Ferrell, Baron Cohen find Sherlock Holmes funnyPair to reteam for Apatow-produced pic

Can Sirius XM afford Howard Stern?Merged satcaster to wield greater negotiating power

Public TV network turns on French PresidentSarkozy studio outburst secretly taped, released online

Posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger?Critical praise for "Dark Knight" kindles award speculation

Tongues are wagging yet again over the fate of Conde Nast's business magazine Portfolio, and this time it's not just embittered ex-staffers. The thin display of ads in this month's issue with Starbucks' Howard Schultz as cover art (32 ad pages, according to a spokeswoman) was shocking to many, even if it does reflect summer doldrums and a slowed economy. How long can it go on this way? Meanwhile, the mood in editorial is far from warm and fuzzy. The latest top editor to leave is photo editor Lisa Berman, who has just abandoned the glamorous glossy for the more workaday environs of Entertainment Weekly. "I don't know a single writer or editor there who wouldn't rather be working somewhere else," came the harsh view from inside the Conde Nast building. Calls around the Times Square tower kick up a surprising amount of animosity toward editor Joanne Lipman, with comments like "confusion" and "identity crisis" among the kinder remarks. (We try to avoid ad hominems here at Waxword.)

There's another thing. Here in Hollywood, I keep hearing that Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has prevailed on his coterie of power broker friends – among them Brian Grazer, Jim Wiatt, Brad Grey – to keep Portfolio from any big Hollywood 'gets.' Carter denies it. But it is notable that Portfolio has yet to weigh in with any major Hollywood pieces that might move magazines off the stand. Where's the Will Smith, mogul-in-the-making story? Or the Judd-Apatow-Comedy-Business-Genius cover? (Barry Diller was a 'get,' but at this stage, he's more Internet than Hollywood.)

A spokeswoman for Portfolio, Perri Dorset, said "We've not found" any evidence of Carter blocking and tackling. "Hollywood is a big place. We'll continue to cover it aggressively," she said. Asked about it, Carter responded: "Not only have I never spoken to anyone in Hollywood about Portfolio, I wish the magazine well and think it gets better with every issue." That's nice, but it's not what I'm hearing sotto voce. Graydon is "definitely blocking them in Hollywood," said one former Portfolio editor who asked not to be identified. Lead Hollywood correspondent Amy Wallace is "being blacklisted a little bit." Wallace, who has done major takeouts on financier Ryan Kavanaugh and lawyer/Superman expert Marc Toberoff, declined to comment.

"Hancock" flies high at box officeSmith flick reaps $107.3m since Tuesday

NBC U buys Weather Channel$3.5 billion deal includes Weather.com

Icahn: Microsoft still in game if Yahoo! board quitsActivist investor kindles speculation with shareholder letter

Osbournes to host Fox variety showFormat a throwback to "Sonny and Cher," "Donny and Marie"

Readers: Light posting this week as I'll be travelling. In the meantime, here's another endorsement for my upcoming book, 'Loot,' this from the best-selling author Douglas Preston, with my gratitude:

Loot by Sharon Waxman is a riveting foray into the biggest question facing museums today: who should own the great works of ancient art? Waxman is a first-rate reporter, a veritable Euphronios of words, who not only explores the legal and moral ambiguities of the conflict but brings to life the colorful-- even outrageous -- personalities facing off for a high noon showdown over some of the world’s iconic works of art. Vivid, witty and delightful, this book will beguile any reader with an interest in art and museums. The great strength of this book is that it will offend virtually all parties to the conflict by revealing their deepest, darkest, dirtiest secrets, from the destructive cleaning of the Elgin Marbles by the British to the Keystone Kops level of security in Turkish museums.

