Right off the bat, Finke admits she's not into lists, writing:

"Last year I was on Elle's Women in Hollywood power list; this year I was asked to write it. That's ironic, because I hate power lists more than one-size-fits-all spa robes. These influential jobs are not necessarily comparable. Are the casting directors I included more important than the cinematographers and film editors I didn't? So what I have is a very subjective roster of women I deem essential to a town run by alpha males who don't play well with others. Women in general do."

The List is split up into sections; there's The Movie Executives; The TV Executives; the awfully titled "The Wives & Daughters." But first and foremost there's The Talent — which includes Tyra Banks, Beyoncé, director Kathyrn Bigelow, Miley Cyrus, Ellen DeGeneres and Tina Fey. Also on that list? Michael Patrick King, whom Finke calls "2009's honorary female." Finke explains:

He gave us the best years of Sex and the City on TV and can be credited for reviving the chick flick in Hollywood when the movie version grossed $415 million.

The commenters on Women In Hollywood are split. One writes:

I just dislike that she left out a woman in order to include Michael Patrick King as an "honorary female". It is not good to be told that a man knows and produces women's films better than women.

But another replies:

That bugged me as well… but then I thought, well… It's the biggest film starring a cast of women of all time. He may not be a woman, but his film surely did something great for women in Hollywood, especially with a cast of women 40+.

Here's the question: If a man sympathetic to women is in power, is it as good as a woman in power? I'm going to go with: No. Because the more women pulling strings and making executive decisions the better. But since Finke makes a point about the SATC franchise being a powerhouse — and generates some buzz by including a man — she gets a pass from me. Disagree?

The Most Powerful Women in Hollywood According to Nikki Finke [Women In Hollywood]
Nikki Finke's Power List [Elle.com]
Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood

Earlier: Hollywood Heavy Nikki Finke: Victim Of Misogyny, And Misogynist Extraordinaire

• Guy Richie will not fight ex-wife Madonna's plans to move their children to the United States, claiming that he would rather keep his children together than tear them apart with a nasty custody battle. [Mirror]

