Night at the Museum, starring Ben Stiller, appears to be one of those critic-proof movies that moviegoers decided to see or not to see when the trailers came out. It's a good thing, too, since the movie is getting hammered by most reviewers. Some of the descriptions: Jan Stuart in Newsday: "pea-brained;" Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune: "charmless;" Stephen Holden in the New York Times: "an overstuffed grab bag;" Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times: "tedious ... uninspired;" Lou Lumenick in the New York Post: "hackneyed." Still the film does attract some favorable comment, mostly for its special effects. Nancy Churnin in the Dallas Morning News calls them "a blast." Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes: "If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see." But Bill Zwecker in the Chicago Sun-Times observes, "It's unconscionable for a major studio release to feature such shoddy effects. Throughout the entire film, everything looked as fake as could be."

Critics seem to regard Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd, starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, with respect. That's not to say they like it. Take, for example, Gene Seymour's review in Newsday, which concludes that the movie "absorbs without resonating, impresses without arousing." "The CIA is a fascinating creature, but The Good Shepherd is as impenetrable as the organization itself," concludes Matt Pais in the Chicago Tribune.Manohla Dargis in the New York Times writes that the film asks some hard questions about the nature of government intelligence, "but they are also too big, too complex and perhaps too painful for even this ambitious (2 hours, 37 minutes) project, which can only elude and insinuate, not enlighten and inform." On the other hand, Chris Vognar in the Dallas Morning News offers high praise for the movie. "It takes its audience's intelligence for granted and rewards it at every turn," he writes. And Stephen Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer calls the movie, "a cool-headed thriller."

If the public reacts to We Are Marshall (starring Matthew McConaughey and Matthew Fox) the way many critics have, the film will come crashing down like the plane that carried 75 Marshall University players to their deaths in 1970. Jan Stuart in Newsday dismisses it as "a depressingly mechanical sports drama that seems not to have been written and directed so much as home assembled, Ikea-style, by pictorial instruction." Stephen Holden in the New York Times is one of numerous critics who call the film formulaic, adding that it "is nothing if not rah-rah. By the end of the movie, the three words of its title, which become the community's rallying cry, have been shouted into your ears so insistently you will never want to hear them again." Peter Howell in the Toronto Star writes that the movie "is so predictable, it makes the Capistrano swallows seem arbitrary and reckless by comparison." But Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times remarks that none of all that really matters. The film, he says, "will grab you by the face mask and make you take notice." Likewise Eleanor Ringel Gillespie writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:: "It's as predictable as the final Big Game, but director McG -- the one-name phenom who made something presentable out of Charlie's Angels -- applies that same audience-friendly expertise here."

Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa came out swinging on Wednesday, pummeling the competition with a take of $6.4 million in its debut, but the real contender for the box-office championship over the holiday weekend doesn't even enter the ring until tonight (Friday), when the Ben Stiller comedy Night at the Museum opens. Two other potent challengers also enter the fray: We Are Marshall, based on events surrounding the 1970 plane crash that killed the Marshall University football team, and The Good Shepherd, the Robert De Niro film about the early days of the CIA, while Dreamgirls, about a Supremes-like female pop group expands to 852 theaters. Most box-office analysts are betting on Museum to win with about $35-40 million, followed close behind by the latest Rocky sequel, which, they say, is due to take in about $30 million.

Becoming one of the viral-est videos -- critics might have called it "vilest;" admirers might have called it "virilest" -- ever to hit the web, a boy-band parody that aired last weekend on Saturday Night Live has already been played online by nearly as many people as watched it live. Numerous websites linked to the video on YouTube, featuring Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake, after the New York Times reported on Thursday that NBC had agreed to allow the on-air bleeps to be removed from it. (The video was also posted on the NBC site, but, oddly, few if any other other websites linked to it.) In the video, Samberg and Timberlake borrow the unmistakable vocal style of 'N Sync and countless other boy bands and the mannerisms of rappers to render a song about delivering their, er, genitalia in a gift box to their girlfriends for Christmas. Titled "D**k in a Box," the video is preceded by a warning that it contains language that was not aired during the original NBC broadcast. In the Times article, Rick Ludwin, head of late-night programming for the network, said that his initial reaction was that the unbleeped version of the video should not be posted on the Internet because "it's still representing NBC" but later changed his mind, concluding that those who might be offended by it "are probably unlikely to go searching for it on the Internet."

ABC has still not posted the next episode of Day Break on its website despite promising to do so after it yanked the show from its broadcast schedule early this week. The online edition of TV Guide said that the network is blaming "unforeseen music-clearance issues" for the delay. The network apparently did not spell out the precise nature of the problems, but the musicians union has been demanding payment for online performances.

Hoping to counteract the out-of-sight/out-of-mind phenomenon, NBC is planning what Advertising Age magazine has called "a marketing blitz" when its new hit Heroes returns to the air on Jan. 22. Launched in September, the show quickly became the biggest new drama of the season and, according to AdAge, is the No. 1 non-sports entertainment show among men 18-49. Now, after being off the air since Dec. 4, NBC plans to promote the series' return by giving away 10,000 Heroes T-shirts at Monday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles football game and by distributing a catch-up episode to Netflix's 3 million subscribers. The DVD "is for the people that have heard about [Heroes] but not gotten into it," NBC marketing exec John Miller told the trade publication.

CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, continuing to recover from injuries suffered during a car-bomb attack in Iraq last May, has thanked the U.S. military for treating her "as one of its own, saving my life a few times over." Her camera crew, an Iraqi translator and an American soldier were killed in the same attack; six other soldiers were seriously injured. She says that she sometimes sees footage of other civilians being dragged into Iraqi hospitals. "I see where the shrapnel ripped into their bodies, and think to myself: 'Dear God. Those wounds are like mine. In an Iraqi hospital, they won't survive the night.'" She concluded by asking her readers to contribute to a fund to aid the families of the two CBS News cameramen and wished the families "some comfort, somehow."

An attorney for former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame, is at the center of the Plamegate scandal in Washington, was raked over the coals by a judge Thursday for remarks she made the day before on MSNBC's Hardball. During an interview on the program, Melanie Sloan said that former administration official Scooter Libby could still be convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice even though he may not have been the first person to reveal that Plame was a CIA agent. In a stinging rebuke from the bench, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said that he "would not tolerate this case being tried in the media." He added that Sloan's remarks "could cause potential members of the jury pool to engender negative attitudes about the defendant." Sloan's comment, he added, "Is not only shocking but borders on unethical conduct."

BBC executives and staffers were reeling Thursday after learning that the publicly supported broadcaster would receive a far-smaller-than-expected increase in the license fee that British citizens who own TV sets are required to pay, which currently stands at about $250 per year. According to published reports, the BBC will receive a 3-percent annual increase over the next three years, a 2-percent increase in the following two years and between 0-percent and 2-percent (to be negotiated) in the sixth and final year of the deal. The BBC had sought an increase of more than twice that amount in order to develop new programs and cover the cost of its transition to digital broadcasting.