Pierce Brosnan has abandoned James Bond with a vengeance. In The Matador he plays a sleazy professional hit man having a mid-life attack of conscience. Stephen Holden in the New York Times suggests the movie has all the quality of a paperback page-turner, noting that since it "sustains a tone of screwball insouciance and keeps its trump card hidden up its sleeve, it must be counted as a well-made comic thriller. That doesn't mean it has any depth, credibility or artistic value beyond its capacity to divert." Claudia Puig in USA Today credits writer-director Richard Shepard for fashioning "a witty screenplay and well-drawn, compelling characters that feel plausible, despite the outlandish scenario." David Kronke in the Los Angeles Daily News calls it "a cult gem." But it is Brosnan who is receiving the most admiring notices from critics. Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News remarks: "Brosnan's smooth fit comes as both a shock and a pleasure. He obviously likes playing an engaging sociopath, and he's good at it." Gene Seymour in Newsday also is impressed by Brosnan's transition from Bond to his current character, Julian Noble. "Eventually, you forget Brosnan's ongoing effort to set fire to his trademark creased-and-polished image and begin to share his apparent glee in traipsing through this seriocomic farrago of crime melodrama, buddy movie and sob story," he writes. It is, writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times (his original review appeared during the Sundance Film Festival), "the best performance Pierce Brosnan has ever given." Likewise, Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times comments that Brosnan "turns in what might be considered the performance of his career, the kind of witty, relaxed star portrayals that recalls those of Cary Grant and other Golden Era legends." But Kyle Smith in the New York Post neither admires Brosnan's performance nor the movie itself, which he calls a "comedy thriller [that] has neither laughs nor thrills" and "makes Pierce Brosnan look so bad, figuratively as well as literally, that the film amounts to a charity appeal for his fading career."

The top 15 films of 2005 performed as well at the box office as the top 15 films of 2004; however, every film below the top 15 performed worse, Daily Variety reported today (Friday) in a year-end analysis of the top 100 films at the box office. The trade publication pegged the total for the year at around $8.75 billion, down 5 percent from $9.2 billion a year ago, while admissions dropped 11 percent to 1.32 billion from 1.48 billion. (It marked the third consecutive year of declining attendance.) Variety observed that only two studios, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, posted higher box-office earnings this year than last. It pointed out that Fox had received a big boost from Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, which earned $380 million, making it the year's top grosser. It failed to point out, however, that Lucasfilm, which fully funds its productions, also takes all of the profits, paying the studio only a flat distribution fee.

Once again, animated films dominated the list of top DVD sellers in 2005, with the Disney/Pixar feature The Incredibles, distributed by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, selling 17.38 million copies, making it the top-selling DVD of the year, according to Home Media Research. DreamWorks Animation's Madagascar and Shark Tale tied for third place with 10 million copies sold, while Warner's The Polar Express placed fifth with 8.13 units sold. All of those films were computer-animated, but Disney's reissue of the 55-year-old, hand-drawn Cinderella came in at No. 8 with 6.56 million copies sold. Also making the top-ten list was Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, which came in second with 10.36 million units; Universal's Meet the Fockers, ranked sixth, with 7.21 million units; Disney's National Treasure placed seventh with 7.2 million units; Universal's Ray took the ninth position with 6.53 million; and Batman Begins placed tenth with 6.15 million.

In a reported production move that seems on its face as implausible as flying with the aid of an umbrella, Steven Spielberg is planning to bring back Mary Poppins to the screen, using the cast from the current stage hit in London, the London Daily Mail reported today (Friday), citing Richard Eyre, who directed the show and is bringing it to Broadway in the fall. The West End Poppins uses much of the same script and virtually all of the music as the movie and was co-produced by Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Productions and British stage impresario Cameron Macintosh. "I would hope to use as much of the West End cast as possible and keep Mary English rather than have the role go to a big American star name," Eyre told the newspaper. Laura-Michelle Kelly performed the title role on stage that was originally played by Julie Andrews in the 1964 Disney movie. She received lavish praise from theater critics -- as well as from Andrews herself, when she attended the theatrical production last March.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences mailed out nominating ballots to 5,798 voting members on Thursday. Members have until 5:00 p.m. on Jan. 21 to complete and return them to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that traditionally tallies the votes for the Academy. In a statement, the Academy observed that PriceWaterhouseCoopers' staff members verify that there are no duplicate ballots and that none have gone missing. Nominations for this year's Oscars are due to be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 31 at 5:30 a.m. Pacific times (so that they can be covered on the networks' morning shows).