• ""It is quite simple in Guy's eyes - Rocco comes before him. He has always put Rocco and David's future ahead of his own and this is why he has relented," says a source, "He is adamant he wants to keep the boys and their sister Lourdes together. He does not want to tear them apart from each other. Guy is telling Rocco and David he will still see them a lot.He is already making plans to visit the children in America and looking at the possibility of them having holidays in England."[Mirror]
• Nick Lachey is the latest member of the "Leave Jessica Alone!" brigade: "I can't believe it's this big of a story and people are making such a huge deal about it. I'm never ceased to be amazed by people's reaction to things," Lachey says, "I hope she's happy, whatever size she comes in. I wish her nothing but the best." [People]
• And Heidi Klum agrees with him: "there are always people who are quick to offer an opinion and when you are in the public eye, people will always talk about you and put their opinions on you. That's what you get when you're in the public eye. But people need to be happy with the way they are." [People]
• As does Simpson's brother-in-law, Pete Wentz: "I think the media puts too harsh of a spotlight on women in general and I think it's a bummer. It's bad for young women. I see it affecting young girls who come to our shows and that's a bummer. Real beauty is on the inside, man." [NME]
• Is Katie Holmes afraid to leave Tom Cruise? A source says yes: "As much as Tom loves her now, Katie believes that if she left him, he'd make it difficult for her to see their daughter Suri. She's already seen how that would play out - because after Tom and Nicole Kidman divorced, he pretty much took control of their two children. Before Tom, she always had loads of friends and loved to go out. Now she must feel like she's living Tom's life, not her own."[ShowbizSpy]
• Uh-oh: did 30 Rock steal material from the Sarah Silverman Program?[Videogum]
• Britney Spears' father, Jamie, has just filed restraining orders against Britney's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib, and ex-manager, Sam Lutfi, claiming that the two men "are now working in concert to disrupt the conservatorship with utter disregard for Ms. Spears's health and well being." [People]
• Tom Jones is keeping it classy on his new tour, ladies: the singer says he's stopped dyeing his hair and won't be encouraging the underwear tossing that has dominated his past shows. "I don't capitalize on it as much as I used to," Jones says,"I used to pick it up and do shtick with it and all that, which I stopped doing because it was encouraging it." [AP]
• Amy Adams is still trying to balance celebrity and her everyday life: "I'll pick up my allergy medication and the pharmacist will say, 'I love you'. I'll be like, 'I'm just glad I'm not picking up something embarrassing.' Suddenly you realise you're not a private person any more. It's okay, just jarring, to realise that everything you do can be scrutinised or evaluated. But don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful for where I'm at."[Independent]
• Kimora Lee Simmons, who recently announced her pregnancy with Djimon Hounsou, has finally finalized her divorce from (now) ex-husband Russell. Yahoo]
• Evangeline Lilly is auctioning off a line of lingerie on Ebay to support Task Brazil, a charity that "provides housing, aid and guidance to children and teens living on the streets of the South American nation." Lilly says: "Here on eBay I'm offering beautiful, Brazilian-made lingerie as a fun, enticing way for you to not only invest in yourself but in the poor and abandoned children of Brazil." [E!]
• Steve Martin: Action Star? "I've always dreamed of doing an action movie," Martin says, "I'm very proud of the movies I've done and I have done some action scenes but I would have loved to have gone all out with all guns blazing like those guys, just once."[ShowbizSpy]
• Sex and the City creator Michael Patrick King admits that he had to fight to cast Jennifer Hudson in the first film: "It can't be called Sex and the City without a little color—it's just wrong," King says, "Women are very nice when they figure out who I am. And the only negative comment I ever got about the series was every now and then, some woman of color—whether it'd be Latina or an African-American—they'd stop and say, 'Where are the sisters?' in my ear, and I was like, 'Yeah, where are they?'"[Yahoo]
• My 7th grade love, Val Kilmer, will be the celebrity king of the Krewe of Bacchus parade in New Orleans on Feb. 22. [AP]
• Taylor Swift had to deal with some serious Mean Girls growing up: "I had a group of friends when I was about 12. [Then] they all just decided they didn't wanna hang out with me anymore. I would go and sit down at the lunch table with my friends. And they would get up and move their trays to another table," Swift tells Katie Couric. Maybe because you wore sweatpants? Or a ponytail more than once a week? [CBS]
• Robert Pattinson continues his "answering dumb questions with even dumber answers tour," claiming that he doesn't like to tell people he's an actor because "It's kinda cheesy, so I prefer to say I do something else. I don't like the word 'acting'. I prefer the word 'creating,' because I want to build a character with an idea that turns into something that people will remember." Oh, dude. Dude! Stop it![ShowbizSpy]
• DMX, or as I like to call him, Mr. Earl Simmons, has been sentenced to 90 days in jail for various charges, including animal cruelty. Goodbye, Earl! [Mirror]
• And finally, in beautiful people news, Brad Pitt admits that his life is chaotic, but he loves every minute of it: "It's chaos at times, but there's such joy in the house," Pitt says. And as for the lady in his life? "Angelina and I are together because we can enhance each other. I don't want to waste any time because I'm with company I really, really love." He then added, "I'm sevvvven, but I look a lot olllderrr." Ok no, that was me. I can't stop doing my Benjamin Button impression, you guys. It's becoming a serious problem. It's starting to scarrrre myyy dogggg. [People]

