In his review of Wim Wenders' Million Dollar Hotel, featuring Mel Gibson, the Los Angeles Times' Kevin Thomas observes that the movie is "likely to elicit a love-it-or-hate-it response from most viewers." Clearly Thomas's reaction is on the side of love. "If you're a Wenders admirer and can give yourself over to his gorgeous verging-on-surreal vision, you can come away deeply moved, " Thomas writes. On the side of hate are most of the other critics. "Pretentious and trite" is the way Jonathan Foreman describes it in the New York Post. Andy Seiler in USA Today allows that "Wenders creates an imaginative, stylized cityscape, " but he faults the story, said to have been suggested by U2 frontman Bono. Gibson, whose company produced the film, receives excellent notices even though he himself once criticized it as "boring as a dog's ass." "Gibson actually seems to be having a fine time playing up his noirish detective, and he brings some much-needed acerbity into this earnest environment, " writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News.

Head Over Heels, the latest Freddie Prinze Jr.-starrer seemingly aimed at prepubescent girls, is receiving the same sort of dismissive reviews that Prinze's previous movies did. A.O. Scott does his best to review the movie seriously, but then gives up, writing, "What am I saying? Head Over Heels, like Mr. Prinze's other movies, exists in a realm beyond sense, and it induces in the viewer a trancelike state, leaving the mind free to ponder the mysteries of the universe. For instance: Why is it that Mr. Prinze appears in so many movies with three-word titles? Down to You, She's All That, Boys and Girls -- think about it. No, don't. Think about the stock market. Think about Renaissance painting. Think about those noble beluga whales, swimming through the briny deep, blissfully oblivious to the existence of movies like this one. Try to be more like them."

In the Mood for Love, the Chinese-language movie from Wong Kar-wai, is receiving positively rapturous reviews from most critics. Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times concludes his review this way: "This film is a sweet kiss blown to a time long since over, a time that may have existed only in the movies, with ballads recorded in mono while hand-sewn clothing lay perfectly over the bodies of the stars. In the Mood for Love is just that." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal asks: "Of all the mysteries that shimmer behind the ravishingly beautiful surfaces of In the Mood for Love ... the most intriguing may be this: How does a highly stylized movie with minimal action, in a language we don't understand, make us care as much as we do for its reluctant lovers?" Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News describes In the Mood for Love as "a love story told from the point of impact." But Mike Clark in USA Today calls it "exasperatingly affected" and "painfully laborious."

AOL Time Warner has shut down its lavish Warner Bros. Studio Store on New York's Fifth Avenue and appears set to shutter its other retail outlets as well, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Friday). The company had previously said that it would close the stores if it could not find a buyer for them. Although, like the Disney stores, the Warner stores had initially proved popular, they were unable to continue to excite customers, the Times observed. It quoted Marty Brochstein, executive editor of the Licensing Letter in New York as saying: "Disney and Warner have acknowledged ... that there is such a thing as too many stores. Once they had them in every major mall, then it became just another store in the mall. It became a pretty expensive billboard."

It appears unlikely that the Writers Guild of America and movie and TV producers will be able to reach a new contract agreement by the end of today (Friday), the day that the WGA originally set as a deadline, the Associated Press observed Thursday. The wire service noted, however, that WGA President John Wells said when the talks began that he would consider extending the deadline if it appeared that the sides were making progress.

President George W. Bush invited Senator Edward Kennedy to the White House Thursday to watch a special screening of Thirteen Days, a drama about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. "He thought it would be very appropriate to have the Kennedy family here to watch the movie in the White House where so much of that movie took place, " White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

Roger Daltrey, The Who's lead singer, has confirmed that he wants to produce a film biography of the group's drummer, Keith Moon, who died in 1978 of a drug overdose. The British online site Ananova said that Daltrey is also attempting to prevent a rival company from producing their own film about Moon.

In their first head-to-head go-to, Survivor II: The Australian Outback walloped NBC's Friends Thursday night. The latest version of the reality show, which debuted Sunday following the Super Bowl, scored an 18.0 rating and a 27 share (a 12.0/29 among adults 18-49) in the 8:00 p.m. hour, peaking in its second half hour with a 19.8/28. Friends, which broadcast a "super-sized" 40-minute episode, pulled a 16.6/24 from 8:00-8:30 p.m. The second half hour, comprised of ten minutes of the Friends episode, followed by 20 minutes of Saturday Night Live, managed only a 15.5/22. Nevertheless, NBC won the night thanks to its hospital drama E.R., which produced the best numbers of any show for the evening -- a 20.7/32 in the 10:00 p.m. hour.

