Albany restaurant critic Steve Barnes was viciously beaten last October by two thugs he'd never seen before. An arrest has been made! And he's got shadowy connections to the seedy Albany restaurant world!

At least America's last remaining actually influential film critic is Roger Ebert, and not, like, David Denby. Because Ebert, who can no longer speak due to removal of his cancerous jaw, now just writes crazy mean blogs and reviews and columns, calling out everyone who bugs him. Like Ben Stein, and his stupid anti-evolution movie.

Movie critic Elvis Mitchell (remember him? crazy-but-readable Times crit in those glorious pre-Manohla fucking Dargis days?) had $12,000 seized by U.S. border guards as he tried to go back home to Detroit from Canada. Mitchell was hiding the money in a cigar box, along with some Cubans, and he declared only $80. When asked by border agents why he had $12,000 in a cigar box, "Mr. Mitchell told the ICE agent the money in the cigar box represented money he (Mitchell) had withdrawn from bank automatic teller machines over a two year period." We're not sure how that explains anything, but there you go. Agents allowed Mitchell to keep $117 of the $300 he had in his wallet. He'll need that to get back to the Turner Classic Movie studios to interview Peter Bogdanovich, right? Excerpts from the criminal complaint attached.

It's an age-old question that will probably never be answered: Does Billy Joel suck, or does he actually rule? Impossible to say, really. But, whatever your stance, do not pal around with The Piano Man and pretend you're best buds when actually you're a nasty music critic who's going to go back to his office and trash the guy's work. Because Billy is not having it! "I had no idea when you interviewed me that you considered much of my later work to be `sentimental rubbish', or that you thought songs like 'Uptown Girl' and 'We Didn't Start the Fire' were `abominations'. And your back-slapping, buddy-buddy style of conversation betrayed no indication that you actually compared talking with me to `sleeping with an inflatable girlfriend'," Joel wrote to New Zealand Sunday Times-Star scribe Grant Smithies the other day.

We got tipped on this an hour ago and happily it still hasn't been corrected. The New York Post's review of Mamma Mia comes with bracketed editor's notes asking the reviewer to clarify vague passages! At no extra charge! Anyone want to check the print version for us? In case they fix it, click to see the screengrabs. [NYP]

Why not. YouTube will determine the next president and whether we bomb Iran, it might as well shrink James Wood's column inches in the New Yorker. I'm already experiencing the anxiety of a certain kind of influence in watching this ebullient young critic analyze Tom Rob Smith's Child 44. Future belletrists, take note. Edmund Wilson had to go to Princeton, edit F. Scott Fitzgerald, lose his cherry to Edna St. Vincent Millay, and learn half a dozen languages to be taken seriously. That's what happens when you've got a face made for text messaging.

Is it possible that beer advertising is becoming "silly" and "arbitrary?" We're going to go with "what do you mean, 'becoming?'" But the lack of "weight" and "integrity" to the "brand stories" of beer companies these days is really weighing on Seth Stevenson, Slate's generally sharp ad critic-and a man who obviously takes beer very seriously. While you or I might just accept that beer ads, of all things, are destined to be stupid in order to appeal to drunks, Stevenson allows a vapid Amstel commercial to send him into a deep spiral of despair. Why aren't they emphasizing the "five valid, logical criteria for choosing one beer over another" in their TV spots?!?!:

Would you like to hear New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones sing the hits of Kelly Clarkson? Sure, we all would! Thankfully, The New Yorker has us covered. Sasha wrote an entertaining piece on auto-tune (the software that corrects pitch problems and can also be used to make wacky robot vocals), and then went to Hoboken with a sound crew to get auto-tuned himself. Attached, a clip of Sasha singing "Since U Been Gone." Click through to the whole piece to hear him get all T-Pained out. [New Yorker]

The PR industry loves to get riled up any time someone takes what might be construed as an unjustified shot at its awful reputation. This is because there are already so many perfectly justified criticisms of PR that any argument not directly linked to a huge public scandal gives the industry a rare chance to get on its high horse. That's precisely what's going on today, after CBS analyst Andrew Cohen went on air yesterday with a scathing but overbroad rant calling the entire PR industry dirty liars, in the wake of lying former Bush flack Scottie McClellan's book. How dare CBS be so mean! The Public Relations Society of America fired back with a mealy-mouthed letter declaring "truth and accuracy are the bread and butter of the public relations profession." This is the same PRSA that didn't feel the need to say anything about McClellan's admitted lies themselves. So we have an ill-considered commentary, and a hypocritical response. A perfect embodiment of PR! Video of Cohen's rant, after the jump.

Pugilistic director Uwe Boll's latest offering, Postal, is being billed as a comedy. But reviewers, well, at least this one, isn't buying it. "With Postal, the widely mocked auteur and glorified carny barker tries something completely different: an out and out comedy. His latest effort-already infamous for having its planned release to 1500 theaters scaled back to double digits-is a provocation first, an insult second, a publicity stunt third and a film a distant fourth." [The Onion AV Club] But, I dunno, the trailer below has me thinking it's my kind of summer fare.

Insane creatures of all different backgrounds and creeds have been sucked into the seamy world of online reviewing, but no one has come out quite as shiny as blogger Dave Cassel. Some write online reviews for the love of sharing their views with others, but not Dave. He does it all for the zeroes in his bank account. For 100 days writer marketing website Helium.com offered all users $3 per review to review anything, and Dave went haywire. All told Cassel churned out about 200,000 words over the course of 300 articles, weighing in on everything from Cyndi Lauper's Christmas album to the classic 70s series Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp and Thomas Wolfe's poetry. And the reviews, though often centered on absurd subjects, are far from terrible. Cassel's review of the syndicated Natasha Henstridge comedy She Spies has us wanting to pick up a season set: "It was intentionally unbelievable. But it was also a lot of fun." A fitting epitaph for your accomplishment, you brave bloggeur you. [Destiny-land]

At long last, P.S. I Love You, a heart-string-tugging romantic fable about a gay Spartan warrior and a drag king boxer's inability to make love work, arrives in theaters today. As promising as that setup sounds, the reviews are mostly terrible, with the Hilary Swank/Gerard Butler vehicle inspiring movie critics to some of their most creatively bilious work in recent memory:

Poking around a bookshop in Paris last December, I came across a small handsome book. It was an unjacketed volume, bound in severe black cloth of the sort usually associated with spanking erotica. Picking it up, I found that it was actually more like a breviary, the title embossed in gold, the edges of the pages gilt, with a ribbon bookmark in ecclesiastical red; "La Base" is, in fact, a stylish little cookbook.