• Did Ellen DeGeneres try to trick Mariah Carey into admitting she's pregnant? Mariah was a guest on Ellen's show, and after Ellen asked and got a vague response, she busted out the champagne, saying, "You don't have to answer that. Let's just toast with champagne." Mariah got flustered and said, "I can't believe you did this to me, Ellen," and pretended to sip the bubbly. Knocked up? [Yahoo News via E!]
• Someone's not pregnant: Sarah Jessica Parker in the Sex And The City sequel. Carrie won't be having a kid. "It doesn't seem as if that's going to be a choice she'll make… Michael (Patrick King, director) and I never talk about it. That doesn't mean that won't be part of the story. We just haven't figured it out. It feels a little bit manipulative to toss that into the mix, because she seems so pointed in a different direction." [Daily Express]
• Kanye West and hot hot model Sessilee Lopez: Is it on? [The Sun]
• Madonna has hired a specialist to help her "exorcise the memories" of her ex-husband, Guy Ritchie, from her home. The technique seems to involve throwing shit away. [Mirror]
• Madonna and A-Rod are in Miami together right now, having just landed in a private jet. [TMZ]

• What's this? Even though his ex, Cynthia, claimed Rodriguez would be spending Thanksgiving with Madonna, a source says A-Rod "has been in Florida for days" and "always had every intention of spending the holiday" there with his ex-wife and daughters? [People]
• In other news, Madonna's brother is going to direct a "teen thriller" called Twist. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Britney Spears wants to go back on the road again. She and her conservators have asked the court to allow her to go on a U.S. tour next year: She'd need to make deals with backup singers, roadies, venues, ticket brokers, etc., but legally can't make any of the deals herself. [TMZ]
• Britney will be in New York next week — her album drops Tuesday, so she's hitting Good Morning America, but it's also her 27th birthday. So she'll also have a "very private circus-themed" birthday party that night. Waiting for our invitation! [Page Six]
• The chick from The Rules is offering dating advice to Jennifer Aniston. Says Sherrie Schneider, who co-wrote the infamous dating manual with Ellen Fein: "Never mention Brad's or John Mayer's name in public. Also, don't say anything bad about John, like when you said he was missing a sensitivity chip. Never talk about Angelina or call her 'uncool', even if she was uncool. She does not exist in your world. You are going to be 40 soon. You have no time to waste if you want kids." What's that eyeroll emoticon again? [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Lily Allen and Agyness Deyn got strip searched when they went to Dubai. Lily says: "I knew I didn’t have anything on me so I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t paranoid, just terrified." Agyness agrees: "It was really traumatic. It wasn’t the best experience in the world, but it is their culture and you just have to respect it." [The Sun]
• Ivanka Trump sure is fueling those rumors she might get engaged to boyfriend Jared Kushner — she's guest blogging for Brides.com the first week of December, writing about her style and her jewelry line. [WWD]
• Model Jessica Stam is dating Austin Cregg, the son of '80s pop music icon Huey Lewis. He's facing jail time for marijuana possession and scrawling graffiti. [Page Six]
• An upcoming Law & Order episode will have a young male "supermodel" die in a way that is eerily similar to the way Heath Ledger did. [Page Six]
• Ricki Lake is on Match.com. Go Ricki! [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• Oh no, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem might be on the rocks: They'd agreed to take a break from movies for a year, then he took a part in a film. She wanted to adopt a baby from India because she "admires Angelina Jolie." [ONTD]
