Critics have generally agreed that the latest remake of H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic The Time Machine is pretty much a waste of time. Peter Howell in the Toronto Star says it's really like "a very bad remake of Planet of the Apes. No, it's worse than that. It's Beneath the Planet of the Apes." Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times calls it "a drab, mostly colorless film." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times describes it as "a witless recycling of the H.G. Wells story." But while most critics are simply dismissive, Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune imagines what it might have been like had Wells been transported by his own time machine to the present and had seen the film himself. "My guess is that he'd be overwhelmed, but not pleasantly so," Wilmington writes. "This new DreamWorks production is one of those staggeringly well-produced, joylessly extravagant pictures that keep whooshing you from one visual marvel to the next, hastily, emptily. It's a shallow picture, dazzlingly elaborated, all decked out in Industrial Light and Magic finery but stripped of social thought, the meat-and-potatoes of H.G. Wells' vision." And, noting that the film was directed by Wells' great grandson, Simon, Joel Siegel remarked on Good Morning America this morning that it was too bad it hadn't been directed by the great grandson of Orson Welles. "If it had been Orson Welles' great grandson, we might have had a shot," Siegel quipped.

All About the Benjamins, starring Mike Epps and Ice Cube, is faring only a bit better than The Time Machine with the critics, but it cost roughly a quarter of the $80 million that DreamWorks shelled out for the sci-fi movie. Gene Seymour in Newsday gives the film its best review: "Granted, its dark-edged crime-caper plot is so formulaic it seems almost ritualized," he writes. "Yet Ice Cube and Mike Epps enact their standard odd-couple tango with such ease and brio, you'd think they'd never seen such movies before. A lot of generic thrillers could profit from their easy-does-it byplay." Robert K. Elder in the Chicago Tribune also concludes that the two stars "have an explosively funny on-screen chemistry." But Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer says that Ice Cube and Epps "made me laugh in Next Friday. They made me squirm here." And Philip Wuntch in the Dallas Morning Newswhile describing the film as "good, sleazy fun that should pay off handsomely at the box office," describes one scene that left the audience he saw it with doing a lot of squirming -- one in which Epps yells, "I ain't gonna make that jump! I don't wanna wind up like Christopher Reeve!"

Twentieth Century Fox and Lucasfilm are planning to step up their pre-opening marketing push for Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones with the release of a new trailer for the film that will air on the Fox network on Sunday, March 10 at 9:00 p.m., between Malcolm in the Middle and The X-Files, and be posted to the official Star Wars website (http://www.starwars.com) on the same day. The trailer will also play in theaters showing the animated feature Ice Age beginning March 15. In a statement, the company said that the two-and-a-half minute trailer includes "glimpses of some of the largest action sequences ever found in a Star Wars movie." The statement quoted Lucasfilm's marketing chief, Jim Ward, as saying: "We're going to see hundreds of Jedi, hundreds of lightsabers, thousands of clones, in a huge battle. The trailer gives just a hint of what's to come."

In stumping for Oscars, studios are increasingly proposing as candidates for best-supporting-actor or -actress nominations performers who in some cases are on screen longer than those proposed for the best-actor or -actress nods, the Wall Street Journal observed today (Friday). The newspaper noted, for example, that although Jennifer Connelly is up for best supporting actress for her performance in A Beautiful Mind, she's actually on screen as much as Sissy Spacek, who's up for best actress for her performance in In the Bedroom. Best-supporting-actor nominee Ethan Hawke is actually on screen 13 minutes longer than best-actor nominee Denzel Washington in the same movie, Training Day. And Jim Broadbent is onscreen only two minutes less than Judi Dench in Iris. Asked about the Hawke-Washington anomaly, Warner Bros. marketing chief Dawn Taubin told the Journal: "I think that Ethan's character is more reactive to Denzel's character." However, the newspaper raises the question of whether it is fair to pit an actor who has only a few minutes on screen with another who's on screen throughout the film. The WSJ also noted that Jennifer Connelly is up for a best actress award at this Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards -- something the studio attributes to "a clerical error."

Lured by blockbusters like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ("Sorcerer's" was used only in the U.S. version) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, movie attendance in Britain hit a mark not equaled since 1972, according to figures released by the British Office for National Statistics Thursday. As reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper, 141 million tickets were sold in 2001, four million more than in 2000. The newspaper noted however, that the figures can't compare with the levels prior to the early 1950s (before TV), when nearly ten times the number of tickets were sold each year.

The government of New South Wales has approved a 5.2-acre expansion of Australia's Fox Studios. "Lack of studio space had been the biggest brake on filmmaking in NSW," state treasurer Michael Egan told Melbourne's The Age newspaper. "At any one time, there is $10 billion of U.S. film production looking for locations around the world. ... More studio space makes us more competitive."

In the tug-of-war between CBS and ABC over David Letterman, each network is trying to outdo the other, not with offers of higher pay for Letterman, but with promises of stronger marketing and promotion, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported today (Friday). ABC execs have reportedly tried to entice him with a new set in Times Square, the advantage of better local news lead-ins in many major markets, recent deals with sports franchises (Letterman has a strong following among young males), and promotions on ESPN. CBS is promising to promote the show on corporate siblings MTV and VH1 and on the hundreds of radio stations owned by another corporate sibling, Infinity Broadcasting. The WSJ noted that analysts and media buyers are giving the edge to CBS. Commented the Times: "It is no longer just a battle of the networks. It is also a battle of the conglomerates."

In an unusual backwards spin, four cast members of Cheers, which left the air in 1993 after 11 seasons, are due to reunite on Frasier in an upcoming episode, TV Guide Online reported Thursday. When it debuted as a Cheers spinoff in 1993, Frasier, starring Kelsey Grammer, saw the title character leave his stool at the Cheers bar in Boston and head for Seattle. According to TV Guide, the upcoming episode, titled "Cheerful Goodbyes," has Frasier returning to Boston to convince mailman Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger) not to retire and move away, much to the dismay of Cheers waitress Carla (Rhea Perlman) and another regular at the bar, accountant Norm (George Wendt.)

After chastising EchoStar Communications and Hughes' DirecTV company for not submitting complete answers to questions it had asked about their proposed $26.3-billion merger, the FCC halted its review of the merger Thursday. Kenneth Ferree, the head of the FCC's cable services bureau which is reviewing the deal. said that until the two companies provide the requested information, the commission would "stop the 180-day clock for consideration" of the merger.

Three "second tier" advertising agencies, America's Bcom3 Group, France's Publicis Groupe, and Japan's Dentsu announced Thursday that they would form what would become the world's fourth-largest advertising company. "I don't know if biggest is better, but big is better," Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Michael J. Russell Jr. told today's (Friday) New York Times. "The agencies are playing catch-up to what the media and clients have already done."

As Germany's KirchGruppe struggles to pay down some of its $5.70 billion in debt and finds buyers for its smaller assets sparse and tightfisted, some U.S. media companies, including Disney, Viacom, and AOL Time Warner, are directing their attention at the German media group's most attractive holding, the commercial satellite service ProSiebenSat1, news reports said Thursday. KirchGruppe's 52.5-percent stake in ProSiebenSat1 is reportedly worth between $1.4 and $2 billion. Earlier this week, Kirch's top TV exec, Dieter Hahn, said that the company would never sell ProSiebenSat1, but the company's creditors, analysts noted, may have other ideas. Meanwhile, asked at a conference in Berlin today (Friday) about the report, AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case said, "Kirch is not an area of focus for us at the moment."