Good news: when Michael Fleisher was made vice chairman of Warner Music Group last November, part of the deal was a gift to him of 450,00 shares of restricted stock in the company. At the time, WMG stock was at $2.77.

Interesting footnote, just FYI: according to ‘this SEC 8-K filing from WMG, Fleisher got the job in September when the stock was around $8.50. But the deal wasn’t done until November, when the price had fallen around five bucks. That’s when Fleisher locked in his purchase price for future stock buys at $2.77.

During the ensuing months, of course, the stock had plummeted, eventually hitting a low of around $1.50. Who could have guessed that it would drop so between the time Fleisher signed his deal and the day he locked in his price? And that the price would then skyrocket again?

But in the last few months, WMG has been mysteriously and inexplicably on the rise (although this Billboard analysis has its theories). On Tuesday the stock price hit $7.47. And what did Fleisher do? He sold, of course. He made $2,964,000 on the sale of 400,000 shares. And he still has another 400,000 options to buy at $2.77.

That’s quite a reward for an executive at a company that’s failed to do anything remotely successful and whose CEO’Edgar Bronfman, Jr.‘ just announced he was moving to London, far away from the daily decision making that’s so far marked his reign of incompetence at WMG.

Cool.

The big question now is, who sells next? Bronfman or vice chairman’Lyor Cohen? They each plunked down huge amounts in the millions to buy shares when the price was $5.29 back on March 15, 2008. If they sell now, they’ll make $2 per share. But perhaps they’ll wait and gamble that the stock will rise some more for no reason.

WMG currently has two albums bearing its name on Billboard’s Top 25 albums, and two others’by Nickelback’that are part of a now-ended distribution deal.

The New York Post’s Michael Riedel must have a lot of time on his hands — certainly enough to flip through the British papers and take their stories.

Over the weekend they lifted a story out of Britain’s Daily Mail, and from pre-eminent theater and celebrity writer Baz Bamigboye.

The story in question is about author Helen Fielding bringing her “Bridget Jones’s Diary” stories to Broadway and the West End as a musical.

Bamigboye broke the story on Friday, May 15th in his weekly column in the Daily Mail. He confirmed the musical with producer Eric Fellner of Working Title Productions. The famed London reporter — who recently got headlines in Cannes for challenging director Lars Von Trier over his horrifying “Antichrist” film,’ even wrote about a secret reading of a script. held at the insidery Ivy Restaurant in London.

The Mail story also noted that Stephen Daldry and Peter Darling, the award-winning director and choreographer of the “Billy Elliot” musical (and film), were in the audience.

You can read it here

All of this didn’t deter Riedel from stealing the scoop. He simply waited two weeks and posted it as if it were new on May 29th in the New York Post. He re-interviewed Fellner and pretended that he, Riedel, had the scoop. He didn’t, and he should be ashamed.

It’s definitely the spring of James Gandolfini.

Famously known far and wide as Tony Soprano, Gandolfini used to worry that he’d always be typecast as a lurking Mafia chieftain or just a plain brute.

But look what happened: Tony has a Tony nomination for Best Actor in the play ‘God of Carnage.’ On Sunday, it’s possible he could surprise everyone and wind up taking the gold statue home.

And next Friday, June 12, Gandolfini really wipes the slate clean. He plays the Mayor of New York City in the remake of ‘The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.’ His mayor, accompanied by a put-upon deputy (John Benjamin Hickey, cheated out of a Tony nomination this season, by the way, from ‘Mary Stuart’), is quite the modern creation. He’s a billionaire who’s not seeking re-election’sort of Bloomberg in reverse.

Gandolfini’s mayor also gets off a good line about Rudy Giuliani that’s already met with laughter in advance screenings. The former mayor and would-be governor/senator should take heed of this in-theatre referendum.

But good for Gandolfini: his mayor’who has no character name’is no Tony Soprano. He’s smart and sophisticated. He even comes up with a key revelation that kicks the movie into its next phase. In most movies the politicians come off as idiots. Not so this time. If only our real-life mayor were this quick on his feet, we wouldn’t have people sitting on plastic garden chairs in the middle of Times Square!

All of the new ‘Pelham,’ by the way, is cast with top-notch character actors in the tradition of the original film. That cast looks like a championship team in retrospect: Walter Matthau, a pre ‘Jaws,’ post ‘Sting’ Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman, James Broderick (Matthew’s father), Jerry Stiller, Doris Roberts, Kenneth McMillan, and Tony Roberts as that assistant mayor.

Director Tony Scott has at least the same depth in his new cast. He’s got stars Denzel Washington and John Travolta totally reinvented as characters. Denzel either gained a bunch of weight or put on a chub-suit to become a convincing subway motorman. It’s Travolta’s best character work since ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Michael.’ And then Scott has the great John Turturro, Michael Rispoli, Luis Guzman, Frank Wood, Brian Haley, Ramon Rodriguez, Aunjanue Ellis, and a terrific find from ‘The Wire’ named Gbenga Akinnagbe. Denzel and Turturro, by the way, are great together, and trump the memory of their other picture together, Spike Lee’s ‘Mo’ Better Blues.’

