Will Ferrell doesn't bring many critics to their feet cheering with his sports-related comedies, but he often does receive polite applause. Such is the case with Semi-Pro, in which Ferrell portrays the owner, coach, and star of a 1970s basketball team. Matt Zoller Seitz writes in the New York Times that the movie "finds the sweet spot between sports melodrama and parody, and hammers it for 90 diverting minutes." Claudia Puig in USA Today pronounces the film "definitely more than semi-funny" and concludes, "If you're a Ferrell fan, and if you enjoy his particular brand of eccentric tomfoolery, it's worth taking a chance on Semi-Pro." Michael Sragow in the Baltimore Sun also seems mildly amused. "The pacing and the staging are lackadaisical at best, but the virtue of this film's looseness is that it has some of the airy unpredictability of the best late-night TV comedy," he writes. Nevertheless, some critics blow the whistle on the movie. Kyle Smith in the New York Post leads off his review by remarking that "Semi Pro goes up for the dunk and misses the hoop, the backboard and the point." Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News compares Ferrell's performance in the movie with his real-life appearances on recent TV shows in which he ends up "embarrassing both the hosts and himself by acting crazy." In the same way, writes Mathews, "The movie itself leaps onto the screen and makes goofy faces at you without being either funny or involving."

The costume drama The Other Boleyn Girl is receiving generally A's for effort, but mediocre grades for everything else. "It's a marvel that something that feels so inert should have so much frenetic action," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Kenneth Turan sums up in the Los Angeles Times:, "Initially The Other Boleyn Girl is good, genteelly trashy fun but it eventually reaches for dramaturgy that's out of its league." And Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News comments that by the time the film reaches its climax, it has also " reached such a pitch of neurotic hysteria you can't help but laugh." A few critics are less harsh. Mick Lasalle in the San Francisco Chronicle remarks, "However embarrassed you might feel in the morning, this in an enjoyable movie with an entertaining angle on a hard-to-resist period of history." He also writes that Natalie Portman's performance, "which shows a range and depth unlike anything she's done before, is the No. 1 element that tips The Other Boleyn Girl in the direction of a recommendation."

Competing for the young female audience is Penelope, starring Christina Ricci, about a rich girl whose nose looks like a pig's snout and is therefore shunned by those around her. On the surface, it may sound like a neat fairy-tale of a film, but Gene Seymour in Newsday writes that "there's no real rigor or craft applied to this story; just mood, tone, neo-Gothic imagery and frantic attitude." It's the film, not the character, that seems cursed, several critics suggest. Susan Walker in the Toronto Star notes that it has been two years since it originally debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and has sat on a shelf ever since. She adds: "Maybe there was more to that family curse than the filmmakers reckoned on, because now that it's finally released, Penelope seems destined for early oblivion." And many critics suggest that the main problem with the film is that even with a pig's snout, Christina Ricci doesn't look ugly at all. In fact, most of the critics remark, she looks awfully cute.

New Line Cinema has reached the end of the line. Time Warner announced Thursday that it will merge the studio into Warner Bros. and lay off hundreds of employees, including Co-Chairmen and -CEOs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne. The company's plans were originally reported last month by L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke but were strenuously denied at the time by a New Line spokeswoman. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes indicated that the New Line banner will continue to exist but that it will no longer greenlight, market or distribute its films. "Between the cost savings and the revenue enhancements, we believe we can at least double the earnings of New Line," Bewkes told the Los Angeles Times. In an email to New Line staffers, Shaye called his departure "painful" but added that he was proud to have been a part of creating "some of the most popular and successful movies of all time." He said that he and Lynne "intend to remain actively involved in the industry in an entrepreneurial capacity" but otherwise gave no hint of their future plans.

Will Ferrell will be adding basketball to his series of sports spoofs and is expected to give the hapless New Line a rare box office victory with Semi-Pro this weekend. Box-office analysts predict that the film will score a slam-dunk $25-30 million -- and that figure could be conservative. Ferrell's last film, Blades of Glory (2007), in which he played a figure-skating champ, opened with $33 million. Talladega Nights (2006), in which he played a NASCAR driver, opened with $47 million. If Semi-Pro fails to equal those figures, analysts say, it will be because films that open at this time of year rarely do as well as films that open in spring and summer, as the other two films did. Semi-Pro is also opening with an R rating, unlike the other two, which were rated PG-13. Two other films are opening this weekend, with low box-office expectations. Each targets women -- The Other Boleyn Girl, starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johannsson and Eric Bana, and Penelope, starring Christina Ricci.

