Hoping to present itself to that segment of the moviegoing audience that prefers to see a little more class on screen, director Julian Jarrold's film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited is expanding to 364 theaters this weekend. As Claudia Puig observes in USA Today, it's a movie for "those who are weary of summer's bawdy comedies and superheroes." Unfortunately, despite its impressive pedigree, it has not been welcomed enthusiastically by critics. A.O. Scott in the New York Times, who compares it with the PBS miniseries that aired in 1982, says that while the new production is "more cinematic" than the older one, "it is also tedious, confused and banal." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times observes that while the TV series was "inspired," the movie is "somewhat less inspired." He concludes, "While elegantly mounted and well acted, the movie is not the equal of the TV production, in part because so much material had to be compressed into such a shorter time." Like most of his colleagues, Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal compares the movie with the TV series and can't figure out why anyone even attempted to make the movie. "If it's a choice between the movie's 135 minutes or the 659 minutes of the miniseries (which has been re-mastered and re-released in a lavish four-disk edition), I'd say it's no choice at all. The shorter version is the one that seems long," he writes. And Kyle Smith in the New York Post simply dismisses the entire production as a "well-polished relic."

Shares of Blockbuster took another hit Thursday as it reported a $44.7-million loss in the last quarter, worse than analysts had expected. It blamed the loss on the costs of closing unproductive stores (it dumped 233 of them last year) severance pay to laid-off employees, and the legal costs incurred in its failed effort to take over Circuit City Stores. On the other hand, it said, sales at its remaining 7,619 stores rose 9 percent in the quarter, leading CEO James Keyes to predict that the company would wind up with a profit of $21-36 million for the year. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the demise of Blockbuster has been greatly exaggerated," Keyes said.

In a settlement that neither side applauded, investor Ron Perelman has agreed to pay $80 million to bring to an end a lawsuit filed in 1997 in which he is accused of diverting $553.5 million from Marvel Entertainment, which he controlled at the time, to some of his other companies before Marvel filed for bankruptcy in 1996. Of the $80 million, $25.9 million will go to cover legal expenses incurred over the 11 years since the suit was filed. It has been bouncing around the federal court system ever since. Litigation trustees issued a statement saying that they believed it would have been "irresponsible" for them to reject the $80-million settlement, while attorneys for Perelman, the head of Revlon, said that he wanted "to settle the action solely to avoid the burden, expense and uncertainty of continued litigation."

Dennis Hopper may seem to have mellowed considerably since his days as Hollywood's enfant terrible in the late '60s and '70s, but he is still capable of biting the hand that feeds him. In an interview with the New York Daily News's "Rush & Molloy" column, Hopper complains that many of his scenes in the Kevin Costner movie Swing Vote ended up on the proverbial cutting-room floor. Hopper, who plays a Democratic presidential candidate in the film, says that he "got cut out of the movie. ... My [character's ] subplot was completely cut. ... When I saw the final cut, I thought, 'I'm not even in this movie!'" Neither Costner, the director, Joshua Stern, nor the distributor, Disney, would comment on Hopper's complaint.

The coming switchover to digital television has boosted the number of DirecTV subscribers and in the process boosted the satellite-TV provider's profits. The company said Thursday that its net income rose to $455 million from $448 million during the same quarter a year ago as it added 129,000 new subscribers to bring its total to 17.2 million. CEO Chase Carey said that DirecTV has also fended off its rivals by boosting the number of HDTV channels it offers subscribers. By the end of this month, he said, that number will expand to 130.

NBC executives have apparently leaned over backwards to please the next president of the United States -- regardless of who he may be. According to MediaPost's online MediaDailyNews, while the network has charged other advertisers $700,000 and up for a 30-second spot during the Olympics, it charged Barack Obama and John McCain's campaigns only $250,000. The ad buys were made by two Washington-area political consulting firms, Media Ad Ventures (McCain) and GMMB (Obama). One advertising executive who purchased spots during the Olympics told the trade publication, "Whoever bought this, I want working for me." An NBC spokesperson said only that the network "worked very closely with both campaigns to provide them with this singular opportunity to reach millions of American voters." Earlier in the day the network said that it had tallied $1 billion in total ad revenue for the Games, for which it had paid the IOC $894 million.

Fox's season finale of So You Think You Can Dance Thursday night produced the series' best ratings for a results show this summer, drawing nearly 10 million viewers and beating every other show in sight. Wednesday night's performance show also bested the competition. Ratings for the final broadcasts were almost identical to last year's.

Suggesting that NBC and other media outlets covering the Beijing Olympics will have much more than sports to report about during the next 17 days, a pirate radio station went on the air in the Chinese capital early today (Friday), just 12 hours before the start of the opening ceremonies. The station, broadcasting in both English and Mandarin Chinese, was apparently set up by Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. It demanded the release of reporters held in prison in China for defying the country's Communist rulers. "China is the country of censorship, and this program is our way of making fun of the Chinese authorities who still keep hundreds of journalists and Internet users in prison," a voice on the station said, adding that the broadcast was "our way of saying: 'Whatever measures you take you will never be able to abolish the right to free speech.'"

The BBC reminded its viewers today (Friday) that it was the first television network ever to televise an entire Olympic Games -- back in 1948 when the Summer Olympics were held at London's Wembley Stadium. At the time it beamed 68 hours of live, black-and-white coverage -- "an enormous technical achievement" back then -- to the country's 50,000 homes that had television sets. During the coming 17 days, it noted, it will broadcast almost 3,000 hours of live and taped coverage from Beijing in high-definition color TV, plus additional hours on its websites. It said that 437 staff members, ranging from producers to announcers to technical crew members to translators, have been sent from London to cover 192 events in 31 locations.