Roland Emmerich's movies generally make a lot of money despite negative reviews. 10,000 B.C. appears to be no exception. A.O. Scott in the New York Times describes it as a "sublimely dunderheaded excursion into human prehistory." To Jan Stuart in Newsday, it's "an epic adventure of such towering testosterone counts and ceaseless tedium, you can almost feel the hair growing on your chest as the bags collect beneath your eyes." Similarly Claudia Puig remarks in USA Today, "The action is so plodding and the story so dreary that you feel as if you've lived through several millennia by the time it reaches its strained conclusion." Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post accuses Emmerich of taking "the time-honored Hollywood tradition of spectacle, overkill and narrative absurdity and manages to zap almost all the fun out of it." "Roland Emmerich enters a whole new tar pit of crapitude," Peter Howell scorns in the Toronto Star. But Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times may have nothing nice to say about the movie, but he expresses profuse admiration for Emmerich himself. "Outrageous and outlandish, Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. is easy to mock," he writes, "but it is so cheerfully shameless and terminally silly -- who knew that woolly mammoths were used to build the pyramids? -- that you have to admire its effrontery and accept its creator, the man behind Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, as a certified crackpot visionary."

Kyle Smith in the New York Post gives College Road Trip one of the greatest left-handed compliments in reviewer history. He writes that it "is better than most Martin Lawrence movies -- much as strep throat is better than malaria." Other reviewers take a similar tack, like Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune: "Look, I know families have a low bar for this sort of diversion," he remarks. "When my kid's interested in seeing a movie, all the parent part of me (as opposed to the critic part) wants is an hour and a half or so that won't audibly rot his brain. By those low standards you could do worse than director Roger Kumble's" movie.

The critics are reserving their loudest applause for The Bank Job, the film least likely to perform well in its opening this weekend. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times calls it a "wham-bam caper flick." Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times concludes that while the film "dawdles" at times, the "real fun comes as nearly every genre convention unravels in one clever way or another." Claudia Puig in USA Today enthuses: "Well-paced, smartly told and unpretentious, this solid British heist thriller also has moments of invention and imagination." And Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News employs British understatement to sum up: "It's quite satisfying."

Federal prosecutor Kevin Lally indicated Thursday that he intends to make Anthony Pellicano the chief witness against himself by introducing recordings of the former celebrity private eye boasting about the crimes he is accused of committing. Addressing the jury in his opening argument at Pellicano's wiretapping trial, Lally described Pellicano as "the biggest government informant in this case." He accused Pellicano of bribing police officers and telephone company workers to gain information for his clients. "This is a case about corruption," Lally said, "corruption fueled by greed." While recordings of virtually all of Pellicano's alleged wiretappings were destroyed, the U.S. attorney said, recordings of the detective himself talking about those wiretaps were not and will be introduced at the trial. Pellicano, who is acting as his own attorney, spoke to the jury for only 10 minutes, saying cryptically at one point, "The evidence will show what it shows."

Surprising analysts who had written off Blockbuster as a nearly extinct dinosaur, the video rental giant on Thursday reported a huge jump in profit during its fourth quarter. In an SEC filing, Blockbuster said that it earned $30 million against $8.3 million during the comparable quarter a year ago. If one-time costs including $13 million in severance payments, had been excluded, Blockbuster said, it would have reported $55 million in profits for the period. Shares in the video-rental company went on a roller-coaster ride Thursday, rising more than 9 percent following release of the quarterly report, then eventually plunging, closing down 10.2 percent as the overall market fell to a 52-week low. At midday trading today (Friday), Blockbuster shares were up 4 percent.

Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Crust has denied that he and fellow writers for the newspaper's arts section, Calendar, were forced to take a buyout package and leave the newspaper. In an email message, Crust wrote that they were "voluntarily taking the buyout to pursue other opportunities. ... There was no 'force' involved." Other writers have observed that the voluntary buyout package was a "carrot" accompanied by a rigid "stick" -- a warning by editor Russ Stanton on Feb. 19 that staffers had until March 3 to decide whether to accept it or face the possibility of its being withdrawn following that deadline. Some writers have used the term "nudged out" rather than "forced out" to describe the departures of the staffers who applied for the buyout.

Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. is expected not only to dominate the box office this weekend, but set ticket-sales records for the month as well, some analysts have predicted. The current record was set by last year's 300, which took in $70.9 million over the comparable weekend a year ago. Two other films are opening wide today (Friday), but are expected to provide weak competition. Disney is offering the G-rated comedy College Road Trip, starring Martin Lawrence and Raven-Symoné of The Cosby Show and That's So Raven, which is expected to take in $15-18 million. Lionsgate is distributing the British film The Bank Job, which is likely to take in $5-8 million.