Despite talk that Steven Spielberg may pull up DreamWorks' stakes at Paramount and move them to Universal, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said Thursday that he believes Spielberg himself will continue to make films for Paramount. "I've been spending a lot of time with Steven Spielberg," Dauman said during a conference call with investors on Thursday. He indicated that among their topics of conversation was a "pretty exciting idea" for a new series of movies. He did not elaborate. "We agreed to proceed calmly and mutually to see what structure the relationship takes," Dauman said. "We'll just see how our relationship progresses," he added. Dauman's comments came as he discussed Viacom's fourth-quarter earnings results, which showed profits rising 16 percent to $559.5 million from $480.8 million during the same period a year ago. Dauman in particular credited Paramount's box-office and DVD hit Transformers and ad sales at MTV as principal contributors to the favorable result, which beat analysts' predictions.

DreamWorks announced Thursday that it will end its support for the HD DVD high-definition format and will not release Bee Movie in the format on March 11 as originally scheduled. Meanwhile, a Paramount spokesman has told the website High-Def Disc News that next week's releases of Into the Wild and Things We Lost in the Fire will be the studio's final ones in the format. It canceled its April 1 release of Sweeney Todd and its April 15 release of There Will Be Blood, but it did not indicate when those titles will be issued in the Blu-ray format.

Even the strongest Thursday-night competition from its rivals failed to keep Fox's American Idol from dominating the ratings. A results show, which trimmed the number of contestants to 16, wound up with a 14.2 rating and a 22 share in the 8:00 p.m. hour. CBS's Survivor: Micronesia, which usually wins the time period, wound up with a 7.1/11 -- about half the Idol numbers. Idol also served as an effective lead-in for Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics, which posted a win in the 9:00 p.m. hour (8.1/12) against a rerun of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (8.0/12) and a new episode of ABC's Lost (7.9/12). CBS took the lead at 10:00 p.m. with a rerun of Without a Trace (7.6/13); Fox does not air network programming at 10:00 p.m. Idol will again air on three nights next week but will return to a twice-weekly schedule the following week.

With both the Super Bowl and American Idol going for it, Fox had its highest-rated sweeps period in history for February, averaging 18.04 million viewers. That was more than the second- and third-place networks combined. CBS averaged 8.14 million viewers and ABC, 8.10 million. NBC trailed with 7.56 million.

Mixed martial arts, a sport some critics have described as excessively brutal but which nonetheless has been gaining in national popularity, will be coming to CBS in the form of four Saturday-night specials this spring, the network said Thursday. The network presumably hopes to rev up ratings for the night, which now trail those for every other night of the week -- not only for CBS but for all of the networks. CBS Entertainment executive Kelly Kahl told Reuters that the MMA events represent "low risk" for the network with "a potentially large reward." As for criticism of the sport's violent nature, Kahl noted that football and hockey also have "violent elements," adding, "If an injury does happen, we'll try to treat it as tactfully and tastefully as we can. But it's not something we're going to hype."

NBC's Quarterlife turned out to be worth little more than a plug nickel following disastrous ratings in its premiere Tuesday night. The first drama created for the Internet to wind up on network television had been set to debut in its regular time slot this Sunday, but instead NBC decided to move it to sibling cable channel Bravo, although it did not announce a date for its revival. It will be replaced on NBC by lengthened episodes of the news magazine Dateline and reruns of Law & Order.

Shelley Ross, the news show executive producer who has a way of raising hackles among talent and staff wherever she goes, is once again doing so at CBS's The Early Show, the New York Post indicated today (Friday). The newspaper's "Page Six" column quoted one veteran producer as saying, "I can't stand working here anymore. I can't stand people being humiliated this way. ... I've seen a lot of crazy people, but she takes the cake." Ross, the former producer of ABC's Primetime and Good Morning America, reportedly demanded that Rob Foreman, who produces medical stories for the morning show, read an apology to colleagues after he remarked during an editorial meeting, "Since when did scientific evidence matter on this show?" A source told the Post that Ross "was so enraged [that] he had questioned the value of her stories that she demanded he write a formal apology and then made him read it to the entire newsroom." A producer was ordered to reschedule his colonoscopy because it was sweeps month, another source told the newspaper. But a different source defended Ross, saying, "It is a general rule in TV that during sweeps, it's all hands on deck."

Commercials appearing in local newscasts represent the most effective video advertising platform, a study by Hearst-Argyle Television, which owns 26 U.S. TV stations, has concluded. Speaking at the annual Association of National Advertisers (ANA) conference in New York, Hearst-Argyle chief David Barrett also pointed out that local TV news is more "DVR proof" than other broadcasts because viewers tend to watch the programs live and therefore can't fast forward through commercials.