Reviews of American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, are split between love and hate. On the love side is Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times who awards it a four-star ranking. "This is an engrossing story, told smoothly and well," he writes. Likewise, Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal sums up: "It's a great big gangster film, and a good one." Claudia Puig in USA Today concludes that it "is probably the best gangster crime drama of the year." And Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post raves, "In American Gangster, time doesn't fly, it explodes. The thing is 2 1/2 hours long; it feels like 40 minutes. Whether it's the next great American crime movie or simply this year's professional stunner will be determined over the net few months." On the other hand, Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News says he likes the final 40 minutes of the movie, "but the film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, and the runup, setup or whatever-up you want to call the first two hours is largely a drag." Jan Stuart in Newsday says "the film begins to show its flab about two-thirds in." Michael Sragow in the Baltimore Sun pronounces it an intriguing true story turned into "facile melodrama" and dismisses it as kind of "a cover version of a Scorsese, Coppola or De Palma movie." Which is apparently good enough for Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle who writes: "So it's not a classic. ... Instead, it can be classed as a respectable second-tier entry."

Critics are treating Jerry Seinfeld as if he were Kramer. His Bee Movie is getting mostly Cees and Dees -- with a single exception among the major critics: Kyle Smith of the New York Post, who writes, "Bee Movie is dazzling fun. Jerry is master of a new domain." But Claudia Puig in USA Today writes that it is "tedious and often seems to be running on empty." Peter Howell in the Toronto Star asks, "Jerry, where is thy sting?" Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times remarks that "it's a bee movie about nothing." The movie does get a few polite claps. Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News pronounces it "amiable." And Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune regards it as "moderately entertaining." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Martian Child, starring John Cusack as a science fiction writer who adopts an eccentric young boy, arrives without much buzz and receives mostly so-so reviews. Kyle Smith in the New York Post describes it as "a sweet father-son heart warmer ... which works the tear ducts as expertly as an Irish barman dispensing Guinness." And Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail advises: "If you're allergic to schmaltz, bring a bottle of Benadryl along to Martian Child."

Although Jerry Seinfeld has been relentlessly plugging his family-oriented animated flick Bee Movie, and although it is opening in 3,500 theaters and about twice that number of screens, box-office prognosticators figure that An American Gangster will lead the box office this weekend. They are also predicting that a third film, Martian Child, starring John Cusack, will flop, earning perhaps less than $5 million.

The closure of hundreds of competing video stores has apparently not driven many consumers to Blockbuster outlets. On Thursday the video renter posted a quarterly loss from continuing operations of $34.8 million, rising from a $23-million loss during the comparable quarter a year ago. The figures were considerably worse than expected. There was one bright spot in the quarterly report: subscribers to its online rental service dropped to 3.1 million from 3.6 million a year ago, with most of the lost subscribers presumably moving to NetFlix. "Our goal is to continue to increase our membership base by providing even more ways for customers to get the entertainment they want through our stores, through the mail and through new technologies," Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes said in a statement.

In what appears to be a new strategy in the high-definition DVD wars, Best Buy and Wal-Mart have announced that they are dropping the price of HD DVD players below $100. In-store sales of the players were expected to begin today (Friday). They are listed as sold-out on the stores' websites.

The board of the Writers Guild of America is expected to meet today (Friday) and announce a decision on when the guild will go out on strike. Several publications, citing sources close to the board, indicated that it would probably begin on Monday. The Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers responded, "We are ready to meet and are prepared to close this contract this weekend." The two sides remain far apart on residual payments for DVD and online sales. However, today's Los Angeles Times observed that there remains "an outside chance that an agreement on a new contract may be reached in the next few days." A strike would affect late-night talk shows immediately, but alterations in regularly scheduled shows could also become evident. NBC, for example, has presumably been stockpiling editions of its Dateline news magazine since the beginning of the season and may now employ them as specials to extend the run of regular dramatic and comedy shows. Likewise ABC's Primetime magazine, which has not aired since the beginning of the season, is likely to reappear. In her influential Deadline Hollywood Daily column, Nikki Finke commented that "politics is about to trump sound economics" and that neither the writers or producers appear to recognize that a strike is likely to cost far more than what either side can possibly gain.

CBS got off to a solid start on the first night of the November sweeps, with its Thursday-night lineup winning every half-hour of primetime. The launch of Survivor: China at 8:00 p.m. pulled an 8.2 rating and a 13 share, off 11 percent from a year ago, but ABC's Ugly Betty suffered a more serious decline, dipping to a 7.3/12, down 27 percent from its year-ago figures. At 9:00, CBS remained in the lead as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation recorded a hefty 12.4/19 versus an 11.6/18 for ABC's Grey's Anatomy. Without a Trace closed the night for CBS with a 10.7/18. Its closest competition was NBC's E.R. with a 6.8/11. ABC's Big Shots, despite a 6-minute runover of Grey's Anatomy, proved to be no big shot at all, as it recorded a 6.6/11. (Without the help of Grey's, the 10:30 p.m. half hour registered a 4.5/8.)

CBS reported revenue of $3.3 billion during its third quarter, down slightly from $3.4 billion for the comparable quarter a year ago. Earnings, however, were up 8 percent to $343.3 million, from $316.9 million last year. In its filing, CBS attributed the decline in revenue to "lower television license fees, the impact of radio and television station divestitures and the absence of UPN, which ceased broadcasting in September 2006."

A federal court in Chicago has tossed out a lawsuit against NBC that was brought by a former Dateline producer who claimed that she was fired after complaining about the show's To Catch a Predator series. Marsha Bartel's lawsuit included a number of allegations of ethical misconduct, in which she particularly singled out the group Perverted Justice, the group hired by Dateline to lure unsuspecting child predators before Dateline's cameras.

The son of Duane 'Dog' Chapman taped the phone conversation in which the TV bounty hunter used racial epithets in reference to his son Tucker's girlfriend, the Associated Press reported today (Friday). He later sold the tapes to the National Enquirer for "a lot of money," the elder Chapman's lawyer said. "I guess because of whatever level of anger he had of his father, he felt the need to express it in that manner," attorney Brook Hart added. A&E channel has suspended production of Chapman's series, Dog the Bounty Hunter, despite Chapman's apology issued late Thursday.