--Douglas Preston, author of The Monster of Florence

Driving up the 101 yesterday, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, was a journey through fire country. All along the Pacific Coast, clouds of smoke and ash hugged the waterline. Along 400 miles, passages of low-hanging smoke interrupted the brilliant blue of the Pacific,  through an ominously overcast Santa Barbara, and past the darkened tunnel that was Goleta. In between I emerged into the sunlight passages of the coastal Pino Noir vineyards and Pismo Beach, still unaffected. But all along the 101, the fuel for future fires was evident -- dry, sand-colored scrub lining the sides of the road. There are still 1,700 fires blazing through California, with only a small percentage of them contained, according to state officials. It is likely to take until the end of the month for the fires to be extinguished. But as July stretches into August, fire fighters are going to face exhaustion. Home owners will face evacuation. And beach-goers may decide that the summer of 2008 is a time to go much further south. Yesterday, the news radio served as  running commentary to the haze floating above Highway 101: "There is no fire season anymore," said the governor's spokeswoman. "It's year-round." (photo: LA Times)

AFTRA ratifies pactThree-year TV contract deals a blow to SAG

Tarantino introduces "Inglorious Bastards"Writer-director shows long-awaited script to Hollywood

Burnett sued for $70 millionBusiness partner claims breach of partnership agreement

Because I am all in favor of saving whatever print journalism remains, here's a call for a news editor at an excellent magazine, ArtNews, based in New York. Editor Robin Cembalest is looking for a smart, capable professional with a background in cultural news. Under publisher Milton Esterow, ArtNews has been a leader breaking news in the art world over the years, and was at the forefront of the looted Nazi art story in the 1990s. Here's the job posting. In other media news, The Hollywood Reporter appears to be in need of warm bodies in the wake of this week's latest eliminations. Nikki Finke has the details. Will Hollywood soon be a one-trade town?

HBO's new $50 million mini-series, "Generation Kill," is being promoted everywhere as having been brought to the screen by the creator of "The Wire," David Simon. But what does that mean exactly? The series, debuting next Sunday, is a hard-driving, non-fiction tale of Marines on the front lines in Iraq, and it is drawn directly – in some scenes word for word – from the award-winning book of the same name by Evan Wright. Wright is credited as a consulting producer on the seven-part series, and has credit on two of the scripts. But he tells me that in fact he also wrote about "50 percent" of the scripts on which Simon and his collaborator Ed Burns have credit, and that he had to fight for the credits he got. "There was a lot of friction over credit issues," Wright told me today.

Last summer, after HBO cut the series from eight episodes to seven, emails flew back and forth last summer from Baltimore, where Simon lives, to Baghdad, where Wright had returned to report for Rolling Stone. Wright was worried, correctly it turned out, that Simon was about to kill one of his scripts. Simon resolved the matter by giving joint credit to Wright and Burns. Again two months ago Wright had to request further credit in the wake of still more active input, and Simon agreed. But Simon denies that Wright was responsible for half the scripts with his or Burns' name on them. "If he told you that, he's genuinely incorrect," Simon said this evening, from a screening for Marines in California, where Wright was also in attendance. He added: "Nobody wrote any of the scripts by themselves. There's stuff in Evan's script written by me and Ed. There's stuff written in total by me and Ed. There's stuff in our scripts written by Evan. That's what happens in every serialized show."

Well, yes and no. These matters are taken very seriously by the Writers Guild, and in the case of "Generation Kill" even Simon notes that it came down to actual page counts per writer. As for what it means to write the 'story' of a series based closely on a carefully reported, non-fiction book, Simon damned himself with faint praise: "Decisions have to be made about where to break the story, where to limit the point of view, where to combine elements, what characters are going to have to disappear from the storyline, which to maintain, which arcs are going to be emphasized, where the exposition will be." No wonder Wright, a novice in Hollywood who has no need to make an enemy of Simon, made this generous remark: "Even if the scripts were 100% mine, David is the author of the miniseries in that I'd never have thought to have migrated my book as faithfully as he did," he said.

iPhone 3G rolls out in worldwide launchFaster device expandable with new iTunes App Store

SAG rejects AMPTP's final offerDispute over new media, DVD residuals prolongs stalemate

News Corp unlikely to be part of Yahoo dealMurdoch quashes idea of Microsoft partnership

Publisher's Weekly has chosen to feature "Loot" next week, in the first review of the book which I'm delighted to share with you all. The book rates a star with PW, which says: "Skillfully blending history and reportage, Waxman traces the stories of treasures like the Elgin Marbles, then jumps into the debate over whether they should be restored to their countries of origin. She finds no easy answers: while acknowledging the dubious means by which European and American museums acquired many antiquities, she concedes that the governments clamoring for their return don't always have adequate plans for their maintenance." Here's the rest.