SCREENING THE CRITICS

Everybody’s a critic, right? Or wants to be. And when film critic Kenneth Turan defected from California magazine to GQ the other day, California started getting 10 inquiries a day about the job, said an insider. Applicants are wasting their time: Editor-in-Chief Harold Hayes said he’ll “appoint” the critic of his choice soon, without advertising for candidates. GQ did likewise when it picked Turan.

But these are juicy jobs. The San Jose Mercury News took out some ads in Editor & Publisher magazine last year for another movie critic to work with Glenn Lovell.

Arts/Entertainment Editor Lee Grant said applicants ranged from the seasoned (including some prominent critical names) to the neophyte--”whose only qualification is that they just love the movies.” More than a hundred applied. But for naught: The Mercury News has frozen the position for the moment.