When ABC's co-anchored World News Tonight launches on Tuesday, Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff will not engage in the kind of chit-chat that commonly occurs between anchors on local newscasts and on network morning shows, according to Vargas. In an interview with today's (Friday) Daily Variety, Vargas said that "whichever one of us has the lead story will start off the broadcast, read the first few stories and toss to the other." She did not indicate how the decision about who will read the lead story will be made. She did say, however, that for the time being, one anchor will report from the field; the other, from the studio, adding, "I'm not sure we will ever be at the same desk." Woodruff is due to report from Iran on Tuesday, but whether he has developed a lead-worthy story there is unknown. Indeed, it is by no means certain that he will be able to report from the country on Tuesday, and chances are that he will not be able to broadcast live. When he last visited Tehran in February, he and his crew were quickly deported.

Nielsen Research apologized to its clients Thursday for delayed ratings results this week, which it attributed to software glitches as it attempted to include results from viewers watching shows on digital video recorders. "We have encountered complications that are taking us additional time to resolve," the statement said. Nielsen had said that it intended to offer three sets of figures -- 1. the standard ratings for live viewing; 2. ratings for same-day viewing of programs recorded on TiVo and other DVRs; and 3. ratings for programs viewed within one week of the actual broadcast. In reporting on the delay, MediaPost editor Joe Mandese commented Thursday that the "statement is the first public acknowledgment of what many observers had predicted: That Nielsen was ill prepared to make the transition, and that there would be glitches, delays and confusion as it begins reporting not one but three streams of data."

The star of the NBC comedy Scrubs has complained that network executives treated him and the cast disrespectfully when they delayed the start of the fifth season, then refused to tell them when -- or even whether -- their new shows would air. "We all felt very dissed," Zach Braff told the New York Daily News. At the time, NBC Entertainment chief Kevin Reilly said that the delay was made necessary because Braff was shooting a movie, Fast Track. But Braff told the Daily News that the movie production overlapped the Scrubs shooting schedule by only one week, not enough to justify the long delay. The series is due to return to the air next Tuesday at 9:00 with twelve episodes already filmed. Braff said that not knowing whether the shows would ever air affected the performances -- but in a positive way. "There was an attitude of, 'If we're not going to be on the air, let's take this a little bit further, let's lean into the turns,'" Braff said. "So as actors, I think we were a little bit extra wacky and silly and I think the scripts were a little more surreal and crazy."

The conservative family-activist group Parents Television Council, which in the past has flooded the FCC with complaints about broadcast indecency, has expressed disappointment that the commission has failed to mete out fines for numerous alleged violations this year. Melissa Caldwell, the PTC's director of research and publications, told Reuters Thursday that the commission's inaction has encouraged broadcasters to begin airing racier content. "As soon as it seemed to them that the FCC was letting up a little bit, they went back to same old, same old," she said. Last year, the FCC issued a record number of indecency fines.

Although 98 percent of its viewers live in the United States, this year's Super Bowl game was watched by more people than any other sports event in the world -- some 93 million people, according to a study by media ad buyers Initiative. The study indicated that the UEFA Champions League Final game between Liverpool and Milan attracted 73 million viewers, scattered all over the world.(In even-numbered years, the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Football Championships typically attract more than 150 million viewers.) The Canadian Grand Prix (Le Grand Prix du Canada), which drew 51 million viewers, was the third-most-watched sports event of the year. All other sports events attracted fewer than half the number of viewers who tuned into the auto race. In an interview with Reuters, researcher Kevin Alavy of Initiative noted that while most regular programming is experiencing a declining audience, "some of the sports programming is becoming more powerful with every year that passes. ... I would expect that for these sports programs, it will become yet more expensive to buy 30-second commercials."