Virtually all of the reviews of Rock Star, starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston, compare it to either the spoof documentary This Is Spinal Tap or the autobiographical comedy Almost Famous -- or both. Except for the performance of Wahlberg, the film fails to outshine the touchstones in the minds of the critics. Claudia Puig in USA Today compares it to still another film. After commenting that Rock Star is Spinal Tap "without the humor," Puig says that the film eventually "becomes a head-banging, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll version of A Star Is Born. Mark Caro in the Chicago Tribune asks, "Do we really need another movie to show us that rock stars are exposed to wicked temptations and treated like deities?" Jami Bernard in the New York Daily News writes that the movie "seems like a Brady Bunch episode in which the moral is that overnight success gives you a swelled head and makes you lose your friends." (In fact, there was an actual Brady Bunch episode in which a Brady family member is picked by a talent agent to become a rock star.) But Bernard and many other critics give Mark Wahlberg (the former rap singer Marky Mark) high praise for his performance. "Wahlberg fits the role of putative rocker with ease," Steven Rea writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times remarks: "Unlike his most recent work in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, Rock Star plays to Wahlberg's strengths -- his hunky regular guy likability and an ability to play convincingly blue-collar." Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail comments: "Wahlberg commands the screen in every frame." And Jonathan Foreman in the New York Post praises not only Wahlberg but the movie itself, calling it "an unexpected pleasure."

Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers has been made into a movie of one sort or another (three times as a musical) 13 times since the first production in 1916, according to the Internet Movie Database, but critics are suggesting that the 13th attempt, The Musketeer, will probably fall on its own sword -- or ought to. Quipped Joel Siegel on ABC's Good Morning America: "You know why it's called The Musketeer and not The Three Musketeers? Because the other two guys saw the movie and quit." Other reactions: Megan Rosenfeld in the Washington Post: "Buckling one swash too many." Jonathan Foreman in The New York Post: "The swash buckles." Mike Clark in USA Today: "Musketeer swash has come unbuckled." Clark adds: "If this is Dumas, there's a 'b' in the middle and an extra 's' at the end." Similarly, Jonathan Foreman writes in the New York Post: "The Musketeer is an example of lazy, dumb and couldn't-care-less hack movie making."

Following allegations of ethical improprieties that led to his suspension at the Hollywood Reporter, gossip columnist George Christy was extended a package deal if he would quietly resign, according to the Sept. 7-13 issue of L.A. Weekly. The magazine claims that Christy was offered about $70,000 in severance pay, access to the personnel files of former reporter David Robb (who had written an article about the alleged improprieties) and former editor Anita Busch (who had resigned when the Reporter's publisher refused to run Robb's article), an opportunity to write a farewell column, and a going-away party. The magazine, which did not cite a source, said that when the deal was proposed to Brian Lane, one of Christy's attorneys, he replied: "Let me get this straight. You want to fire my client and then throw him a party?" The L.A. Weekly article also makes the point that Christy has continued to receive a weekly paycheck since his May 25 suspension ("the longest paid leave of absence since Napoleon took a one-way cruise to Elba"), while Robb and Busch forfeited even a claim to severance when they resigned.

In what today's (Friday) Wall Street Journal described as "really weird, by Hollywood standards," Keanu Reeves has sometimes handed over part of his salary to other actors or crew. According to the newspaper, he twice agreed to cut his fee by $2 million -- when producers had difficulty making salary deals with Al Pacino for The Devil's Advocate and with Gene Hackman for The Replacements -- and asked that they be given the money instead. More recently, the WSJ said, Reeves gave up part of his back-end deal for the sequels to The Matrix and told the studio to divide it among the special-effects and costume-design workers. "He felt that they were the ones who made the movie and that they should participate," one executive familiar with the situation told the Journal.

Woody Allen has agreed to discuss his 10 favorite movies during a question-and-answer appearance before Britain's National Film Theatre in London on Sept. 27, the London Independent reported today (Friday). His list includes three films by Ingmar Bergman, two each by Jean Renoir, Federico Fellini, and Vittorio De Sica and one by Akira Kurosawa. The earliest film is Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937); the latest, Fellini's Amarcord (1973). Geoff Andrew, the NFT's programmer, told the Independent: "It doesn't mean that Woody Allen doesn't like more recent films, but his taste is quite classical. That's something you could have expected, given the obvious homages in some of his films to people like Bergman and Renoir."

