Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times gives Sylvester Stallone's Rambo one of several so-so and/or grudgingly complimentary reviews. "Rambo hits his stride in the film's second half, meting out justice in an unjust world and ultimately the movie works best when warbling its out-of-tune greatest hits." (Indeed, the film has the greatest number of hits of any Rambo movie -- a professor of national security studies at Ohio State counted 236 killings.) Besides, Crust says, "There's something oddly touching about Stallone's march down memory lane." Stallone was the writer and director of the movie, as well as its star, and Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle acknowledges that he provides "a straight-ahead action film that makes the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan look like a debutante ball. It's 90 minutes of flying, dismembered limbs and explosions of blood, but give the man credit. Stallone can do action. If you want action and nothing but, here it is." A.O. Scott in the New York Times compares the Rambo character to the "samurais and gunslingers" of classic films and concludes, "Mr. Stallone is smart enough -- or maybe dumb enough, though I tend to think not -- to present the mythic dimensions of the character without apology or irony. His face looks like a misshapen chunk of granite, and his acting is only slightly more expressive, but the man gets the job done. Welcome back." But Kyle Smith in the New York Post headlines his review "RAMBOLONEY!" and concludes: "Needlessly violent? No, Rambo is needfully violent. Johnny R. is a man constructed of violence. He can no more do without firing arrows into skulls than a lady poet can do without her yoga. The psychological effects of his métier might be worth considering, but Stallone isn't interested in anything but the next explosion." Several critics predict that the movie should perform well at the box office. The Los Angeles Daily News's Glenn Whipp writes, "Interestingly, the relative absence of this kind of action movie in recent years makes the new Rambo something of a curio that will satisfy genre enthusiasts whose taste for (first) blood cannot be quenched by costumed pansies like Spider-Man." But Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer predicts that modern-day audiences are likely to be disappointed. Calling it a "slab of action porn," she advises that anyone interested in such stuff should "buy the video game. With its first-person-shooter perspective and gun-and-run narrative, this one's for the PlayStation crowd."

The Canadian film How She Move, the critics seem to agree, has all the clichés of similar dance movies. But Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune comments that screenwriter Annmarie Morais "has a way of making the clichés seem new. ... Mainly it's a very solid dance picture." Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times has a similar reaction. "There's nary a twist you don't see coming," he writes, "but the film's strong acting, spectacular dance routines and culturally specific details turn cliches into catharsis. It's the sort of film that sends you home with a spring in your step." Ty Burr in the Boston Globe asks, "How many times can you watch the same movie with different actors and a new title? If it's a dance musical and the dancing's good, the answer's obvious: As many times as they can keep cranking 'em out. No one went to see Astaire-Rogers movies for the plots, and no kid is going to go to How She Move for its hackneyed inspirational story line about an inner-city good girl who wants to step bad. When the cast starts clomping atop a car, their synchronized bodies joining with the booming cross-rhythms, we're sold." Nevertheless, several critics point out numerous shortcomings (beginning with that ungrammatical title for a film about high-schoolers competing for a college scholarship.) Rafer Guzmán in Newsday begins his review this way: "Somewhere between the acrobatic dance sequences and lead-footed script of How She Move there exist fleeting glimpses of a serious film that could have been."

This weekend will provide a box-office test of whether the public will turn out to see a 61-year-old former action star in a role that he first made popular as a much younger man. Sylvester Stallone first introduced the character of John Rambo in 1982 in the movie First Blood. He last appeared as the character in 1988, helping rebels in Afghanistan oust the Soviet Union. (In the interim most of those rebels turned against the U.S.) "Hopefully, what our advertising has done is introduce Rambo to a whole new generation of younger males," Lionsgate distribution chief Steve Rothenberg told today's (Friday) Los Angeles Times. The question among box-office analysts was whether it could top Cloverfield, which had a spectacular opening last weekend. While Rambo is expected to take in $15-20 million, that figure would merely come close to equaling what Cloverfield would bring in if its ticket sales fell by 50 percent. It's also being challenged by the debuting comedy Meet the Spartans, a spoof of last year's 300, which has also been garnering considerable buzz in recent weeks. (Spartans was not screened for critics.)

It hardly sounds like the title of a 007 movie, but producers said Thursday that Quantum of Solace, which will be what the 22nd James Bond flick is to be called, actually comes from a 1960 short story by Bond creator Ian Fleming. The producers of the film also provided further details about it, including that it will pick up the story where Casino Royale left off and that, in addition to the U.K. (at Pinewood studios), it will be filmed in Austria, Italy and South America. The MGM film, to star Daniel Craig, is due to be released by Sony Pictures on Nov. 7.

