Monday morning magazine round-up

Better late than never, Entertainment Weekly offers its special “Remembering Elizabeth Taylor” tribute, but the cover belongs to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who—you guessed it—is “back!” Also inside is the “Black Swan Scandal,” which, if you didn’t know, is about “how much dancing did Portman really do?” But if you really want an expert’s opinion on Black Swan, dig up Newsweek’s take of a few weeks ago by my friend Toni Bentley, the former Ballanchine ballerina-turned-brilliant essayist/author, who thought the film showed an inaccurate picture of the ballet world.

People seems late, too, even if it is current with its “World Exclusive Photos” cover of “Reese’s Dream Day,” i.e., the “Celebrity Wedding of the Year!” Small upper corner pix present “Ashley Judd’s Shocking Memoir” and “Suri Turns 5!”

Newsweek might as well be People, what with “Kate the Great” on the cover and its own wedding hype (“In a world gone to hell—thank God, a wedding”). In keeping with sensationalism, it places “The Military’s Male-Rape Secret” atop the title, and also highlights “How Kabbalah Killed Madonna’s Charity.” Oh, well. Without a new earthquake, celebrity death or military involvement, it's a slow news week. Too bad Time likely loses out with its serious “Environment Special” and cover shot of “[The] Rock [that] could power the world”: Geologists will recognize the rock in question as shale, which the magazine suggests “can solve the energy crisis.” Inside stories include Joe Klein’s “People power for Palestine,” along with a “Batter up!” guide to the 2011 baseball season.

But The New Yorker’s cover draws attention to the week’s real sports story—The Masters. The clever painting has a hapless golfer up a tree, where his ball has landed on a branch. The gallery watching intently is made up of birds. The big story inside is “The Next Revolution?,” about Yemen’s dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been an ally in the war on terror. Other stories are “Hollywood’s funny-girl problem,” about Anna Faris, and “Robert Murdoch’s press warrior,” about Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson. But there’s no Masters coverage, though today's papers and Web sites are full of 25th anniversary look-backs at Jack Nicklaus’s magical Back Nine of the Fourth Round at Augusta in 1986.

New York, meanwhile, has its first annual “Yesterday’s New York” issue, and devotes the cover entirely to “The Apartment—A History of Vertical Living”: The top half is a color shot of Diane Von Furstenberg’s luxurious domicile, with the bottom actor/poet Taylor Mead’s cluttered bedroom—both exemplifying “the grandest, the smallest, the highest, the scariest….” “Tomorrow’s neighborhoods today” is an inside feature.

And speaking of split-cover clutter, Billboard pictures an upside-down RedOne in its top-half “From Gaga to U2: Turning pop’s new sound around with RedOne,” which is accompanied inside by talk from other top producers. The bottom half leads with “What the music biz can learn from the NYT’s paywall” and also directs readers to “Katy Perry: 4 No. 1s from ‘Teenage Dream,’” “Managing Beyonce: Who will step in?” and “No pub, no prob: Azoff’s Live Nation wants Warner’s recorded music ops,” among others.

jim bessman