It seems reality shows are finally coming under scrutiny.

Updated Thursday 9:30 am:

A good lesson in peddling rumors. Hall writes again to say that Bill Keller was indeed in her office yesterday, but they were discussing Sifton's new position as restaurant critic, not giving her a new job. Sounds like it's safe to say that what I heard ain't happening, and that the search for a new culture editor is on. 

Earlier:

There may be some weird game of musical chairs going on in the back section over at the New York Times.

The clock is ticking for a court to approve a settlement that will pay blogger Nikki Finke $80,000 and Hollywood lawyer Neville Johnson $1.8 million for the lucky mistake of having a telephone conversation between Finke and an E-Trade employee recorded without telling her.

Is it all over but the shouting??

Leave it to the New York Times to take 5,000 words to give us a small amount of new information about the ailing Weinstein Company, which David Segal (um, who?) does in Sunday’s business section just weeks after one of the paper’s Hollywood correspondents weighed in on the very same subject.

The news that turnaround expert Stephen Cooper has been brought in to replace Harry Sloan at MGM has apparently put a new glint in the eye of hungry Hollywood dealmaker Ryan Kavanaugh.

There are pained looks and tiptoeing assistants inside the halls of Summit after the debacle of “Bandslam” this past weekend (a $2.3 million take), followed by the embarrassing slam from an insider who accused the studio of botching the movie’s marketing.

this post was updated and corrected at 6:45 pm:

Here’s an explosive update on those nasty foreign levy lawsuits that nobody wants to talk about.

Bill Richert, the screenwriter who is leading a class action lawsuit against the Writers Guid of America, has written to object that I called him a "loose cannon" in a previous post, where I also said he recorded a whistleblower on the phone, unaware.

Say what you like about Harvey Weinstein. But when it came to marketing “Inglourious Basterds,” he hit it out of the park. The movie beat even the highest box office projections by more than $10 million.

That’s worth a closer look.

Here are the raw elements: A period film. Mainly in French and German. With subtitles. An ensemble cast of mostly Europeans. And more than two and a half hours long. Not exactly the makings of a summer blockbuster hit.

Read part one: 

Exclusive: WGA Whistleblower Terri Mial's Testimony

Part two: 

Fast Company has a very interesting flyover of Dubai, where the ambitions to build a whole bunch of theme parks have dwindled to a heap of sand. Blame the falling price of oil and the crumbling fortunes of the global financial markets.

But --- how can we say this gently? THEY OVERBUILT LIKE CRAZY.

(Here's the proposed theme park, below.)