CBS's The Young and the Restless is celebrating its 1,000th consecutive week as the top daily soap opera. For the week ending Feb. 29, the daytime drama averaged 5.8 million viewers and is likely to experience an audience surge two weeks from now when it celebrates its 35th anniversary on March 26 with a storyline that returns several earlier characters to the show, including Danny Romalotti, played by Michael Damian, who debuted on the series in 1981. Eileen Davidson and Lesli Kay, now appearing on The Bold and the Beautiful, are also due to return to the cast for the anniversary plot. "Reaching the milestones of 1,000 weeks at No. 1 and 35 years on the air simultaneously is unheard of in this industry, it is a testament to the work of an extraordinary team of storytellers both in front of and behind the cameras," Barbara Bloom, senior VP daytime programs at CBS, said in a statement.

CBS made it official Thursday: Shelley Ross is out as executive producer of the network's The Early Show after just six months. The hard-driving Ross, who previously had overseen ABC's Primetime and Good Morning America, had reportedly generated a serious morale problem among Early Show staffers, several of whom had threatened to leave if she remained. The network said that she will be replaced "on an interim basis" by Rick Kaplan, currently the executive producer of The CBS Evening News.

Although most of the entertainment industry aims to attract viewers who are 18-49 years old, a group of female media celebrities are planning to establish a website aimed at women 40 and over. The website, wowowow.com, scheduled to launch on Saturday, is the brainchild of 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith, advertising executive Marry Wells, commentator Peggy Noonan, and former Simon & Schuster President Joni Evans, who is WOW's CEO. Contributors to the site include Candice Bergen, Joan Ganz Cooney, Whoopi Goldberg, Marlo Thomas, and Jane Wagner. In a statement, Evans said that wowowow.com "is a party -- only disguised as a website -- where we can meet for coffee (in our robes) or for cocktails (without any makeup) or even in the middle of the night (someone's always up). Here we can talk to our readers, exchange news and gossip, invite the most interesting and informed guests, share experiences and tell tales out of school, process news and make some of our own."

Classic ABC television shows unavailable today on DVD will likely turn up soon on the Internet, Disney CEO Robert Iger told shareholders in Albuquerque Thursday. Speaking at the company's annual meeting, Iger said, "Providing physical goods on DVD is tougher and tougher these days because shelf space [at video stores] is limited." Iger also indicated that some Disney shows, produced years ago for other networks, were also likely to turn up on Disney.com. He did not indicate which shows were likely to make the online transition.

The head of the Associated Press warned Thursday that since the 2001 terrorist attacks, press freedoms and other constitutional safeguards have steadily given way to "expediency." In remarks prepared for the annual dinner of the Radio and TV News Directors Foundation, A.P. President and CEO Tom Curley warned that at a time when Congress fails to exercise oversight over the executive branch and when the executive branch fails to exercise oversight over the military, when the Justice Department interprets laws to extend police powers and when prisons are established abroad to circumvent due process -- "It's at moments like these when a free press matters most." Curley's remarks came as he accepted the foundation's First Amendment Leadership Award.

The government of the Netherlands has raised its terrorism alert level to "substantial" in the wake of rising anger in Muslim countries to reports that Dutch television may broadcast a 10-minute film by a national political leader critical of the Koran. The Dutch government has warned television networks that the film, which maintains that the Muslim holy book foments violence and religious hatred, could trigger unrest among the country's large Muslim population. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has warned producer Geert Wilders, leader of the rightist Dutch Freedom Party, that he must be held responsible if the release of the film results in deaths. Earlier in the week, hundreds of Afghan demonstrators in Mazar-i-Sharif burned Dutch flags and demanded the withdrawal of Dutch troops from the country. NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer expressed "fear that our soldiers will come under fire because of this film." On Thursday Wilders told the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad that he was disappointed that thus far no Dutch TV station had agreed to show it. Dutch reports also indicated that if they continue to shun the film, he will screen it at the Nieuwspoort Press Centre in The Hague on March 28. Press reports quoted the chairman of the center as saying that Wilders would be welcome to show the film there, provided proper security measures are undertaken, citing the principle of freedom of speech. Wilders has also said that he intends to post the film on his website, FitnaTheMovie.com, which is hosted by Network Solutions. The provider has indicated that it is preparing for possible denial-of-service attacks -- attempts by outsiders to prevent access to the site.