• After an uncharacteristic bit of good PR, Harvey Weinstein is behaving in comfortingly predictable ways, haranguing his wife and firing people. The creative director of Halston, the label bought by Weinstein a year ago, has been ousted after designing one collection. [WWD]

Lovers of moguls and fashion house revivals pay heed: Halston, the 70s luxury brand that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is attempting to restore to its former glory, has lost its creative director! Marco Zanini, who came to Halston from Versace a year ago to revive the brand, has reportedly been shown the door. Apparently he didn't have the "sexual charge" that Weinstein craves. Don't worry Harvey, you still have Project Runway!

Disgruntled as its recent self-esteem plunge has made us, no one could realistically suggest that the Weinstein Company is what you'd call "circling the drain." Maybe "studying the drain," or even "pawning the drain," if today's latest Harvey newsflash is to be believed: The Weinsteins have locked up a deal with Showtime as the premium-cable outlet for 95 films over seven years. Starting in 2009, the agreement covers both Weinstein Company and Dimension Films releases, including the so-hot-no-one-will-claim-it Inglorious Bastards and Rob Marshall's musical Nine.

• The controversy over the Obama New Yorker cover rages on. The mag says it's received a flood of angry letters, although we're pretty sure David Remnick is the happiest he's been in months. [WWD]

· Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno exploits took him from Israel to Arkansas; his Sherlock Holmes adventures to come may or may not include the missus.
· AFTRA ratified its new contract, but SAG didn't let that spoil its appetite for destruction.
· Harvey Weinstein is now officially going door-to-door to finance his films. Psst! Buddy! Wanna buy a Tarantino?
· The TV Critics Association Press Tour is dead. Long live the TCA Press Tour!
· Lest major Dark Knight spoilers aren't up your alley, there's always Michael Bay's unproduced Awesome Knight screenplay to hold you over another week.
· After a long string of compatibility issues, Drew Barrymore is on the market for a Mac huckster upgrade.
· This Week In Magazine Cover Hell: Blake Lively gets the blown-out Skeletor treatment, while the pasty youths of Twilight make EW safe for chest hair.
· Here's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely RRRAAALLLLPPPHHHHH
· Defamer's readers joined Matthew McConaughey in welcoming a bouncing Bongo Romcom to the world.
· Meanwhile in France, stinky, salmon-devouring, "high-maintenance beetch" Angelina Jolie prepared her post-twinbirth conditioning regimen. Two words: Hula hoop.
· Pick your reality TV poison for 2009: America's Greatest Dog or The Ashley Dupre Governor Boink Variety Hour.
· We wished a healthy recovery (literally) to the rat-friendly Newsroom Cafe, and bid a fond farewell to J-Lo's slice of Pasadena paradise, Madre's.
· Have you yet greeted Tricia Romano, Defamer newcomer and social observer extraordinaire? Well? That's more like it.
· Molls ate spinach. That is all.

Harvey Weinstein, who has been the focus of some strange goings on as of late, has appeared blissfully happy (or whatever passes for normal human emotion within the mysterious chambers of the brutish mogul's dark heart) since marrying English fashion designer Georgina Chapman last December. The greatest beauty and the beast couple since Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porizkova, Harvey and George have said that they like to keep their private life private, which may explain why in an interview (not online) with Tatler's editor-at-large Vassi Chamberlain, the reporter's questions are "met with short responses and deft sidestepping." But it's a great testament to Chamberlain's journalistic skills that she manages to get shy Georgina to gush about her husband for nearly a page anyway!

Dear Quentin Tarantino,

Could 2008 be the year that Hollywood has waited for so long, when that "indestructible cockroach" of independent movies-New York's Harvey Weinstein-finally runs out of luck? Forget about disappointing revenues from movies such as Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse; one should be looking at the plight of a boring home video distributor which was supposed to be the Weinsteins' salvation.

How the mighty are falling. The once proud Project Runway, winner of highly esteemed Peabody awards and beloved of many an affluent gay tastemaker, has been in a tailspin since the announcement was made that the show would be moving to Lifetime (television for Women). The fashion design competition show has but one short season left on Bravo, where it has helped shape and brand the once obscure network. And, hey, it starts next week! Did you know this? I certainly didn't. Where is the typical tsunami of press releases and meet-the-cast rosters and, um, internet advertising? TV writers won't even get a screener until Monday, two short days before the season premiere. What gives?

The inevitable karmic payback for Fraggle Rock: The Movie is coming swift and severe at The Weinstein Company, where Harvey Weinstein is reduced to bringing in outsiders to get two of his long-delayed passion projects off the ground. Relativity Media appears ready to kick in at least half of Nine's $80 million budget, meaning the long-delayed, Daniel Day-Lewis/Nicole Kidman-starring musical will finally start shooting this fall.

Tony Ortega is editor-in-chief of the Village Voice. He's also the man who accidentally came across a big pile of Harvey Weinstein's trash on the street in Tribeca, papers he kindly shared with readers this week. Of course, this was the same week that a recording of a private conversation between Weinstein and uber-producer Joe Roth was publicly leaked and one in which Page Six revealed that a former employee of Weinstein's is planning to publish tell-all book about the movie mogul. But there's no connection whatsoever—at least if you buy Ortega's account of how he came across the documents.

