Vanity Fair‘s Michael Wolff writes about a visit with a billionaire looking to invest in a daily periodical or two, a guy who “knew nothing whatsoever about the newspaper business, or news. Zip. Nada. I am not sure he quite understood that it was a bleak business. I offered that there are many people who believe that the commercial viability of big-city dailies will be kaput within five years. He said, with affable certainty, and as though agreeing with me, Oh, but there will always be lots and lots of people who want to read a newspaper. I pointed out that, actually, only older people read a daily paper — average age: 56.”

Leonardo DiCaprio “actually played the better role in The Departed, if you ask the Bagger, but he’s nominated for lead actor in Blood Diamond. If there is confusion, so what? A vote for Leo is a vote for Leo.” — N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr in a 2.7.07 entry.

Except a vote for Leo in Blood Diamond is not just a vote for Leo — it’s also a secondary pat-on-the-back for the chops and visions of Diamond director Ed Zwick, and that’s a problem. Leo didn’t just play a better role in The Departed — his emotional ferocity levels were such in that film that all kinds of wild-ass light seeped into his hunted-animal performance. It was way, way beyond what he managed to do in Zwick’s film.

“It wasn’t totally surprising to learn [yesterday] that Sony isn’t planning to show critics Ghost Rider, which opens a week from Friday,” N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick wrote yesterday in his new blog. “The latest Marvel Comics blockbuster starring Nicolas Cage, which carries a pricetag of $120 million, may well be the most expensive event movie movie to receive this treatment, which tends to embarass the talent involved.

“Sony has been in the vanguard of the snowballing no-screening movement, racking up a record string of No. 1 openings last years including a number of (mostly low-budget)films that avoided advance critical scrutiny. Just this weekend, the poorly-reviewed The Messengers topped the charts after opening cold, as they say in the trade.”

“My hope for the future is for people to start cutting loose from [their] geographic roots, to begin moving towards a state of freedom, of rootlessness. I feel this is what someone like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has already done. By shooting Babel in Morocco and Japan, you could say that he was leaving his roots and finding his identity.

“I have a huge appreciation of backgrounds. What I have a problem with is borders. The language of cinema is cinema itself: it doesn’t matter whether it is filmed in Spanish or English or French or Japanese. The same goes for the people who make it. Yes, I’m a filmmaker from Mexico. But I also belong to the world.” — Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron, writing in the Guardian.

Two Departed sequels…? Gimme a break.

Variety‘s Ian Mohr reported yesterday that Universal will delay Peter Berg‘s The Kingdom, an FBI guys-vs.-terrorists actioner, from April 20 to September 28 “in order to build momentum for the Mideast-set drama. The Michael Mann-produced flick costars Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Chris Cooper. Universal marketing guy Adam Fofgelson said the studio decided to delay after gauging reactions to the film “during recent tests in Sacramento. ‘We had screenings at the high end of extraordinary. The big and obvious points of the film worked, but also a great deal of its subtlety had an immense impact on audiences.'”

There’s a question about whether Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron will be attending Wednesday evening’s “Three Amigos” press party. Word from Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, who will most definitely attend, is that Alfonso is sick with a London flu (along with his family) and was under the weather as of Tuesday morning. “He could still make it,” says Guillermo. “I’ll know in the morning. I hope he does. It would be the sweetest.”

“We’d like to feel insecure when we go to make our next movie. Losing [the Best Picture Oscar] might be the best thing for us.” — Little Miss Sunshine co-director Valerie Faris, as passed along by N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr (a.k.a., “the Bagger”).

A pre-Berlin Film Festival blast from EXBERLINER’s D. Strauss, who says he’ll be filing day by day as things move along. The Berlinale runs from 2.8 through 2.18.

Slate‘s Kim Masters has written about Steven Spielberg‘s (and the DreamWorks team’s) conflicts with Paramount chairman and reputed credit-hog Brad Grey. It’s a brewing, building tempest and apparently leading somewhere. Truth be told, I’m so unmoved by this territorial spat I was barely able to type this out.

“Doctor…? Doctor…? You…you are very naughty!”