A lot of the reviews of I Am Legend are not about the story or the performances but about the special effects. The film reportedly cost more than $150 million to make, largely due to the intricate, post-apocalyptic effects scenes. Writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times: "The first third of the movie is a high-octane joy ride through post-apocalyptic Manhattan, and you can't stop asking yourself how they did it. How did they do it? Endless swaths of Fifth Avenue are cleared out and rendered feral, with grass poking through the concrete and herds of deer galloping through the canyons." Roger Ebert begins his review in the Chicago Sun Times this way: "The opening scenes of I Am Legend have special effects so good that they just about compensate for some later special effects that are dicey." Especially dicey, it seems, is the creation of the film's zombies. Claudia Puig in USA Today comments: "The rampaging zombies don't look at all convincing. Instead, they look like escapees from a second-rate video game." Desson Williams in the Washington Post agrees. "They are, quite simply, too superhuman," he writes. "They move too fast and perfectly. They belong in a video game, but not a big movie." Will Smith gets numerous kudos for essentially playing the only character in the movie. (He is after all, the last man on Earth.) "There are not many performers who can make themselves interesting in isolation, without human supporting players," A.O. Scott observes in the New York Times. "But it is the charismatic force of [Smith's] personality that makes his character's radical solitude scary and fascinating, as well as strangely appealing."

You can almost hear Ross Bagdasarian's chastising "Oh, Alvin!" in the tone of the reviews for Ross Jr.'s Alvin and the Chipmunks. In USA Today Claudia Puig writes, "Sure, rodents are hot this year. But unlike Ratatouille's chef prodigy Remy, these mischief makers bring nothing new to the table." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post acknowledges that he has been a longtime fan of Alvin, "but this partially animated, charm-free atrocity is awful enough to instantly cure any remaining nostalgia for the rodent trio." Andy Webster in New York Times describes the film as another example of Hollywood milking old television properties for nostalgia, and concludes: "Despite its shout-outs to the holiday season, this is essentially airplane fodder, not a perennial." But Stephen Cole in the Toronto Globe and Mail remarks that he watched both The Golden Compass and Alvin in theaters packed with 4-12-year-olds, and, he adds, "This reviewer is honor-bound to report that Alvin wins the kids' vote, paws down."

Atonement, which is getting a wider release this weekend after opening in a handful of theaters, is attracting rave reviews to go along with numerous awards and nominations that were handed out during the past week. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times particularly praises the performance of Keira Knightley and the direction of Joe Wright. Wright, he says, "shows a mastery of nuance and epic, sometimes in adjacent scenes. ... This is one of the year's best films, a certain best picture nominee." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times writes an equally ecstatic review of the movie, based on an acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan. "This is one of the few adaptations that gives a splendid novel the film it deserves," Turan writes. Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post echoes the sentiment: "How fitting, somehow, that a novel so devoted to the precision and passionate love of language be captured in a film that is simply too exquisite for words," she comments. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post concludes his review with four words: "One for the ages." A few reviews are not so gushing. Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star, for example, calls it "handsomely tidy and earnestly dull."

According to most critics The Perfect Holiday doesn't come close to living up to its title. Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune describes it as "overplotted and underwhelming" and lacking "any sort of cinematic personality." Queen Latifah gets top billing in the movie, but Ann Hornaday warns in the Washington Post: "This crass seasonal programmer features only enough of its nominal star to avoid being sued by bait-and-switched filmgoers." Rafer Guzman in Newsday dismisses it as "sexist, unfunny and guaranteed to turn you into a grouch." That is indeed what it turned Carrie Rickie of the Philadelphia Inquirer into. Her summation of the movie: "In the annals of Noel films so wincingly, gratingly, insultingly bad that a lump of coal would be vastly preferable."

Box office analysts expect the Will Smith sci-fi thriller I Am Legend to do more than $50 million at the box office this weekend. Today's (Friday) Los Angeles Times observed, "No one doubts the movie, which cost more than $150 million to make, will open No. 1. The only question is how big it will be." It quoted industry analysts and executives at rival studios as predicting that the film could open with ticket sales as high as $65 million. Almost certain to take second place is 20th Century Fox's family flick Alvin and the Chipmunks, which is expected to take in between $15 million and $20 million.

