HOPE STAYS ALIVE ON SATURDAY NIGHT: H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights is an undisputed classic of sports journalism. It's been a couple of years since I read it last, but as someone who grew up in Texas and who's been on the sidelines of numerous high school football games, it's a book I can strongly recommend. That said, I was a bit afraid of what might happen with the film adaptation that arrived in theatres. The book is (in my view) a somewhat scathing indictment of the athletic system and the obsession with it in Odessa, and I was afraid it might turn into a cut-rate version of Remember The Titans ("Remember the Mojo?").

Fortunately, my fears were abated with the film, which is gripping (if dramatically simplified from the book). While Billy Bob Thornton is the lead of the film, he has a total of one long inspirational speech rather than many, and that one is well-written and well-delivered (to the extent I can judge it, since someone decided to chit-chat on their cell phone in the theatre during the speech). The young actors (mostly unknown) playing the members of the team are all solid, and Peter Berg brings a surprisingly gutsy approach to the film.

For football fans and fans of the book, this is a must-see.

SUPERMAN HAD COME TO TOWN TO SEE WHO HE COULD ROCK: I have really been enjoying the new VH-1 five part documentary series And You Don't Stop: 30 Years of Hip Hop this week.

Starting from DJ Kool Herc setting up two turnables in the South Bronx in 1973, it has been a smart, reverential-but-not-fawning take on the history of hip hop music, with great use of archival video and interviews from just about everyone who ever mattered.

And, if you're not careful, you might learn something before it's done: like that the Sugarhill Gang was thought of as the Spice Girls of their day, or that Nas' Illmatic was the first album ever to be awarded 5 mics (i.e., 5 stars) from The Source, or how much the 1995 Source Music Awards in New York became the Gavrilo Princip of the East Coast-West Coast war.

It's on VH-1, so it'll be on constantly. Give it a try.

QUEEN LATIFAH IS THE MAGIC: I don't have quite the loathing for "magical negro" movies that Kingsley apparently does--I enjoyed both Bringing Down The House and The Legend of Bagger Vance--but that doesn't keep me from ridiculing movies that deserve it. And man, judging from Rotten Tomatoes, it sure looks like the Queen Latifah/Jimmy Fallon vehicle Taxi deserves it. Some high points from RT's reviews?

"About 60 or 70 jokes fall flat in this movie, which wouldn't know comedy if it was written in block letters on the side of the Empire State Building."

"Jimmy Fallon...is an astrophysical wonder...a black hole of funny, a yawning void of charisma."

"Fallon needs to learn that funny sometimes needs to be played straight; jokes aren't funny when the actor is laughing at them."

"The most embarassing SNL vehicle since Pootie Tang." (Yes, I know Pootie Tang wasn't SNL related, but I'm just quoting here.)

It's a safe guess that Roger Ebert's quote "wall-to-wall idiocy" will not be on posters, but who knows?

That said, even the negative reviewers say some nice things about Queen Latifah, and one reviewer notes:

Giselle Bundchen is called upon to lean over in low-cut shirts and have long legs, both of which she does very well. She is also called upon to act, which she does not do well.

Pssst--the new issue of Vanity Fair has plenty of cheesecake shots of the (very pretty) Miss Bundchen, including one where she's nude, and it has good articles. It's also cheaper than your ticket to Taxi. Just a suggestion.

NEXT UP, THOMAS HADEN CHURCH REMEMBERS JOHN RITTER: Let's pretend for a moment--you're the New York Times, and you're going to publish a story about memories of Marlon Brando. With whom do you begin? Those who acted with him, like Val Kilmer, Johnny Depp, or Martin Sheen? Or those who are considered his heirs, like De Niro, Pacino, and Crowe? No, no. You start with Ed Begley, Jr. And it gets weirder from there, as Begley explains Brando's brilliant idea to harness the power of (I'm not making this up) electric eels.

THE LEGEND OF BAGGER DAH: I'm not sure if I'm the only one watching Survivor 9, but, wow, a Survivor first tonight: the winner of the reward challenge got a day's worth of service from Dah, an Actual Magical Negro of Vanuatu, who taught them how to forage for food, construct more comfortable beds, and, in footage not shown but surely filmed (right after Dah helped Matt Damon with his golf swing), gave all the tribe's members advice on their relationship problems.

Really, really uncomfortable to watch.

(Also, this season's boring.)

THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EYED PEAS: The Wall Street Journal, of all places, tries to figure out how "Let's Get Retarded" became "Let's Get It Started".

DON'T SAY I GAVE HIM NO RESPECT: Rodney Dangerfield Dies At Age 82. Really got nothing more to say about that, but worth noting, at any rate.