auteur won’t retire. So the Academy pries the viewfinder from his liver-spotted hands and picks from younger generations to make that walk to the podium. Yes, Marty Scorsese qualifies, even at age 64. Since he’s never won for Best Director, the envy factor in his case is null and void. Following my reasoning, David Geffen’s Dreamgirls was snubbed because Hollywood is jealous of him...

"Not that Dreamgirls is even in the same league with my own favorite, The Departed. I was floored that this tour de force from a major studio received less nominations than Pan’s Labyrinth from minor Picturehouse. Then I remembered that Warner Bros. is lousy at mounting Oscar campaigns (a huge handicap that only a legend like Clint seems able to overcome). Geffen is taking the high road and acting all “I don’t care” when you know he really wants to be kicking butt and taking names...

"This year’s seven-times nominated Babel was to global sociopolitical-multilingual bleakness what last year’s Crash was to Los Angeles’ sociopolitical-multilingual bleakness. (The Academy’s a sucker for pseudo-profound bleakness of any sort: witness other Best Picture winners of recent vintage like The English Patient, American Beauty, Million Dollar Baby and even Gladiator.) As for other Best Picture nominees, while Little Miss Sunshine is the lighthearted darling, Oscar voters always seem to require intellectual heft, however half-baked, in their BP winners, which is why even the most deserving comedies almost never get nominated — like Borat, for example. Letters is lucky just to get noticed, while The Queen is too subtle and too Brit. (Especially since Mexicans have replaced Brits as the new toast of Hollywood. Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo Arriaga and Guillermo del Toro all received screenplay nods, Alejandro González Iñárritu for directing, and Adriana Barraza for supporting actress.) So which pic will win? Hell if I know. It will be decided by PR. Oscar voters don’t want to seem out of touch with the public, which would favor The Departed, but they also pride themselves on not being prisoner to convention, which would favor Babel...

"The Best Actress category pits Notes on a Scandal’s too-oft-honored Dame Judy Dench against winless Queen Helen Mirren. Even though Dench’s performance is more multilayered, Mirren wins as the object of least envy. This is the first year since 1927 that none of the Best Picture nominees were represented in the Best Actor category. There’s an outside chance that Leo (Blood Diamond) could score if his role in The Departed is factored in, but the Academy deems him too young and too infamous to win an Oscar — yet. So the contest comes down to sentimental favorite Peter O’Toole and shoo-in Forest Whitaker...

"For Best Supporting Actress, always the novelty-act category, it’s hard for the Academy to be jealous of four one-hit wonders (a little girl, the two Babel babes that aren’t Cate, and an American Idol loser). They'll muster some envy of previous winner Blanchett, who seems to be in everything these days. The voters will want to save Little Miss Abigail Breslin from a Tatum O’Neal–like future of heroin addiction. So it’ll be Jennifer Hudson. Best Supporting Actor won’t be Eddie Murphy because the town hates him. Not just because he squandered that megadeal he had for eons at Paramount, but also because he crapped on them during it. (This town never forgets that stuff. Two words: Lauren Bacall.) Besides, those Norbit trailers running now will ruin it for him. Mark Wahlberg should get the Oscar for The Departed, but the Academy’s jealous of his upward career trajectory. Alan Arkin has a shot. But the least enviable guy has to be comeback kid (literally) Jackie Earle Haley, not just for his creepy portrayal of a pedophile in Little Children but more for this Bad News Bears child actor’s back story... (Read the whole column here.)

No wonder CAA wants to talk about sports these days. (Surely you saw that they've hired another three warm bodies, this time execs, to run CAA Sports division.) Maybe because they don't want to talk about the Oscars. That's right, things are not going that well for CAA in the motion picture literary department. Think about it. They hired a bunch of motion picture lit agents over the past 24 months to bolster their aging list of screenwriters and directors. And they spent north of $20 mil to do it. But CAA winds up crushed in the writer/director category this Oscar season by upstart Endeavor agency which is only 1/3 of CAA's size. With a little luck, Peyton Manning is secretly scribbling a script.