The Writers Guild of America on Thursday filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming the networks and studios violated federal law when they broke off negotiations last weekend. In a statement, the WGA demanded that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers return to the bargaining table to hammer out a settlement. The AMPTP has indicated that it will not return to the table until the WGA drops its demands for jurisdiction over writers on reality and animated shows. However, in its complaint the WGA claimed that by law "an employer may not require a union to resolve specific proposals as a pre-condition to discussing other subjects." The AMPTP called the writers' NLRB filing "baseless, desperate" and an "indication that the WGA's negotiating strategy has achieved nothing for working writers." Meanwhile, the Directors Guild of America said it would hold off arranging negotiating sessions with the AMPTP until after the first of the year "to give the WGA and the AMPTP more time to return to the negotiating table to conclude an agreement." However, it added, with "no end to the standoff in sight" it plans to "commence formal talks in the hope that a fresh perspective" may bring about a larger settlement.

In an interview on Fox News Channel's Your World With Neil Cavuto Thursday, News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch accused the writers of attempting to impose "some sort of Socialist system and drag down the companies." Murdoch predicted that the strike "is not going to last as long as everybody says," but quickly retreated on that forecast by adding, "But, if it does, it does." Later, he added, "I would be hopeful we will have everybody back at work fairly soon, but maybe maybe a few months."

Executives behind the late-night TV shows have been meeting together in order to find a way to put the shows back on the air again without writers before the strike is settled, the New York Post reported today (Friday), citing knowledgeable industry sources. The plan, the newspaper said, is for all of the late-night hosts to return to the air on the same night. "The fact is they're talking, but no one wants to be first or the only one, for that matter," one network executive told the Post. "But I think their power will come in their solidarity. It's a hot potato." Today's Daily Variety also reported that the late-night talk-show hosts are likely to return to work early next month

Comcast, the nation's largest cable-TV operator, has sued the National Football League in an effort to stop the league from urging Comcast customers to drop their cable subscriptions because access to the NFL Network is not provided free. The suit charges that the NFL is engaged in a "multimillion dollar marketing campaign" aimed at coercing Comcast into abandoning the right to include the NFL on a sports tier at additional charge. Comcast had previously indicated that the NFL demands 70 cents per month from each of its subscribers if its channel runs on basic cable -- an amount that Comcast would have to pass on to its customers, whether or not they are football fans. The dispute comes at a time when the New England Patriots are aiming to preserve a perfect record. They have two more games left before playing the New York Giants in their final game of the regular season -- a game that is scheduled to be carried exclusively by the NFL Network. Meanwhile, on Thursday Glenn Britt, CEO of Time Warner Cable -- which does not carry the NFL Network at all -- urged the football league to make a deal with a major broadcast network for the Dec. 29 game "which would allow all viewers to see it either directly over the air or through their multichannel providers." However, an NFL spokesman told Broadcasting & Cable magazine Thursday that putting the game on a broadcast network is "not an option" and that "everyone understands it is not an option."

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is resisting Congressional pressure to delay a vote next week on media ownership rules. The commission is scheduled to vote on Martin's proposal to eliminate in the top 20 markets the rule that bars a media company from owning a broadcast station and a newspaper in the same city. At one point during Congressional testimony Thursday Martin expressed concern about the current financial state of newspapers and suggested that the new rules would help them. Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi shot back, "The FCC is worried about the financial condition of newspapers? What?"

Noting that the network nightly newscasts do not assign correspondents to all scheduled news events, the Tyndall Report, which tracks network news coverage, has published a list of some of the events that correspondents did not cover on Wednesday. They included the formal presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore, the sentencing of Michael Vick to 23 months in prison for running dogfights, and the first reunion concert of Led Zeppelin in London.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has often raised eyebrows with its selection of movie nominees for its Golden Globes awards, did the same thing -- in spades -- with its selection of TV nominees Thursday. The website Hollywood Today, run by veteran entertainment writer Alex Ben Block, noted that "the big surprise was that [the 18 nods garnered by HBO] didn't include a single nomination for the final season of the hit mob drama The Sopranos." (In actuality Sopranos star Edie Falco did receive a nomination.) And while ABC counted the most nominations among the broadcast networks, the hits Desperate Housewives and Lost were completely shut out. Matt Roush in TV Guide observed that "any institution that so completely ignores NBC's wonderful Friday Night Lights deserves some spirited jeering."