The boy band 'N Sync (although they are customarily called a "band," they do not play musical instruments) dominated the MTV Video Music Awards Thursday night, winning the viewer's choice award, best group video, best dance video and best pop video for its hit single, "Pop." Video of the year (and video from a film), however, went to "Lady Marmalade," the collaboration of Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, Pink and Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliot. The record was made for the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge.The awards telecast was also notable for the surprise appearance of Michael Jackson. Washington Post music writer David Segal noted that Jackson appeared at the end of a live performance of "Pop" when he "spun onto the stage, looking strangely pallid and a bit like a guy who'd spent a fortune on surgery trying to look like Michael Jackson. He pirouetted a few times, then went down dramatically on a knee and was handed a soda -- pop, get it? -- by one of the 'N Sync'ers. The audience, startled at the ghostly sight of the man ... clapped wildly while Jackson huffed and tried to get back his wind." The New York Post commented that Jackson "danced awkwardly, appearing like a deer caught in the headlights," and didn't sing a note.

MSNBC has disclosed the contents of a personal letter that Larry King wrote to embattled Congressman Gary Condit urging him to appear on his CNN interview show. In the letter, King offered to air the interview "without edits that put you at the mercy of selective sound bites and packaging." King then disclosed that during a recent trip to Sea World with his children, "I did a lot of thinking about what I'd do in your shoes." He then continued: "I want my kids to know that it's not the tough situations we face, but the way we handle them that defines us. Gary, tell your story." In the end, Condit told his story to ABC's Connie Chung, deciding, according to the MSNBC report, that King's letter was "a tad patronizing."

CNN cofounder Reese Schonfeld has scolded CNN officials following a report in the New York Daily News that CNN producers had been instructed to carry the opening and closing of the NASDAQ live every day. The instructions, in the form of a memo from network president Jim Walton to CNN General Manager Sid Bedingfield, were reportedly issued during the same week that CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson and sales chief Larry Goodman had been scheduled to meet with NASDAQ, a large advertiser on CNN. "Larry wants to take a tape with him showing them how we cover the opening and closing of the markets," the memo said. Commented Schonfeld: "It sure looks as if Walter was demanding that CNN editorial content include a bit of 'product placement' on behalf of NASDAQ. Maybe that's what you used to do at Time magazine, Walter, but we don't do that in television." On Thursday, Isaacson reportedly sent a follow-up note to staffers saying that they were under no obligation to cover the open and close of the NASDAQ, and he told a news conference that the first directive was "a mistake."

The FCC said Thursday that it will vote next week on proposals to end the limits on the number of cable television systems a company may own and to abolish rules that prohibit companies from owning a TV station and newspaper in the same market. The abolition of the rules appears to be supported by the current FCC Republican majority, headed by Chairman Michael Powell.

Historian Stephen Ambrose has praised the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks miniseries Band of Brothers as "the most accurate depiction that Hollywood's ever done of World War II. ... It's simply superb." The miniseries, which debuts on HBO on Sunday, is based on Ambrose's 1993 bestseller about the D-Day invasion. In an interview appearing in today's (Friday) Boston Globe, Ambrose said that although Spielberg invited him to contribute to the TV adaptation, he declined on the grounds that "I don't know how to write movies; I know how to write books." Nevertheless, he says, he is "almost in awe" at how faithful the filmmakers have been to the book. He observes that D-Day veterans who watched a screening of the film with him "were in some cases shaken" by the experience. And New York Post TV critic Adam Buckman writes today: "After watching the 10-hour Band of Brothers, I'm so drained by the intensity of what I have just beheld that I'm ready to declare this World War II miniseries the finest piece of work ever produced for television."

Britain's Channel 4 was locked in battle with the Independent Television Commission and the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the country's official TV watchdogs, after the two regulators issued an order for the commercial network to apologize for a satirical documentary that it aired in July that was intended to spoof how the news media sensationalize stories about pedophilia. The program, Brass Eye, starring comedian Chris Morris, touched off a political uproar after it was broadcast, with Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell charging that it was helping to tear down "all the boundaries of decency on television." The ITC held that the program violated its rule to "avoid gratuitous offense" and that Channel 4 had failed to broadcast a required warning that "some viewers may find the program disturbing or offensive." Channel 4, however, issued a statement standing by the program and quoted CEO Michael Jackson as saying, "We would not hesitate to ... transmit such a program again."