OSCAR TALLY (Major Categories Only)

Acting:                    CAA  7    Endeavor 2      ICM 0    UTA 0    WMA 3
Filmmaking:           CAA 7     Endeavor 13    ICM 5    UTA 2    WMA 2

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL:                    CAA 14   Endeavor 15    ICM 5    UTA 2    WMA 5

(Sorted by the major categories of actors, writers and producers, Oscar nominees were put into the FilmTracker.com site to find agency representation. When multiple names comprised a single nomination, it was weighted accordingly. ) 

I'm writing my LA Weekly column so I won't get back to Oscar analyzing here until later. (Thanks for all your cool comments. And, yes, I was channeling a filthy-mouthed gaffer named Bick.) But, in the meantime, I want to update you on the 411 behind Ryan Gosling's wild card nomination. (I called it this year's "What the fuck?" Oscar noms moment, said those lost kids on the back of milk cartons are better known than this ex-Young Hercules, the TV series, and surmised that his father toils for the accounting firm who counts the ballots.) True, ThinkFilm was savvy enough to get that Half-Nelson screener out to Academy members early -- it was among the first to arrive -- and then ran a smart word-of-mouth campaign focusing on Gosling's real-'n'-raw performance. That makes a huge difference for these blink-and-you-missed-the-release movies, especially this one and its 91% RottenTomatoes.com "fresh" rating. (In fact, New York mag film reviewer David Edelstein emails me that the critics loved Gosling, so much so that the kid came in second to Forest Whitaker in many awards picks.) Turns out this newbie is the Ed Norton of his day. Norton, remember, burst on the scene in Primal Fear and scored a 1997 Best Supporting Actor nod. Unlike Norton, Gosling is a pretty-boy type, but one who's got a reputation more for his acting chops than for his giddy features in US magazine or on Entertainment Tonight which have killed the careers of too many of his better-known generation of thesps. That's why he has a real following among elite Screen Actors Guild types, who, as we know, make up the majority of Academy members. "You know better than anyone that we could count on one hand the number of young actors who are level-headed, modest and damned talented to boot," a fanboy tells me. "Ryan Gosling is one of them." But I still wanna know where his Dad works, OK? 

More deals from Sundance...

   Details later.

Those muffled wimpering sounds you hear emanating from Spring Street are Los Angeles Times staffers frightened by today's news that Rupert Murdoch has entered the battle for Tribune Co. The Financial Times reports this afternoon that News Corp. has joined the Chandler family in its bid for Tribune "with an eye to taking a stake in New York's Newsday newspaper." Really, we're not that naive: first Newsday, then the LA Times. Surely, Rupe can't be satisfied with those crappy little New York Post boxes scattered sparsely in front of L.A. delis; that's no way to take over the world, now, is it? There have been rumors for eons (long before the current auction nonsense) that Murdoch was interested in joining with fellow right-winger Phil Anschutz on a play for the LAT. Now Rupe has found other like-minded conservatives in the Chandler folks (since some of them are card-carrying John Birch Society nutters, i.e. the kind who still pay for those crazy billboards condemning the late Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren). I can't believe Murdoch isn't also interested in those 23 television stations which Tribune Co. owns. As for prehistoric media, "a person familiar with the situation said Mr. Murdoch wanted to combine back office and operational functions at Newsday with those of the New York Post, the News Corp. tabloid that has made big circulation gains in recent years but continues to rack up losses," the FT reports. "Mr Murdoch would likely take a minority stake in a consortium owning the Tribune's newspapers, rather than attempting to buy outright control of Newsday, the person added. Given News Corp.'s TV and newspaper interests in the New York market, the company would be constrained my media ownership rules." In a recent SEC filing, the Chandlers said they were in discussions with strategic investors about joining the bid.

It sucks having to wake up in total darkness for the 5:38 a.m. Oscar nominations, much less analyze them at that obscene hour. So be sure to keep clicking here throughout the day. Because I get nastier with every caffé latte. There's so much to say about this morning's 79th Academy Award nods. Let's start with the bad since this is, after all, my website. But, first, you must recognize that to understand this process, you have to think like an Oscar voter. Which means you have to be cruel, quirky, and sometimes even incomprehensible. Let's begin...

So what that Dreamgirls leads with eight nominations. That's a promotional wet dream starting tomorrow. Trust me, the folks at Dreamworks and Paramount who've been pimping this pic are having a nightmare today. Shut out for Best Picture. Shut out for Best Director. Shut out for Best Actor/Actress. Only Best Supporting Actor/Actress and Best Song among the big nominations. Just the artsy-fartsy categories left to get nods. Clearly, those prickish Academy Award members are sending a message here. What is it? That David Geffen, as rich and powerful as he is, will be denied what he wants -- which is to exit the movie industry accompanied by Oscar. And the balloters do this simply because they can. Yes, year after year, spite plays a huge part in the Academy's nominating process. Individually, none of the Oscar voters would dare take on David. But there's safety in numbers, so what the hell. From the start of the awards season, I kept hearing the Industry buzz that the Motown musical "wasn't that good" despite all the media gushing. Among them, the NYT's David Carr. I said at the time, and now it's true, that he would eat those words declaring the Oscar season all but over with Dreamgirls winning Best Picture and Best Director. (If he lived in L.A., he would have known better.) There was too much hype, and much too early (in November), for the film to survive even the shortened awards season without the inevitable backlash. In the end, Geffen will take away from this snub what he's always complained about for years: that the movie biz is mostly populated by morons.    