Just wait and see if 20 years from now, this cast doesn’t look a championship team.

Mandy Moore is just 25 years old. Doesn’t it seem like she should be around 40 by now? She’s been around for eons, starting as a teen star. Originally she was lumped in with Britney, Christina Aguilera, and that gang. Moore had one semi-hit called ‘Candy,’ (co-written by none other than Denise Rich), got into acting, but has never been totally focused.

Her bid to be taken seriously took her into an album called ‘Coverage’ where she random shuffled hits by the likes of XTC, Carole King, Joan Armatrading, and Cat Stevens. Then, just to add to the confusion, she married not a pop-star like Justin Timberlake, but went anti-Britney with the decade older indie star Ryan Adams. Weird, huh?

What does Mandy Moore want? Last night she hit Joe’s Pub to showcase her new album. ‘Amanda Leigh,’ and a Kelly Clarkson-ish catchy single ‘I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week.’ Adams was there. So were a cross-section of fans from girls who loved ‘Candy,’ to newer enthusiasts of Moore’s Joni Mitchell-esque persona.

From these songs, it sounded like Moore is actually going through an Aimee Mann phase. She’s got a producer/co-writer/musical director named Mike Viola who’s her own Jon Brion. Add this to the Clarkson single, a lot of Joni Mitchell, and a pinch of Stevie Nicks, and Moore brings new meaning to the word ‘eclectic.’

Still, in all, she can sing. And on stage she’s completely personable. There’s no doubt she wants to be taken seriously, which is fine. But her best number of the night was a reworked more adult version of ‘Candy,’ that lifted her from tortured 40 year old artist to really cool 25 year old pop singer. Call it smart pop. When Moore finds that groove again, she’ll have hits. Until then, we can just sit back and appreciate a work in progress.

Trumpet player Chris Botti has finally bought a house. For the last few years, the blond horn man has lived only out of suitcases, staying in hotels and crashing on friends’ couches.

No more.

He told me yesterday, right before a New Hampshire gig, that he caved in a few months ago and took advantage of lower interest rates.

His new home is in the Hollywood Hills, of course. And it came completely furnished. “I walked in and I’ll take it, with everything. From the ash trays to the soap dishes.”

Apparently the house had just been “staged” for a magazine photo shoot. The new buyer liked what he saw. “It was done very tastefully.” Friends Sting and Trudie Styler came over to see the place–probably thrilled to get Botti out of their guest room.

“They couldn’t believe how nice it was,” he told me.

Now Botti swings through New York tomorrow for a sold-out show at the Beacon Theater, and then on to more shows, and more shows, and more. He’ll get a chance to live in the house in August, during a rare break from touring.

“It might be nice to have a break,” he joked. Reminds me of the Gang of Four song: “At home he feels like a tourist.”

About 200 lucky fans got a great wish granted last night: they saw Elvis Costello play an acoustic set of songs from his newest album in a downtown New York Irish pub.

Costello’s “secret show” was an excellent way to promote his new collection, produced with T Bone Burnett, called “Secret, Profane, & Sugarcane.”

The show — at Jim Brady’s on Maiden Lane, near Wall Street — came after Costello’s performance on NBC’s “Today” show, where he played what’s turning into a smart little hit, “Sulphur to Sugarcane.”

During the set, fans learned that Costello — whose eclectic career runs from power pop to punk to opera, Burt Bacharach and more — was influenced this time by stories about Hans Christian Andersen, Jenny Lind, and P.T. Barnum.

Lind, the Danish opera star of the 1800s, Costello declared was “the Celine Dion of her day.”

Andersen, he noted, who died in 1875, was “extremely ugly.”

Costello also told deejays from New York rock station WRXP FM, 101.9, which sponsored the event, that the one collaborator he was sorry he’d missed working with was Shakespeare. “He had some good lyrics.”

In that regard, Costello — newly svelte and ready to hit the road for a summer tour — revealed that he and country legend Loretta Lynn were working on a song tentatively titled, “Thank God for Jesus.”

“It’s incredible that no one thought of that song before,” he said.

Costello, thirty-plus years into an astonishing career, is clearly not aiming his music toward the Britney Spears set. As usual, his songs are urbane and catchy. He’s still challenging his audience even as he’s sweeping them off their feet with sweet pop melodies, justaposed with complex lyrics.

My favorite, from “My All Time Doll”: “In the far flung cry of a closing saloon/On the blank back side of that poisonous moon/I tried not to think about you/I thought I was immune.”

Take that, Spears fans.