Love the concept, hate the execution. That's essentially the attitude of most critics to Vantage Point. The film is a kind of Rashomon, presenting a presidential assassination through the eyes of several witnesses (including the president himself). However, as Jan Stewart writes in Newsday: "While the varying perspectives enable us to revise our sense of what actually went down, each chapter contains information that could never be available to the character at its focus. It's a big, adrenalin-pumping cheat." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times indicates that he was originally drawn into the story but soon became disappointed. "Initially intriguing and energetic, this film ends up demonstrating that a good script needs to be more than a clever concept and fine direction must be more than moving things fast." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times dismisses the film as "a gimmick in search of a point." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal suggests that, like last week's top film Jumper, the point is in the marketing. He writes: "This week an unsuspecting public is the target of yet another massive marketing campaign on behalf of damned near nothing, and there's no reason to think the effort won't bear fruit. It's rancid fruit, though, if you care about the state of the medium. Vantage Point is above contempt, but not all that far."

Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times of Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def, is probably a whole lot funnier than the movie itself. His description of the plot will likely evoke rollicking laughter, but (spoiler alert), he ultimately concludes: "But you haven't read this far unless you hope to learn whether I would recommend the movie. Not especially." Actually, that's about the same reaction of most other critics, whose reviews aren't half as funny. Carina Chocano writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Sweet-natured and likable as the movie is, it never really delivers on the promise of its ingenious premise, which hints at a subversive retelling of mainstream Hollywood movies but stops short at goofy homage." (The film is about a guy who accidentally erases all the VHS tapes in an ancient video store and then, together with friends, proceeds to reenact them on camera for the store's ancient customers.) Still, many critics, call the film "simple and sweet" or "genial," descriptions that Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail isn't buying at all. He writes: "Problem is, there's simple and then there's simplistic, and this crude thing is a refutation of its own thesis: It's a joyless ode to joy, it's a leaden salute to the silver screen, it's a painful testament to filmic pleasures. Be kind, and don't even begin to rewind."

Charlie Bartlett , starring Anton Yelchin, is getting vastly mixed reviews. The title character finds popularity at his high school by taking over a stall in the boy's room and dispensing advice and Ritalin that he has been prescribed for ADD. Chris Kaltenbach in the Baltimore Sun begins his review by observing: "Charlie Bartlett the character is an insufferably self-absorbed, irredeemably opportunistic teen philistine who'll do anything to maintain his popularity. If you want to spend 97 minutes watching his adventures, then by all means, have at it. Me? I'd pass." On the other hand, Wesley Morris comments in the Boston Globe: "It takes a minute for Charlie Bartlett to distinguish itself from the movies and books it appears to be ripping off. But once it does, the movie transforms into an exuberant, unexpectedly smart comedy about the fraught give-and-take between kids and grown-ups." Among the reviewers, there's not much middle-ground.

From the vantage point of most box-office analysts, Sony's political thriller Vantage Point, will likely be the film to beat this weekend. A political thriller about an attempted assassination told from the point of view of characters played by Matthew Fox, William Hurt, Eduardo Noriega, Dennis Quaid, Sigourney Weaver, and Forest Whitaker, the film is expected to take in about $20 million. Three other new films are not expected to give it much competition. The New Line comedy Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def, opens in just 808 theaters and is likely to take in $8-11 million, say the forecasters. MGM's Charlie Bartlett, a comedy set in a high school but which is rated R because of drug references, is expected to wind up with $7-10 million; Witless Protection, which was not screened for critics, is arriving with what Daily Variety described as "understated" expectations.

Because of the soaring price of gold over the past year, each Oscar statuette will cost the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences $100 more this year than it did in 2007, Bloomberg News reported today (Friday). The statues are made by Chicago-based R.S. Owens & Co. With the price of an ounce of gold rising 40 percent to $950, each gilded Oscar now costs a record $500, academy spokeswoman Teni Melidonian told Bloomberg.

