Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Happy Birthday | It's a big day for Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter: He celebrates his 60th birthday today! (Gifts, flowers, and cards can be directed to 4 Times Square, 22nd floor.) Others marking off another year today: hedge fund manager Phil Falcone (and the husband of Lisa Maria) is turning 47. Music impresario Tommy Mottola is 60. Movie mega-producer Scott Rudin is turning 51. Fellow film mogul Joel Silver is 57. Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is turning 48. Upper East Side plastic surgeon Sherrell Aston is 67. Actor Matthew Fox is turning 43. Tech luminary Esther Dyson is 58. Hudson News chief Jimmy Cohen is 51. Legal powerhouse Barry Ostrager is turning 62. Actor Harry Dean Stanton is 83. Interior designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz turns 53. Artist Lee Friedlander is 75. And actor Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore celebrates his 63rd birthday today.

• Desperate times, desperate measures: The New York Times is thinking about charging a $5 monthly fee for access to its Web site. [BN, NYP]
• Jay-Z is close to signing a book deal with the Spiegel & Grau imprint of Random House; the book will include "the stories behind his lyrics." [NYO]
• Moneyball lives: Sony Pictures is attempting to salvage the movie by hiring Aaron Sorkin to polish the script and adding Scott Rudin as a producer. [NYT]
• A list of prominent media/web people and their public speaking fees. [PC]
• The media moguls in Sun Valley may not be interested in buying Twitter, but there is some good news: The British royal family has signed up! [AP]
• Discovery Channel has been promoting "Shark Week" by sending out bloody swim trunks and personalized obituaries to reporters. Charming. [Movieline]
• Depressing news: Ryan Seacrest makes a lot more money than you do. [THR]
• Great news: NBC's Jeff Zucker says we may have reached bottom. [B&C]

♦ People got Alex Rodriguez to open up about his relationship with Madonna. Or, you know, maybe not. The slugger claims that they're just "friends—that's it." He also says he's never been on a plane with her, despite the countless photos that clearly indicate otherwise. [People]
♦ Have Tea Leoni and David Duchovny reunited? Star reports they were spotted holding hands at a Tasti D-Lite on the Upper East Side and they've picked up a $7.5 million apartment in the East 70s. [Star]
♦ It looks like Harvey Weinstein and Scott Rudin may have buried the hatchet after Harvey publicly thanked Scott at the premiere of The Reader on Wednesday night. [P6] 
♦ A London jury has found Boy George guilty of false imprisonment for having handcuffed a Norwegian male escort to a wall. [People]More

♦  Sumner Redstone is being forced to sell about one-fifth of his stake in CBS and Viacom to meet the terms of various loan agreements. Also: Shares in Viacom plunged after the company announced third-quarter earnings fell short of estimates. [Bloomberg]
♦  It's official: Hearst's Cathie Black announced CosmoGirl will fold. [Portfolio]
♦  A little perspective: Time Warner is now less than one-quarter of what AOL alone was worth before the merger. [SAI]
♦  After much drama (and a few leaked emails), Scott Rudin has decided to talk away from The Reader. [THR]More

♦  Harvey Weinstein may be a million bucks poorer today. Or maybe not! After yesterday's email debacle, Harvey says he'll donate $1 million to the Robin Hood Foundation once he can verify that Scott Rudin's email is "authentic," which means he'll probably conduct an "investigation" into the matter until it blows over. [P6]
♦  Janet Jackson has been released from the hospital. But fiancé Jermaine Dupri doesn't seem too concerned. He hasn't missed any of his scheduled party appearances the past few days. [People, R&M]
♦  Britney Spears' lawyers have been working overtime to quash the sex tape she made with Adnan Ghalib. [The Sun]
♦  Salma Hayek was spotted in Paris with her ex Francois-Henri Pinault, which means it's time to start speculating about whether they're getting back together. [Daily Star]More

This hasn't been a good week for Harvey Weinstein. Last Friday NBC successfully blocked Weinstein from moving Project Runway from NBC-owned Bravo to Lifetime. Over the past few days, he's also been engaged in an increasingly public (and increasingly messy) feud with producer Scott Rudin over the fate of The Reader, a romantic drama directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. Weinstein had wanted to release the film before the end of year so it could be an Oscar contender, and Rudin claims Weinstein stopped at nothing to move up the film's release date, going as far as to harass producer Sydney Pollock on his deathbed and pressure the grieving widow of Anthony Minghella (another of the film's producers) to make it happen. More

Happy Birthday! | If you happen to work in the Conde Nast building, might we suggest stopping off at Graydon Carter's office to wish him a happy birthday? The Vanity Fair editor turns 59 today. He'll be so pleased to accept your good wishes.

Other people celebrating today: Film producer Scott Rudin turns 50, hedge fund mogul Phil Falcone is 46, and Tommy Mottola will fete his 59th today with wife Thalia. Tech visionary Esther Dyson is 57, city comptroller William Thompson is 52, Jimmy Cohen is 50, attorney  Barry Ostrager is 61, artist Lee Friedlander turns 74, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is 47, and  interior designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz is 56. And Dr. Sherrell Aston, the man who ensures New York's most famous faces never look a day over 30, is turning 66.

So the gays are officially marrying each other in California. And there are a few celebrities sprinkled in among the hordes of couples now rushing to the altar: George "Mr. Sulu" Takei of Star Trek married his partner Brat Altman today, and Ellen DeGeneres says she plans to marry her longtime girlfriend, Portia De Rossi, later this month. But what about here in New York? Which locals are going to take advantage of David Paterson's recent decision to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere and fly out West to pick up a marriage license of their own? More