Still, for Hollywood trade watchers, the defection from Variety to The Hollywood Reporter of international freelance reviewers Jonathan Holland (based in Madrid) and Boyd van Hoiej (Paris, Luxembourg) would seem to suggest that there’s concern on their part about the future of their beat. A rep for THR tells us that van Hoiej is already at Cannes, and that both will immediately start contributing to the efforts crowned of course by another Variety alum, Todd McCarthy.

Holland, who focuses mainly on Spanish and Latin American films, has also written for The Guardian and Conde Nast’s Traveller. He separately penned the 1994 novel The Escape Artist.

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The credentials of Scott Foundas, a native of Tampa, FL and graduate of USC, are long, diverse and impressive. As a result, Twitter congratulations are quickly pouring in. From this afternoon’s announcement:

The renowned writer was most recently the chief film critic for the Village Voice, where his reviews, essays and interviews appeared regularly in all 11 Voice Media Group publications. Foundas will remain based in Gotham and work closely with senior film critics Justin Chang and Peter Debruge on reviews and other commentary and reporting for all Variety platforms.

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When will all the dead-serious $200 million battle-centered giant-infested similarly cast rousingly scored fabulously rendered 3D fairy-tale reimaginings all finally merge together into one enormous Anglophilic fantasmagoria of monarchical order and virtue so we can all be done with this for the time being?

We’re talking: 44 glorious words, four of them hyphenated; a French-leaning spelling of phantasmagoria (for le extra oomph?); and an audacious disregard of the comma. In this brief moment, McCarthy has recast himself as Todd the Run-On Sentence Slayer. Bravo.

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Having here at FishbowlLA had a brush or two with the dynamite known as a Drudge mention, we were curious how much traffic – exactly - the item in question received December 12. A spokesperson for THR tells us McCarthy’s Django review registered an astounding 1,000,137 page views.

Drudge often links to McCarthy THR critiques, and not every one of those Wednesday clicks came from his site. But for McCarthy to cross the single-day one million mark a day before being co-opted for an Onion item about The Hobbit, well that’s too cool even for Quentin Tarantino school.

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Last night at Falcon Hollywood, the publication toasted its Next Gen 2012 issue and roster of 35 up-and-coming young agents, managers, TV-film execs, publicists, writer-directors and actors. FishbowlLA dropped by for a cocktail and the best way to describe the scene is that it looked, felt and sounded like a shoot for the Entourage movie. Complete with Janice Min cameo and sexy product placement (the evening’s sponsors were A&E and Samsung Galaxy SIII).

Tonight, THR film critic Todd McCarthy will dial things down at the American Cinematheque via a Q&A with 98-year-old Norman Lloyd (pictured). Today is Lloyd’s birthday and 2012 marks his 80th year in show business (he started working on Broadway in September 1932).

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The site is a solid work-in-progress. For example, items like today’s “Whitney Houston Reality Crap: Who Had It First?” need to do more than simply note which mouth of the four-headed beast was quickest to the content buffet.

On the other hand, the poll question on the right-hand margin is pretty funny and a May 9 item shared some good info about Deadline contributor Don Groves. All told, Trade Fools is a welcome addition to the Hollywood-centric blogosphere.

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The glory days of low-budget VHS studio production are long gone, as are rock-solid film critic positions like the one Honeycutt was lucky enough to occupy from 1999 through the fall of last year. As first reported by Anne Thompson, the former chief film critic of the revamped Hollywood trade has been given his walking papers. His last day will be next Monday, following a stint as a THR juror at the Napa Valley Film Festival.

Ironically, Honeycutt’s switch to international critic and now layoff was brought about by the arrival of Todd McCarthy, Variety lead critic until a spring 2010 firing. These are different times on Wilshire Blvd., buffeted by the fact that the trades no longer have a monopoly on setting the buzz for major releases with those once vaunted first-look reviews.

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But the best such recollection so far comes from Southern California AP reporter Jeff Wilson (pictured). When he was a teenager, he worked as a busboy at the now razed Mexican restaurant the El Chiquito Inn, which was right across the street from Warner Bros. in Burbank. During the filming of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, he served Taylor and husband, co-star Richard Burton many times:

I was awestruck. Those violet eyes took my breath away. And that cleavage, well, it (they?) meant a lot to a 16-year-old high school kid… She was a jaw-dropping beauty like no one else.

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That said, our initial thoughts about the cover have stuck with us: that’s an awful lot of white women. Said cover is a rather dull shot of pasty Oscar hopefuls Amy Adams, Nicole Kidman, Helena Bonham Carter, Annette Bening, Hilary Swank and Natalie Portman. When we wrote about the lily white cover earlier this week, a rep from THR wrote us to say she agreed, and that THR had covered the issue of how this could be the whitest Oscars in 10 years–no minorities are expected to be nominated in any of the major categories.

True, but that doesn’t mean you have to go along with it. It’s your cover.