Variety has been put up for sale. Saying that it wants to get away from publications that are heavily dependent on advertising and concentrate instead on those that are subscription-based, Variety's owner, Anglo-Dutch-based Reed Elsevier said that it will begin entertainment bids for the 103-year-old daily trade paper and weekly magazine. Daily Variety has just 37,000 subscribers. Variety, the weekly, just 21,000. Circulation of the two publications has remained virtually flat for ages. "We've taken the decision to get into less cyclical markets where there's less exposure to advertising," spokesman Patrick Kerr told today's (Friday) Los Angeles Times.The two publications have shown considerable online growth, however. The Times reported that while Variety's online revenue grew 82 percent last year, its print advertising revenue declined.

CBS's Survivor: Micronesia may have been handily beating the competition in the 8:00 p.m. hour on Thursdays so far this season, but it proved to be no match for a special one-hour results edition of Fox's American Idol on Thursday. Idol took the hour with a 13.9 rating and a 21 share, making it the highest rated show of the night. By contrast, Survivor's was audience was about half of Idol's as it collected a 7.0/11. Idol also proved to be a capable lead-in for Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics, which edged out ABC's Lost in the 9:00 p.m. hour with a 7.8/12 to Lost's 7.6/11.

CBS and Procter and Gamble have been caught in a pincers attack over a storyline involving a gay couple on the long-running As the World Turns, the Los Angeles Times indicated today (Friday). Gay activists have complained that two characters, a young gay couple named Luke and Noah (portrayed by Van Hansis and Jake Silbermann), have not been allowed to kiss or behave on camera the way heterosexual couples do. Damon Romine of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) told the newspaper that "while tremendous strides have been made on soaps, it's clear that we're not at a place where gay and transgender people are treated the same on daytime as they are on prime-time or cable." On the other hand, the American Family Assn. on Thursday urged members to contact Procter and Gamble to demand that it stop sponsoring "overtly pro-homosexual television programs." A spokeswoman for the company, which produces ATWT, said "We're trying to be sensitive to all the different audiences who watch our show. We do make our decision based on what we think is best for the show's diverse audience and what's best creatively."

CBS may have originally scorned Star Trek, allowing NBC to become the first network to carry the program, but those classic NBC episodes are about to live again, among the first to be offered on CBS.com, the CBS local station sites, and the CBS Audience Network, a group of websites that include AOL, MSN, and Comcast. CBS said it will also will make available online episodes of Melrose Place, which originally aired on Fox, as well as The Twilight Zone, MacGyver, and Hawaii Five-O, which originally aired on its own network. On Wednesday, NBC announced that it will begin streaming other classic shows on its own websites.

Only one day after announcing that it had begun selling copies of several of its most popular TV shows on Apple's online iTunes Store in the U.K., the BBC said that it would begin streaming many of its shows to users of Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch mobile devices "within weeks." Streamed video, except from Google's YouTube site, is currently not available to U.S. users of the devices, and Apple blocks access to the BBC's iTunes programs outside the U.K. On Wednesday the BBC said that over 17 million programs had been streamed or downloaded via its BBC iPlayer in the first seven weeks since it was launched and that already online viewers represent ten percent of the audience for some of its programs.

Jerry Springer has admitted that if he weren't hosting his daily talk show, he "wouldn't watch" it. In an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News, Springer remarked, "I get it. I get why it's entertaining. But I'm 64 years old. If I were in college, I would probably like it." Springer made his remarks at West Chester University prior to a lecture on TV's effects on pop culture. His show, he said, has "no redeeming value" and subjects are selected for their "outrageous" potential. "People come on our show to get attention they don't have in their regular lives," he acknowledged.

CBS's Criminal Minds went back into production on Thursday after executive producer Ed Bernero was able to bang out a script in one week, assemble cast and crew, and perform the other tasks necessary to relaunch the series. Bernero, who spent ten years as a beat cop with the Chicago Police Department, is also directing the comeback drama. The network confirmed that the show will return with seven new episodes beginning April 2. It has also been renewed for another season.