Manohla!

Tim's got a link to Niki Finke's LA Weekly story on Manohla Dargis replacing Elvis Mitchell at the NYT. If this is true (and Niki usually has this shit down), it's great news. Manohla's writing is consistently smart and entertaining. Dave Poland must be pissed.

UPDATE: Yeah, so clearly Dave is grumpy. Herer's the headline that ran at moviecitynews.com:
"Manohla Dargis Heading From The LA Times To The NY Times As More A Columnist Than A Critic... Which Is Just About Perfect."
Yes the Finke piece did say that they loved her columns and that was a huge plus. But there's something smug about the phrasing, methinks. Manohla's "columns" are typical newspaper columns. They're more like the long-form essays that one would find in Sight & Sound or Film Comment. Among her most famous "columns" was one in which she slammed the relentless nostalgia/hyperbole for 1970s filmmaking. It didn't go over well and brought out the ire of, among others, Peter Bart who sniped "I don't remember seeing you around in the '70s" or some other equally irrelevant statement.