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Via brief, boiler plate item on its website this morning, THR indicates that Guider “will continue to contribute” in a way that is more commensurate with her book writing efforts and trips to visit out-of-state relatives. Whether that means angry letters to the (new) editor about her severance package or something else at this point remains unclear.

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From IndieWire:

This week’s announcements follow indieWIRE Editor-in-Chief Eugene Hernandez’s recent announcement that he is leaving his editorial role later this month after nearly fifteen years since co-founding this company. He’ll continue writing his blog on the iW Blog Network after joining the Film Society of Lincoln Center on November 1st.

“I believe in indieWIRE and am committed to its vital mission to support ‘filmmakers, biz, fans,’” said Anne Thompson, “a mission which continues under the direction of managing editor and ten-year indieWIRE vet Brian Brooks and his staff. Forbes has called indieWIRE the ‘online heartbeat of the world’s independent film community’ – I’m delighted to help that heart beat even stronger.”

Thompson will continue to run her popular Thompson on Hollywood blog.

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“We were really glad to have been able to offer Todd an entrepreneurial home when he needed one,” Rick Allen, CEO of SnagFilms, which runs IndieWIRE told THR, “but completely understand his desire to return to his roots with a publisher like The Hollywood Reporter, and we wish him well.”

Strangely, the New York Times broke the news of McCarthy’s hire. The THR post on McCarthy’s hire links to the NYT. Weird.

Glad the mag is kicking ass, hiring everyone in sight, but you’d think they could find the time to break the news of their own hires.

Photo: Getty

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In a more detailed interview, Neil Stiles, Variety’s president, said his paper was profitable but declined to disclose financial figures for the operation, which has been owned since 1987 by Reed Elsevier. He said Variety had suffered a year-to-year ad revenue decline less severe than the estimates of 50 percent or more that have been heard in Hollywood.

But Martin Kaplan had the best quote:

“Traditionally, the trades have offered gossip, casting announcements, advance reviews and hopefully a little news,” he said. “Go through that list and ask what’s left. It’s all widely available elsewhere.”

Whole piece is here.

Previously on FBLA:

Todd McCarthy and David Rooney Out at Variety

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]]> Tina Dupuy http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/nyt-documents-the-decline-of-variety_b10453#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/nyt-documents-the-decline-of-variety_b10453 http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/nyt-documents-the-decline-of-variety_b10453 Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:01:10 +0000 Variety has let go their last staff critics Todd McCarthy and David Rooney. They will be replaced by “freelancers.” We hope that won’t become code for crowd-sourcing student labor and Twitter reactions.

Hm. Chills.

NYT reports:

Neil Stiles, the president of Variety, said the entertainment industry trade paper is cutting from its staff two of its most prominent writers — film reviewer Todd McCarthy and theater critic David Rooney.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Stiles said the critics were cut as a cost-saving measure.

Twitter reaction: OMG! #underemployed

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]]> Tina Dupuy http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/todd-mccarthy-and-david-rooney-out-at-variety_b10408#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/todd-mccarthy-and-david-rooney-out-at-variety_b10408 http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/todd-mccarthy-and-david-rooney-out-at-variety_b10408 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:06:39 +0000 Yuma Scores at Boxoffice
James Mangold and producer Cathy Konrad‘s follow-up to their Walk the Line, the western 3:10 to Yuma starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, took top stop at the boxoffice over the weekend. Variety reports that it played on the high-end of expectations with Ben Fritz writing that it was moved up to “give it more breathing room” before the release of Brad Pitt’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Read about how the rest of the pics played here.

Cates to Produce Oscars, Again
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is standing by its lucky guy Gil Cates who has signed on to produce the Oscarcast again next year. It will be his 14th time driving the Oscar train, a job that in itself has garnered 99 Emmy nominations and 25 wins, Variety reports.

Variety on Blanchett, Elizabeth
On the heels of her best actress win at the Venice Film Festival, Cate Blanchett made her way overseas to Toronto to tout a return to the throne in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Variety‘s Todd McCarthy is happy to see her reprise the role that made her famous, but that’s about it. “Without the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett…there would be little to recommend this latest of many cinematic and television accounts of the celebrated monarch’s life…” If you care to read on, click here.

Penn to Go Gay for Gus
Gay helmer Gus Van Sant is pushing Sean Penn and Matt Damon for a biopic about openly gay politico Harvey Milk. Penn is attached to play Milk with Matt attached to play the assassin who guns him down, reports THR out of Toronto. Sideways Michael London is producing.

Lionsgate loves Mandate
In other Toronto news, Lionsgate said in THR Monday that it has made a buy to acquire Mandate Pictures for $56.3 million in cash and stock. The trade paper writes that the deal reunites Lionsgate with Joe Drake, who prior to launching Mandate served as head of Lionsgate’s international distribution. Since he left, he has been involved in Mandate pics like Stranger Than Fiction and the upcoming Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.

- CHRIS GARDNER

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]]> Guest Blogger http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/trade-round-up-sept-10-2007_b4797#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/trade-round-up-sept-10-2007_b4797 http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/trade-round-up-sept-10-2007_b4797 Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:15:55 +0000