Another little tale from the mixed-up files of Harvey Weinstein. One name on the busy movie czar's "Calls You Owe" list was Gwyneth Paltrow "re: Promises, Promises." The Village Voice claims that ol' Harve was due to call the pretend-British actress about playing the lead in a revival of the peculiar (if successful) 1968 Broadway musical. Funny thing though, non-gold-digging actress Anne Hathaway has supposedly already procured the role. Oh isn't casting fun? Your famous costars may think that you'll steal roles away from Gwyneth, but Paltrow's big name and big friendship with Weinstein will, of course, kick your ass in the end. Though, I don't quite get what all the fuss is about. Again, the show is peculiar, especially its show-stopping number "Turkey Lurkey Time." To see what I'm talking about, consult some video after the jump.

Is someone is out to get Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob? Yesterday Gawker posted an "exclusive" conversation between Weinstein and Joe Roth; today Page Six reveals it got the same tape and that a former Miramax employee "is writing an 'explosive' book about their management of Miramax, based on files and tapes compiled over a period of 15 years." The author of the book is anonymous, but Page Six misses what may be the clearest sign that whoever is behind the spectacle isn't playing with a full deck: "Many of the files and tapes we are working from were given to us by the late Stuart Meltzer, who worked directly for Bob as his assistant before he was killed in the World Trade Center attack in 2001. Stuart was extremely paranoid and saved and recorded everything." Except Stuart wasn't employed by Miramax. He was a 32-year-old energy broker at Cantor Fitzgerald when he died on Sept. 11. So that raises a big flag.

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has always resented the fact that peers made more money than him with what he deemed to be inferior films. These days, he's obviously overcome this problem by milking reality shows for millions to prop up his more artsy products; but he couldn't always be so sanguine. Here we have a priceless and EXCLUSIVE classic from the archives: a recording of a phone call between Weinstein and Disney exec Joe Roth, taped shortly after Michael Ovitz-a spectacular failure as head of Disney-was paid more than $100 million to leave the company in 1996. Weinstein is galled beyond belief (and perhaps a bit envious). "Let's quit today!" he jokes. Why, he works his ass off and what does he get? A fucking lecture. "Joe, you're a success, so therefore you're a failure in this business," Weinstein complains. Then he insults his fellow moguls: "Between Peter Guber and Mike Ovitz and everybody who fucked up...Everybody got wealthy on failure." Weinstein just cares too much about the films, you see; "We have character flaws that must be overcome," he sighs. Thanks to Project Runway, he's done so. Click to listen to the titan of Hollywood in all his expletive-spitting glory.

$8 million. Does that seem like a lot of money for a company to pay to have mediocre models use their hair products on a mediocre cable show for a few seasons? It kind of does. But that's how much The Weinstein Company, run by entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein, is trying to squeeze out of L'Oreal for three seasons of sponsorship of Project Runway. Of course, Weinstein has a long history of pimping out the fashion reality show to every company on earth willing to pay a dime to be on it, using it as a profit machine to support his company's less sure-thing ventures. And he's still milking it for every cent. How do we know? Because he left all the evidence in a public trash can:

One evening Village Voice editor Tony Ortega was innocently strolling along in Tribeca when he just happened to "stumble" across film producer Harvey Weinstein's paper recycling bin, "strictly by accident." Of course it was, Tony! Not quite sure how you accidentally stumble across a bin, but you say you'd been drinking so we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Especially since the trash you discovered—and are sharing with your readers—is such fun, and gave you an opportunity that not even (as you discover) the likes of Nicole Kidman can rely upon: a telephone conversation with gruff old Harv himself.

1) At Rita Schrager's Southampton garden, Lara Shriftman and Elizabeth Harrison's new book Party Confidential: New Etiquette for Fabulous Entertaining was feted by Dan Abrams, Dave Zinczenko, Jill Stuart, Woody Johnson, Radu, George Wayne, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Alina Cho, and Elana Waksal, who in keeping the party's Western theme donned bandanas and Stetsons and tried their luck on a bucking bronco. [FWD/NYSD]

Congratulations go out today (we think) to Harvey and Bob Weinstein, whose 2008 Mogul Comeback Tour finds them diversifying yet again en route to reclaiming some kind of surly, deep-pocketed mojo. It all starts on television, apparently, where the brothers plan to renew their old Miramax TV experiment with a full slate of new programming drawing on the success of Project Runway. One show, the late Anthony Minghella's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, has already found traction at HBO; the rest, however, comprises a mixed bag ranging from retreads to stillbirths — and that's before we even get to their plans for Broadway:

1) At the Harold Pratt House, the New Yorkers For Children Fall Gala was previewed with a Tuesday night gathering of Campion Platt, Andre Leon Talley, Jeffrey Kalinsky, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Dayssi Olarte De Kanavos, Douglas Hannant, Kate Schelter, Katie Lee Joel, Derek Blasberg, Debbie Bancroft, Joy Bryant, Daniel Benedict and Andrew Saffir, Annelise Peterson, Jamee Gregory, Fern Mallis, Jennifer Creel, Fabiola Beracasa, Oscar De La Renta, Thakoon Panichgul, Tom Florio, Zac Posen, Zani Gugelmann, Lauren Santo Domingo, Phillip Lim, Heather Mnuchin, and Peter Som. [Guest of a Guest]

Variety reports in typically sycophantic fashion that Harvey Weinstein will bring some of his greatest movie hits to Broadway-starting with Finding Neverland in 2010, followed by a stage version of Pink Floyd's The Wall, Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, Cinema Paradiso, and Shall We Dance. Weinstein and his brother have "mega" TV plans too. The film producer's entertainment interests-which range from movies to reality television, online social networks, fashion and the theater-seems impressive both in breadth and the financial confidence they would indicate. But don't be fooled.