No way United 93 would get a Best Picture nomination. Why? Because this critics' darling had no name stars in it, and the most elite Screen Actors Guild members make up the largest segment of Academy voters. They don't like it when somebody with a good script makes a great movie with a C-grade cast. In a nutshell, it's bad for their biz (their biz, of course, consisting of implausibly padded perks, ironclad start and stop dates, half-hearted promotional efforts in exchange for those studio jet flights, and other pain-in-the-ass behavior that drives up production costs.). There was also the content problem: no one in Hollywood wanted to nominate a jingoistic rah-rah America drama. Not when this year's seven-times nominated Babel was to global bleakness what last year's Crash was to Los Angeles. Instead, the punishment they meted out is to nominate Paul Greengrass for Best Director and, on Oscar night, force him to sit for hour after hour and hour of that interminable awards broadcast inside that fucking prison impersonating the Kodak Theater.

For weeks now, the whispers around Malibu, Brentwood, Beverly Hills and Bel Air among the moguls were eerily similar: "My favorite movie is Little Miss Sunshine, but Apocalypto was the most artistically brilliant -- and I'll deny it if you try to quote me." Expectedly, Mel's pic was blanked in the prestige categories, managing only makeup, sound editing and sound mixing. I'd predicted all along that the Oscar voters would judge Mel the man (in his case, the anti-Semitic drunk) and not the moviemaker. (Hell, many of those machers who revile him are themselves self-loathing Jews married to shiksas.) And Disney's turd of an Academy campaign to convince members that he's "not as bad as Roman or Woody" stunk. But know this: Gibson's film career behind the camera is not over since Apocalypto has already grossed $78.2 mil worldwide (and cost half that) even though it's still in the process of opening overseas. In the U.K., it broke the record for a foreign-language picture debut, and also surprised in Italy and Eastern Europe as well as Russia. Mel may be meshugginah, but he's still a moneymaker.

CLICK FOR UPDATE: Ryan, I Hardly Knew You... Every year, there's a "What the fuck?" moment when the Oscar nominations come out. This year's was the nod to Ryan Gosling for Best Actor in Half Nelson. Those lost kids on the back of milk cartons are better known than this ex-Young Hercules (the TV series). But the Academy geriatrics all loved The Notebook, and Gosling had a starring role in that shameless tearjerker. Still... I do box office week after week, and even I don't recall hearing dickwad about Half-Nelson. So I went and checked. ThinkFilm released the R-rated pic on August 11 (when Hollywood goes on vacation). Its biggest theater count was only 106. (There are more nail salons within a three block radius of my home than this.) It eked out just $2.7 million (about what fellow nominees Leo and Will spend on personal hair product.) Its plot revolves around a schoolteacher with a drug habit. (Maybe the old coots are nostalgic for their crack days.) The result is that nothing about this movie shouts "For your consideration" to the Academy. Yet, Gosling won the nod over Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Jamie Foxx, Ken Watanabe, and, oh yes, Sacha Baron Cohen. I simply can't fathom this. You and I know that, of the 306 eligible pictures this year, at most 20 to 25 are screened by the lazy sons-a-bitches who vote Oscars. Please, someone explain how Gosling even got seen. I, for one, would not be surprised to learn that his father works for the accounting firm who counts the ballots.

Speaking of one of The New York Times' Hollywood correspondents (see Big NYT Hollywood Coverage Shake-Up below), how curious that Pellicano Scandal reporting duo of staffer David Halbfinger and freelancer Allison Hope Weiner were in court taking notes on today's explosive hearing when the subject was, er, themselves. At issue are the ongoing leaks to the journalist pair. Big-shot attorney Terry Christensen, indicted in connection with his rep of billionaire investor and one-time MGM-UA owner Kirk Kerkorian in a child custody dispute, is none too happy over their January 11th audible scoop featuring Pellicano's secret recordings of their telephone chats. (Audio and transcripts were posted on the NYT website.) As it turned out, Halbfinger/Weiner didn't write the story on the hearing for the NYT; the article published Tuesday is penned by colleague Katharine Q. Seelye. Today's hearing grew out of a motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in which Christensen called on the court to force Halbfinger/Weiner to reveal the names of their sources for that recent article. Christensen's lawyer Terree Bowers succeeded in obtaining Judge Dale Fisher's pledge to review what authority she has to compel the NYT to talk about who is violating the her protective order. (The San Diego U.S. attorney's office is investigating.) Unclear is whether anyone actually subpoenas Halbfinger/Weiner about the leaks.) Both journos were at the hearing taking notes. So was Christensen, the lead partner at Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro, one of California's top showbiz law firms having represented Paramount, Sony, Disney, MGM/UA. At today's hearing, Christensen brought along partner Robert Shapiro (of O.J. defense team infamy. Read my previous post about Shapiro's own legal troubles.). Meanwhile, news from the hearing is that the prosecutors just produced what Bowers is claiming to be 45 recently decrypted phone intercepts. No doubt, the NYT website will play what's on them someday soon.