Temptation Island Wednesday night scored its best ratings since its debut, earning an 11.5 rating and a 17 share and helping it tie with ABC for the best overall ratings of the night. According to Nielsen overnights, the show's ratings were 9 percent higher than its premiere show, drawing 18.2 million viewers. It also posted a 10.1 rating among viewers 18-49, more than the combined scores of NBC and ABC in that age group during the 9:00 p.m. hour. Reuters observed Monday that at one point in the show, host Mark Walberg's voice was clearly overdubbed as he asked the three male contestants about their "late-night dates." Reuters pointed out that the closed-caption text read "overnight dates." A Fox official, while acknowledging that Walberg's words were overdubbed, told the wire service: "The word that was dubbed was never 'overnight' date. It was 'fantasy' date or 'dream' date ... the closed captioning was absolutely incorrect."

By recently registering the Internet domain www.livewithregisandkelly.com, the producers of Regis Philbin's morning talk show may have tipped off who his new co-host will be, the New York Post observed today (Friday). The Post speculates that it will be Kelly Ripa, who currently stars on the soap opera All My Children. The newspaper said that Disney Enterprises Inc., the parent of Buena Vista Television, which produces the Philbin show, officially registered the name of the Web site on Jan. 10. The registration was spotted by Trevor Rieger who operates the internet site TVTalkShows.com. Fans of the show who posted messages on Rieger's site approved of Riva's apparent selection unanimously. An official announcement is expected to be made on Monday.

Unable to find a buyer willing to pay the $4.1 billion asking price for its Rainbow Programming networks, Cablevision Systems has agreed to sell 20 percent of the unit to MGM for $825 million. Under the deal Rainbow, whose channels include American Movie Classics, Bravo, the Independent Film Channel and WE, also agreed to license MGM's movie library. In an interview with Bloomberg News, MGM chief Alex Yemenidjian said, "We hope to expand our 20-percent interest to a higher ownership at some point."

Commenting that "the made-for-TV movie has sunk to a new low, " today's (Friday) Wall Street Journal observes that several recent network TV movies have scored atrocious ratings, even those that have been heavily promoted, including NBC's John Lennon Story and Living Love: Natalie Cole, which aired in December. The newspaper observed that the TV networks have been unable to compete against HBO and Showtime films, which have the advantage of bigger budgets, fewer content restrictions on speech, and more sophisticated scripts. Steve White, NBC's movie and miniseries chief also blames the primetime news magazines for making it difficult to produce ripped-from-the-headlines movies. "The news used to whet appetites for the dramas, " White told the WSJ. "Now, often they can use up the appetite."

Judith and Alan Kilshaw, the British couple involved in a dispute over the Internet adoption of twin girls, may have second thoughts about having agreed to appear on Oprah Winfrey's talk show in the U.S. this week with Richard and Vickie Allen, a California couple who claim that they adopted the twins first. According to British reports, the Kilshaws were served with a writ just minutes after taping the show ordering them to appear in court to answer charges by the Alleys that they abducted the twins.

Plans by the BBC to launch an advertiser-supported international news site which could only be viewed outside of Britain have been derided by some experts who say that such a concept is a pipe dream. The "open source" organization Apache Foundation told the ZDNet news site that geographical blocking "is not possible." He added" "[The BBC] may hope they can [block the site domestically] but then management often think very stupid things." But a spokesman for the BBC was quoted as saying, "U.K. users won't be able to log on to the international site and vice versa." He said that the technology to enable such a plan is "still being explored."

Hoping to avoid the time-zone problems that forced most of the Sydney Olympics to air on tape last year, NBC has met with organizers of the Athens Olympics to discuss changes in the starting time of some events, Bloomberg News reported Thursday. Athens organizers said in a statement that NBC had asked them to shift some events later into the evening in order to capture larger U.S. audiences. NBC Sports spokesman Mike McCarley commented: "We are looking at the best schedule for all parties involved."