• Pete Wentz freaked out when his wife, Ashlee was about to give birth: "Right before she went into labor, I was like, 'Oh, my god, I think I'm having a heart attack,'" he says. "My heart started beating real fast. You see your wife is in all this pain. And I don't know what's happening right now. She took care of me and made sure I was okay and then went into labor. That's why she's a saint." [People]
• For the second day in a row, a story about how Reese Witherspoon totally got along with Vince Vaughn while shooting Four Christmases. "Vince is the funniest person I've ever worked with. It was a challenge for me to stay there and keep up with him." The lady doth protest too much? [Yahoo News]
• Natalie Portman doesn't understand celibacy. [Page Six]
• Roger Friedman on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: "Innovative, creative, technologically advanced… [Brad Pitt] is Gollum from Lord of the Rings meeting Robert Redford, with a better wardrobe." [Fox 411]
• Rachael Ray's Christmas will be a silent night: "I'm having voice surgery on Dec. 16, so we're going to celebrate very quietly," she says. [People]
• Are Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's parents broke? [Page Six]
• Audrina Patridge on Heidi and Spencer's elopement: "I am surprised and not surprised at the same time." Haha, because you know that they're contractually obligated to make headlines for Us magazine? She also says: "I do think it's very romantic that they eloped." [People]
• Uh-oh, director John Waters is being sued for adding "Santa Claus is a Black Man" to his Christmas album without permission. [Daily Express]
• Tragic: You know how Kanye West's mom died after plastic surgery? Her nephew, a registered nurse, was supervising her post-surgery care and may have left her bedside to attend a baby shower — he's being investigated. [People]
• Village Voice reporter Michael Musto hit the Milk premiere party, where Marc Jacobs told him he cried and shook his leg emotionally through the whole movie. "I'm for anything gay," the designer said. "The world would be a better place if everyone was gay." "Look, around," Musto urged. "They are!" Meanwhile, Carson Kressley said: "I'm lactose-intolerant, but I loved Milk." [Village Voice]
• TMZ the TV show: Renewed. [Yahoo News]
• File under news you can't use: Katie "Jordan" Price and Peter Andre sunbathe naked; Peter has a "brown willy." [Perez Hilton]
• Carson Daly has a girlfriend? And she's pregnant? [ONTD]
• U2, Jay-Z, Coldplay and R.E.M. are among the bands contributing music to (RED)WIRE, a new download service aligned with Bono’s (PRODUCT)RED campaign. [Rolling Stone]
• Don't know much about country singer Chuck Wicks, but he is "very much in love" with Dancing With The Stars' Julianne Hough, so that's nice. [People]
• Mel Gibson, what hast thou done? A Superior Court Judge wants you to explain why a screenwriter claims he was screwed out of $10 million from the 2004 megahit The Passion Of The Christ [Yahoo News via E!]
• TV chef Gordon Ramsay has made a "groveling apology" to his wife after admitting to meeting his mistress four times. [Daily Mail]
• "There's always someone telling you not to make a movie. When I did Born on the Fourth of July, they said, 'This is going to ruin your career. What are you doing?' Suicide? I’ve committed it. There were people who didn’t want me to make Top Gun. [My character], Stauffenberg, went from saying, 'Someone should shoot that bastard' to realizing, I’m the only one who can do it. You can’t really know until you're under that kind of pressure. I'm not saying this in some chest-pounding way, but I do feel I'd have that kind of courage." — Tom Cruise, defending his Nazi movie, Valkyrie, in Details. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "We came up with the idea Bronx. We've been throwing [ideas] back and forth a while. It's kind of cool to just leave the narrative what it is. People are stoked or pissed or whatever. And you're like, you know what: I don't think anyone really has the real story." — Pete Wentz on why he named his kid Bronx Mowgli. [People]

