The reviews were nearly universally dreadful, but 20th Century Fox's Jumper, starring Hayden Christensen, managed to jump to the top of the box-office charts over the weekend. Opening along with most other new movies on Thursday, Valentine's Day, the film took in an estimated $33.9 million in its first four days -- and $27.2 million between Friday and Sunday, the "official" weekend. Surprising analysts, Disney's, Step Up 2 the Streets, its urban version of High School Musical, shot to second place with $19.7 million ahead of The Spiderwick Chronicles, which earned $19.1 million over the weekend and $26.8 million since Thursday. Universal's romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe debuted in fifth place with $9.7 million, behind last weekend's top film, Fool's Gold, which took in $13.1 million. Overall, the box office registered $119 million in ticket sales for the top 12 films, off 16 percent from the comparable weekend a year ago.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers: 1. Jumper, $27.2 million; 2. Step Up 2 the Streets, $19.7 million; 3. The Spiderwick Chronicles, $19.1 million; 4. Fool's Gold, $13.1 million; 5. Definitely, Maybe, $9.7 million; 6. Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, $8.9 million; 7. Juno, $4.6 million; 8. The Bucket List, $4.1 million; 9. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, $3.3 million; 10. 27 Dresses, $3.2 million.

A Toshiba spokesman acknowledged today (Monday) that the company is considering calling it quits in its format battle with Sony over high-definition video players. Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Oomari told the Wall Street Journal that the turning point came last month when Warner Bros. announced it would no longer support Toshiba's HD DVD format and would embrace Sony's Blu-ray format exclusively. "Sales have been hurt since Warner's decision," he said, "and we are considering different options." On Saturday Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that Toshiba plans to discontinue all HD DVD production in Japan this week at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. "If true, this will be good news for the next-generation DVD industry in clearing up the confusion for consumers because of the format competition that had curbed buying," Koya Tabata, electronics analyst at Credit Suisse in Tokyo, told the Associated Press. "This will work toward a profit boost for Sony." But shares of Toshiba also jumped six percent on the Tokyo stock exchange today as analysts praised the company for its decision to cut its continued losses. (Toshiba had been selling HD DVD players for far less than they cost to manufacture in the hope of stimulating sales of software, a hope that proved to be in vain.) An analyst for JP Morgan forecast that dumping HD DVD would add $280 million to Toshiba's operating profit in its next business year beginning in April.

Lackawanna County, PA lawmakers want to know what has happened to the $500,000 it gave actor-director Paul Sorvino to help underwrite a movie that was to be produced in the county called The Trouble with Cali. In the words of County Commissioner Corey O'Brien: "We've heard nothing with respect to our investment. ... We want a full understanding of where taxpayer dollars are." He noted that it has been nearly three years since Sorvino received the money, which the county raised in part by selling the warehouse that housed its Roads and Bridges equipment and vehicles. But Sorvino told the Associated Press that he resents the implications of the lawmaker's remarks. "To have my honesty impugned has never happened in my life," he said. "The record of how the money was spent was always available, to the penny." He added that it takes time to produce an independent film and hopes to be able to show Cali to a distributor in about three or four months. "It's a wonderful movie and I can't wait to get it out," he said.

Message films duly delivered at the Berlin Film Festival Saturday as the top Golden Bear award went to the Brazilian film The Elite Squad about a corrupt and violent police squad that tortured and sometimes killed drug suspects. The runner-up Silver Bear award -- the Grand Jury Prize -- went to Errol Morris's documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Paul Thomas Anderson received the best director award for There Will Be Blood, based on Socialist novelist Upton Sinclair's novel about the turn-of-the-century oil industry. The best actor award went to Iran's Reza Naji for his performance in The Song of Sparrows, while British actress Sally Hawkins took the actress award for her role in Mike Leigh's comedy Happy-Go-Lucky.

The BBC has landed an interview with Phil Spector, the music producer and accused murderer, which is due to air in April. Speaking to London's Sunday Observer, Vikram Jayanti, who directed the documentary, said, "An interview with Spector has been the Holy Grail for arts documentary makers for many years and I think he agreed to speak to us because he felt that we were inspired by a sense of empathy, though not of sympathy. We intend no disrespect to the dead woman. The whole thing was clearly tragic." The dead woman is actress Lana Clarkson, whom Spector is accused of shooting. He is due to be retried on the charge in September.

It's not often that a network musical-variety show winds up at the top of the ratings, but CBS's Celine Dion special, That's Just the Woman in Me did just that Friday night. Nevertheless, the ratings were hardly anything for the network to boast about, as viewers -- particularly young adults -- continued to desert their television sets on Friday nights. The Dion special drew a 5.2 rating and a 9 share in the 9:00 hour, not much better than NBC's game show 1 vs. 100 did an hour hour earlier when it registered a 5.1/9. Two back-to-back episodes of NBC's Las Vegas at 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. also drew an almost identical 5.0/9 and 5.1/9 respectively. In fact, two reruns of Fox's House turned out to be the real winners of the night among adults 18-49, even though they averaged just a 4.3/8 in overall households.

Clear Channel Communications has sued Newport Television, a unit of private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, accusing it of trying to walk away from a $1.2-billion deal to buy its 56 television stations. (It is separately selling its radio stations to Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital for $19.5 billion.) In a filing in Delaware Chancery Court, Clear Channel said that after agreeing on the deal, Newport informed it that it was experiencing "buyers remorse," In a statement, Andrew Cole, a spokesman for Providence, said that the group was "surprised and disappointed" by Clear Channel's suit, which came "as we were trying to work out a mutually acceptable arrangement in difficult market conditions."

The FCC says that it will begin mailing out $40 coupons this week to help owners of analog TV sets who still receive programs over the air buy converter boxes so that they will be able to receive digital signals. The boxes will be available in nearly 10,000 stores, including most of the "big box" warehouse outlets like Wal-Mart, Circuit City and Best Buy for $40-70. Some consumer groups have expressed concern, however, that digital signals may not travel as far as analog ones and that the settop converter boxes will therefore be useless in some areas when the mandated switchover to digital occurs next year.

New television sets being manufactured this year are being equipped with outlets that will allow users to connect the sets directly to the Internet, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Monday). The connectors will eventually allow them to receive television shows on demand, as well as weather forecasts, stock quotes, and YouTube videos, the newspaper noted. George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal's chief digital officer, told the Times that while most consumers have shied away from additional set-top boxes for such programming, a connection built into the TV set is likely to have a chance. "It brings the ability to have unlimited channel capacity, personalized channels -- a celestial video jukebox in the sky," he said. David Eun, Google's vice president of content partnerships, added, "This is about making content accessible to as many viewers as possible."