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert underwent surgery Thursday to rectify complications from previous cancer operations that left him without the ability to speak. Reports said today (Friday) that he remains cancer free and quoted his wife Chaz as saying, "We are grateful to everyone for the continued prayers and concern. The surgery went well, and we look forward to giving you more good news about Roger's recovery in days to come."

Even as "informal" talks continued between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the WGA announced that it had reached separate deals with Canadian-based Lionsgate and Marvel Studios, a subsidiary of the company behind the Marvel superheroes characters. The deals are described as "interim" with "most favored nation" clauses that essentially mean that if the AMPTP negotiates a more beneficial contract for the producers, then that would supersede the current ones. The deal with Lionsgate allows writers to resume work on the Showtime hit Weeds and AMC's Mad Men. More important, Lionsgate is the first movie distributor to sign a separate deal with the WGA. Meanwhile, today's (Friday) New York Times reported that the strike has still not had a significant effect on the bottom line of the major networks, whose primetime ratings "have not dipped in a meaningful way," according to the newspaper, which noted that ratings traditionally dip in December and January. Advertisers have not taken advantage of options in their contracts that would have allowed them to cancel their commitments because of the strike, Michael Parent, head of the national broadcast unit at TargetCast TCM ad agency, told the Times.

The Super Bowl not only means tens of millions of dollars to the network that carries it, but it means far more than that to the manufacturers of big-screen TV sets. The Consumer Electronics Association said that wholesalers will likely gross $2.2 billion from the 2.4 million HDTV sets that are expected to be sold in advance of Super Bowl XLII. Retailers, it noted, will benefit not only from sales of the sets but ancillary items such as surround-sound audio systems, cables, mounting brackets, etc. The CEA also observed that its expects 18 percent of those watching the game on TV will have a laptop PC nearby to check statistics and betting lines and send instant messages to friends who are also watching the game.

Fox says that it did not offer to sell ads during its Super Bowl telecast to presidential candidates in order to comply with FCC regulations regarding political advertising. A spokesman told Advertising Age that Fox would have refused to sell spots to any candidate because of an FCC rule requiring networks to offer equal opportunities to all candidates. He noted that since ad time was quickly grabbed up by commercial advertisers, it would have been impossible to sell spots during the game to all the candidates. However, the trade publication noted that the courts have made exceptions for "unique, one-time only" broadcasts and have held that candidates may not dictate where their "equal opportunity" ads must be placed. This year's Super Bowl, which takes place on February 3, would have been a logical place for such ads, Ad Age observed, since it is held just two days before the Super Tuesday primaries.

The New York rock band Moldy Peaches recently discovered that their CDs had become big hits in Chile because one of their songs, "Jorge Regula," was featured in an ad for Pepsodent toothpaste in that country. Band co-founder Adam Green said that the song was used without authorization -- or payment. He told Britain's New Musical Express, "Recently we've had music in adverts and people haven't even asked. We had to hunt down lawyers in South America to sue toothpaste companies that have used songs of mine."

Fox News commentator John Gibson apologized on his TV show, The Big Story, Thursday for remarks he made on his radio talk show the previous day about the death of Heath Ledger. During the show, he had mocked the late actor as a "weirdo" with a "serious drug problem" and laughed that he may have killed himself in reaction to the plunge in the stock market. He then played a clip from Brokeback Mountain -- a movie that Gibson had once described as a "gay agenda movie" -- in which Ledger utters the famous line "I wish I knew how to quit you." Well, Gibson mocked, "he found out how to quit you." He then played another clip in which Ledger remarked, "We're dead," then repeated the line himself laughing. On Thursday's telecast, Gibson said, "To anyone offended by my comments, I'm sorry. But I'm also sorry Heath Ledger is no longer alive and with us." The gay-rights group GLAAD said it planned to send a petition to Fox News asking why it continues to provide a platform for Gibson's "cruel and tasteless comments."

A publisher who bought ads on Don Imus's radio show last year to promote a book by former President Gerald Ford has sued Imus for more than $4 million for disparaging the book even as he read commercials for it. The publisher, Flatsigned Press, Inc., which said that the books were individually signed by Ford, claims that Imus adlibbed at one point, "Now that he's flatLINED, you go to flatSIGNED.com." After reading a line in the commercial that Ford had "hand-signed" the books, Imus allegedly remarked, "How else would he sign them, with his foot?" The publisher said that its sales dropped $40,000 a day following the Imus broadcast and that some stores refused to stock the Ford book thereafter.