Earlier: Mag Hag
Sarah Jessica Parker Doesn't Care About Money Except When She Does
Mag Hag

Wall Street Journal:

The production captures the way TV used to be — before cable, alas, and before the advent of groundbreaking shows, like SATC, that pushed, ripped and shredded the envelope of episodic entertainment. It's fitfully enjoyable, and maybe better than that for those who loved the series and have been waiting eagerly for more. But in contrast to the series, which was quick-witted, fast-paced and self-ironic — oh, and sexy — the movie is earnest, often aimless (couldn't anyone cook up a plot?), visually bland (except for the fashion shows) and, at two minutes short of 2½ hours, a decreasingly amiable meander. Here's one helping of more that manages to be less.

The New Yorker:

Not a drop of the forthcoming plot had been leaked in advance, but I took a wild guess. “Apparently,” I said to the woman behind me in line, “some of the girls have problems with their men, break up for a while, and then get back together again.” “Oh, my God!” she cried. “How do you know?”...I was never sure how funny the TV series was meant to be. It kept lapsing into a straight face, even a weepy one, as the characters’ contentment came under serious threat. This uncertainty survives into the movie, which made me laugh precisely once, as a magazine editor let fly with a Diane Arbus gag. It is no coincidence that she is played by Candice Bergen, who gets just the one scene, but who is nonetheless the only bona-fide movie star on show. You cannot simply shift a load of television actors onto a movie screen and expect them to command its greater expanse; only one in a thousand will be able to summon that mysterious confluence of presence and reserve on which stardom relies—the will both to offer oneself to the camera and yet to keep back the hidden, unguessable sources of that self. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Kim Cattrall’s come-ons wilt in the transition; but who would have guessed that Sarah Jessica Parker, a nimble performer who has had a career in movies aside from the TV show, should also seem diminished and ill at ease?

The New York Times:

There was something seductive about the bubble world that the show created back in 1998, in the fantasy that all you needed to make it through the rough patches were good friends and throwdown heels. That was a beautiful lie, as the show acknowledged in its gently melancholic return in the wake of Sept. 11. Back in Season 3 Carrie asked, “Are we getting wiser, or just older?” The ideal, of course, is to do both. There is something depressingly stunted about this movie; something desperate too. It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick.

Slate:

The movie's initially brisk pacing slackens when the girls spend a holiday in Mexico that's long enough for them to cycle through an entire resort-wear collection. Samantha disappears entirely for stretches, and her story arc contains some of the movie's most painfully unfeminist jokes (in which we learn, for example, that vigilant pubic grooming and toned abs are essential to female self-esteem). And an attempt to address the series' endemic whiteness by adding a subaltern black character—Jennifer Hudson as Carrie's designer-bag-toting Girl Friday—is a major misfire that only underscores our heroine's oblivious entitlement. But if you bear even a grudging affection for the show's utopic vision of female bonding as the greatest love of all, you may get choked up when Carrie appears at Miranda's door one shitty New Year's Eve (clad only in pajamas, a sequined cloche, a full-length fur, and what appear to be patent-leather spats) and reassures her friend, "You're not alone."

Los Angeles Times:

For a film that delights in indulging in frivolity at every possible turn, it examines subjects that most movies don't dare graze for their terrifying seriousness. And when it does, the movie handles them with surprising grace, wit and maturity. In other words, it's a movie for grown-ups of all ages. The press and industry screening I attended was uncharacteristically packed with women in their 20s, and my guess is that their interest had zero to do with the inclusion of Jennifer Hudson as Carrie's personal assistant — though her character, Louise, is likable and allows the writer to expand the scope of the film from a story about four friends living in New York into a tale about the contemporary lives of urban women from early adulthood to maturity.

Salon:

Admittedly, it's harder to get away with lapses like that when you're dealing with characters that a large part of your potential audience feel they already know. Then again, why mangle perfectly good characters for the sake of your plot? The psychodrama between Carrie and Big, which looms over the movie like an oppressive mushroom cloud, does play out in a way that's true to both their characters. But King takes far too long to get to the point. What's more, the movie's second and third bananas — played by appealing actors like Willie Garson, Mario Cantone and the aforementioned Handler — have almost nothing to do. King rustles together a quickie romance for two of his minor characters, but the thing is so amateurly taped together (and so minor) that you wonder why he even bothered.

The Independent:

It certainly has its faults, from the superficial – Carrie looks like a witchy, old drag queen when she dyes her hair dark, and Samantha wears too much fur – to the serious. I seriously hated the ending. But this is not a real film, in the sense of Oscar-worthy performances or scriptwriters. It's just a big, blown-up, brash version of the show, like watching five of the soppier episodes back-to-back. But as anyone who has ever spent a day snuggled up on the sofa with a box set will know, that's no bad thing.

Daily Mail:

In years to come, I suspect - and hope - that people will watch this movie, laugh at the naivety of its faux sophistication, and find its assumptions as quaint, bigoted and unconsciously racist as those of Gone With The Wind. Horribly, but typically, the four leading women end up believing, I kid you not, that their biggest fault is not loving themselves enough. One of them actually leaves her lover with the gob- smacking line: 'I love you, but I love me more.'

