Elvis Mitchell's life is more interesting than yours.

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By Alison Willmore on 08/05/2008

Filed under: Critic watch

Nationally known film critic Elvis Mitchell is trying to get back nearly $12,000 he carried in a cigar box through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
Mitchell was entering Detroit in a cab from Windsor on April 26 when a luggage search turned up $11,817 in U.S. currency and 15 Cuban cigars, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agency wants to keep the cash because Mitchell didn't declare it in Detroit or three days earlier when he flew to Toronto from New York. Anyone carrying more than $10,000 outside the country or into the United States must report it.

Mitchell said he grabbed the wrong box when he left home in New York and was too embarrassed to disclose the money.

"An awful and dumb situation," Mitchell said Monday.

Also on the critic front: David Elliott, former critic at the San Diego Union, and before that the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News, is interviewed at San Diego Magazine (tip of the hat to Movie City News):

Criticism is personal journalism so people respond personally. Only a fool would try to be "a cross-section of the American public," which is what Charlie Kane called his second wife. Your taste can really tick some people off. One woman raged that I was unpatriotic because I panned For the Boys, Bette Midler's awful soaper. When I praised Casino, someone said I was endorsing gambling. My dislike of Forrest Gump churned up quite a few people. But I give thanks to many loyal and also demanding readers ... Movies are a cafeteria. If you can't fill your tray with many forms of stimulation, you should be in the little diner that only serves your private menu. I may be the only American reviewer who was moved by the corny but astonishing Titanic, and yet also admired the Portuguese nightmare vision about a gay cruiser, O Fantasma. Now there's a double bill.

[Photo: Elvis Mitchell, from "The Black List: Volume One," HBO, 2008]