I'm told that if you try to reach CAA at what should be its new phone number, (310)288-2000, it's the main fax line of another Hollywood talent agency, Paradigm. Now we know why CAA got stuck with (424)288-2000. What a laugh riot. Reminder, CAA finally made the move to its new office digs at 2000 Avenue Of The Stars when horror ensued: CAA lost its "310" number and got stuck with the new area code overlay for L.A.'s Westside. 

EXCLUSIVE: I'm told of big news affecting Hollywood coverage by The Paper Of Record: The New York Times is shaking up its personnel. L.A.-based movie editor Michael Cieply will now become one of the newspaper's Hollywood reporters. And former media editor turned writer Lorne Manly will take Cieply's place as movie editor, moving the job back to NYC. I gotta say this is a surprise: I'd heard Cieply was unhappy, but Manly's move really floors me. This is also hard for me to write about because so many of the people involved are long-time friends. But here goes: Both Cieply and Manly are veteran journalists who'd been in their respective jobs since July 2004. (For more about their careers, read my 2004 LA Weekly online and column coverage.) Manly, a native Canadian (whom I call "my favorite alien"), came to the NYT from the New York Observer, Brill's Content, and Inside.com, and had many years on the media beat at both papers. He is by no means a Hollywood expert, though at the NYT he has, from time to time, edited and even co-bylined some showbiz industry stories. As movie editor, Cieply was the go-to guy for Hollywood since virtually all movie coverage in the Culture section passed through his computer. He also coordinated with the NYT's Business Section which also recently named a new showbiz editor.

Cieply covered Hollywood biz for Forbes and then The Wall Street Journal and did two separate tours at the Los Angeles Times separated by what I call his Lost Years (when he tried his hand at movie producing, and then returned to journalism first at Inside.com and then as a freelancer). He came to the NYT when, in the summer of 2004, that paper was heavily raiding the LAT, where he was a Business section movie industry editor and writer. (I reported at the time how cool, calm and collected LAT managing editor Dean Baquet threw a temper tantrum upon learning that Cieply was even considering a job offer from the NYT. So Cieply went on the lam to the LAT's famed Globe Lobby and paced around deciding his future.) The NYT hired him to edit from its NYC headquarters, an offer Cieply told me at the time was “a great job" and "a life opportunity", noting: "Anybody in my spot in my life who didn’t look at that would be crazy.” But a year later, in an unusual concession, the paper at his request agreed to let him edit from its Los Angeles bureau when he wasn't enamored of the Big Apple. Even so, Cieply was still miserable -- supposedly with the NYT's multi-layered bureacracy -- and talked to pals about leaving the paper to freelance or write a book.

Cieply's decision is major since that means there are now 5 1/2 writers full-time on a beat that the NYT used to cover with one from here: the others are Sharon Waxman and David Halbfinger who write for the Culture section from L.A., Laura Holson who writes for the Business section from L.A, freelancer Allison Hope Weiner who works out of L.A., and David Carr out of New York but who frequently scribbles from L.A. Given today's newspaper boasts a half-page house ad promoting Carr, I'd say he's clearly become one of the NYT's biggest stars and the lead Hollywood scribe (even though his knowledge of showbiz is miniscule compared to Cieply's). Interesting aside: I understand that the NYT decided not to send any of its Los Angeles correspondents to cover Sundance news this year, citing money woes. Only Carr was dispatched -- underwritten by the paper's Internet side, which employs Carr as The Carpetbagger on an Oscar blog. Meanwhile, Waxman recently signed with Times Books to pen Stealing from the Pharaohs, about the burgeoning conflict over who owns ancient art. But she will not be taking any extensive leave.

This latest news begs a lot of questions: Will the NYT keep all 5 1/2 reporters on the Hollywood beat? Is Cieply's addition a reaction to the fact that 2006's NYT summer movie coverage for the Culture section was AWOL since both Waxman and Halbfinger appeared distracted by other news? Is it a recognition that Cieply may have been the right man in the wrong job? Could this show an understanding that, with the Pellicano trial heating up again in advance of the August trial, it may require the full-time attention of Halbfinger and his reporting partner, Weiner? Or may this be the first step in an overall reorganization? Hmm.