I liked this movie quite a bit  when I first saw it in 2003, and it was called Love, Actually.  This is nothing but a watered down and americanized version of the British movie, and it is mired in mediocrity.  Just think of this as the ugly stepsister of Love, Actually.

Despite a massive ensemble cast (Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Julia Roberts, Shirley MacClaine, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Emma Roberts, and George Lopez) the film lacks any real zip, and for a film about Valentine’s Day, it lacks heart. Don’t let all that star power fool you.

There are a myriad of storylines woven throughout the movie, which takes place on Valentine’s Day, in Los Angeles.  Most of the principals are connected to one another in one way or another, and their connections are slowly revealed throughout the movie.  Some of the stories work quite well, and others just don’t work at all.

Ashton Kutcher plays Reed, a florist who proposes to his less than thrilled girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba.)  His best friend Julia (Jennifer Garner) is giddy over her new boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey), who is actually a two timing married man. Her best friend Kara (Jessica Biel) is the desperate and lonely career girl with no one to spend Valentine’s Day with.

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I get wary when The Office tends to fall back on material that’s been endlessly mined before—guest stars, Michael being an idiot, the threat of a new manager coming to make sweeping changes, romances that ultimately go nowhere—on the one hand, a lot of that stuff made The Office great (and granted you can’t go for six seasons without repeating some things), on the other, most of the rehashes this season fell splatastically flat.

But not tonight.

Call me a pessimist, but I never expected a lackluster season like this to deliver an episode so consistently laugh-out-loud funny as “Manager and Salesman”—it’s among the series’ best and may be in the running for highest number of laughs.

The CEO from Sabre (Kathy Bates in the show’s best cameo since David Koechner [and whatever happened to him?]) drops by to check in on the Dunder-Mifflin branch but mainly to make some changes, namely consolidating Michael and Jim’s jobs into one and setting the two in competition for the manager position…until they discover there’s no cap on sales commissions, leading to a similar power struggle over the salesman position.

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This season of The Office has shown some interesting changes for our favorite cubical-living gang. Dunder-Mifflin has gone bankrupt, which has left the Scranton branch the last of the paper company. And now, they’ve been picked up by the company Sabre, which is run by guest star Kathy Bates.

This week, Bates makes an in-person appearance to check out the branch, and things get a bit difficult from there. From NBC:

The office is eager to welcome Sabre CEO Jo Bennett (guest star Kathy Bates) to Scranton, and are dazzled by her Southern ways. Butwhen Jo finds out there are two branch managers, she says either Michael (Golden Globe winner Steve Carell) or Jim (John Krasinski) must go back to being a salesman. Meanwhile, Andy’s (Ed Helms) Valentine’s Day plan backfires.

Check out 3 exclusive new clips from tomorrow night’s episode, “Manager And Salesman”, after the jump. Be sure to catch the full episode of The Office on NBC this Thursday.

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Excited for the upcoming SyFy adaptation of Lweis Carrol’s classic Alice in Wonderland tale? Well, if so you’re in luck because we’ve got a preview of that two-part drama for you right here. According to the network, this version of the story will be “an entirely new look at “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.”

For this re-imagined adaptation, writer/director Nick Willing “mines the bizarre ingenuity and twisted logic of Carroll’s work to create a daringly different, boldly colorful and delightfully skewed dreamscape of his own.” Well, that does sound interesting, doesn’t it?

I wonder what Tim Burton would say about that? He’s been known to create a few different and bold dreamscapes himself. Oh well, I guess we’ll get a chance to compare this version with Burton’s when his hits theaters.

Until then, check out the preview for this Alice after the jump. Alice, which features Kathy Bates, Tim Curry,  Colm Meaney and Natasha Calis, premieres this Sunday at 9/8C on SyFy.

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I don’t particularly like Sandra Bullock, and I really dislike sports movies, so logic dictates that I would not care for The Blind Side. I saw the trailer, and like everyone else I wrote this film off as a heaping pile of Hallmark Channel goo.

I gritted my teeth and vowed to trudge through the movie, and instead I got one of the biggest surprises (to me) of the year. The Blind Side is good. Really good. Sandra Bullock gives her best performance to date. The story is touching, inspirational and timely.

In the tradition of Rudy, The Rookie, Remember the Titans, and Hoosiers, The Blind Side is based on a true story. Michael Oher is wandering the streets in Memphis in the bitter cold clad only in shorts and a t-shirt, when the wealthy Tuohy family sees him. After the daughter recognizes him from her school, Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) demands that her husband pull over the car.

She offers him a couch to sleep on that night, but after she discovers he has nowhere to go and no clothing, she buys him a wardrobe and eventually offers him a room in their palatial mansion. The Tuohys eventually adopt Michael, who went  on to play football at Ole Miss, and currently plays for the Baltimore Ravens as a rookie tackle.

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