The Guardian:

It is all very trivial and disposable, and yet for all its contrivances, its brand-name silliness and its amplified problems afflicting the comfortably-off metropolitan classes, I can't help thinking this is still a cut above the sinister romcom slush that we are fed, week in, week out. It is still unusual to see a film that features women as the leading characters of their own lives, and which attempts to imagine life after marriage. Like something glutinous from the pudding menu, Sex and the City isn't exactly wholesome, but it won't do you much harm this once.

Rolling Stone:

Some dudes say they'd rather light their dicks on fire than endure this movie version of the ultimate in TV chickcoms. Snap out of it, guys, you just might learn something. If the film didn't go on for a punishing two and a half hours, including two fashion shows and countless designer name-checks, I might call it must-viewing for men who are clueless about the female psyche. Come on, what men aren't?

Sex and the City: The Movie opens today.

All the women in Jungle and Mafia are high-powered to the point of absurdity. They're all uber-wealthy, they're all at the tippy-top of their fields. They have assistants to wait on them and they seem fairly unencumbered by the basic functions that weigh the rest of us all down. SatC was built around the little things — they constructed an entire episode around Carrie farting. But in the few glimpses of Jungle and Mafia that I've seen, the women are portrayed in the broadest strokes possible. Say what you will about Sex and the City, but those women, as Michael Patrick King says in the interview with W, "were always alive for me."

It's not really the series' fault that legions of superficial women embraced only the basest parts of the show — the pink drinks, the rich men, the heels worth one month's rent — and ignored its soul, which was marked by clever observations and often-relatable storylines. I'm not claiming that SaTC was Hamlet, but I do think it was something special, and that's why the movie is so hotly anticipated. "The real pressure, for me, is I have these four characters that people care about and know so well," King tells W. "There's a lot of expectation about what these women should be doing." As long as you focus on keeping it real, Mr. King, you're all right with me.

Bed Fellow [W]

Related: Extended Sex And The City Trailer: Carrie Gets Jilted! (LOL)
OMG! It's The Sex And The City Movie Trailer!

Major brands and designers around the world spent months jockeying for prominent placement on this high-profile movie runway. Money was offered, calls made, favours called in and publicists begged to get their brands on the backs of this glamorous quartet of women.

Brand strategist agencies work as corporate matchmakers and are involved in the movie-making process from the very beginning. They are given advance copies of scripts in order to analyse whether there are opportunities for a partnership, giving money to the studio in exchange for promotion.

Forget the fact that the large majority of writers can't afford head-to-toe designer wardrobes (trust us on this one), Carrie Bradshaw's wardrobe is unrealistic because it isn't even comprised of what a writer would want to wear even if she could afford to. But hell, who cares? After all, what is narrative integrity compared to cold, hard cash?

Cash and Carrie: How Top Designers Have Spent Millions To Get Their Outfits in the SATC Movie [Daily Mail]

Earlier: OMG It's The Sex And The City Movie Trailer
Patricia Field + Barbie = A Drag Queen's Wet Dream

That sort of wanton lust, it's just not at the surface of their skin anymore. What's important to me is that Carrie isn't frivolous and silly, that there is sophistication to her. She's making a serious attempt at making grown-up decisions about love and about life choices

32-year-olds go out and get drunk and sleep with inappropriate men in bars downtown. And 42-year-old girls maybe don't. Today they're out in front of the library getting married. That would've never happened in the 32-year-old New York.

I missed the whole thing. I missed the fictional people. I missed the real people. I missed the crew and the day-to-day of shooting the series.

I sometimes get blamed for the meatpacking district, yes. And I'm sorry. But it can be nice on certain nights. And it can be awful on other nights. Like New York, you know?

That is all. You may vomit a little in your mouth and return to your work now.

More 'Sex,' and the City Is Happy About It [NYT]