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You really can't have too high expectations for a made-for-cable TV movie. And made-for-VH1 at that. With that in mind, Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story was a decent little bio-film. Yes, its too short and sometimes plays fast & loose with the facts, but it gets its main point across pretty decently. Namely, that Def Leppard were always best friends first and a great rock band second.

Although the film opens with Rick Allen's accident and then flashes back from there, it doesn't overly dwell on just the negative. It makes it clear that these were stand-up guys devoted equally to their friendship as to their music.

And even though the actors were obviously chosen based on their strong physical resemblance to each band member, all of them give really strong performances. They all come across as real people, and not at all as mere hired lookalikes. And even though the role is severely limited, Anthony Michael Hall gets the gist of producer Mutt Lange's role (although they made him American when he's actually British).

A few time-line errors: They show the band working on Pour Some Sugar on Me while Rick is in the hospital and before Mutt Lange rejoins them in the studio. In fact, Sugar was the last song on the Hysteria album to be written and it was in fact Lange who recognized it as a potential smash hit and insisted on its development & inclusion (even though they were already way behind schedule).

Also the final concert scene where Rick plays live again for the first time, this was actually at an outdoor concert in Germany. But there actually were people grumbling about a "freak show" in reference to a one-armed drummer (not fans, but members of another band that was also playing that gig). It does also accurately portray that Allen performed without a hitch that day and was warmly welcomed back by the audience.

The real members of Def Leppard themselves have gone on record saying that even though they had no input to it, overall, they were reasonably satisfied with this docudrama.

Namely, this show has become 'info-tainment'.

When it started this show had the perfect attitude for the news/entertainment media. It was cynical, mean-spirited, sarcastic, and prudently self-mocking.

Craig Kilborne was an absolutely perfect host. He was a dumb-blonde version of Dennis Miller. He wasn't a real journalist but he played one on TV. With a knowing nod you knew he knew that entertainment (and network news) was all bullsh*t.

But now, Jon Stewart with his lost puppy-dog face and his "Aw shucks" attitude have completely ruined this show. Gone is the fake smarminess that Craigers knew was necessary to make a show like this funny. Stewart thinks he's a real anchor, giving some kind of alternative newscast for "the kids". Instead he's just become a big ass-kissing phoney like everyone he's making fun of.

The show has become what its creators set out to skewer, just another cog in the great info-tainment media machine.

If you want to see how funny this show used to be watch Joel McHale on E!'s weekly The Soup. Sarcastic, self-knowing, mean-spirited, its all there. Including _real_ laughter from the on-set stage crew (something The Daily Show had in its first, and best, season).

Alien Resurrection is more than just a bad installment to the Alien franchise. It is a horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE film from top to bottom. The script, the effects, the cast, and especially the acting are all unbelievably bad.

The script: The whole concept is contrived, disjointed, and completely 'deux ex machina'. Bringing Ripley back from the dead via cloning, even 350 years in the future, is ridiculous. She wouldn't retain any memories of her past life, and the alien parasite inside her at the time of her death could not have 'inserted' itself into her DNA allowing it to be cloned with her. Bringing her back any of the other ways, making it her grand daughter, making her an android, even making all of Alien3 having been a hypersleep hallucination, any of those would have been better.

The effects: Not only were they not used to the advantage of the story in any way, in some ways, they were downright bad. Everyone always goes on about how 'cool' the swimming aliens were. Number one, it was little more than a neat little gimmick. And two, it was poorly executed. The CGI aliens looked, well, like CGI aliens. In other words, they looked fake. They weren't quite photo-realistic in their appearance & movements. And they were on screen for all of about 3 seconds. Also the final scene reentering Earth's atmosphere was awful. It looked like they ran out of money and hoped no one would notice. And most of all the, ahem, newborn. The achieved something here alright. They found a way to make H.R.Giger's alien, the scariest movie monster ever, look like something out of a Lucy skit. When that thing appeared I sunk in my seat in embarrassment.

The cast: I really like Winona Ryder, but she never was & never will be an action heroine. It should have been obvious from the start that she was a completely wrong choice. And Sigourney, well, she got her 10 million dollar check and sleepwalked thru the role, if not deliberately sabotaging the film because she's sick of her association with them. As far as the rest of the cast, they were all completely forgettable. So I've completely forgotten them. Other than Dan Hedaya and Ron Perlman, who serve as nothing more than comedy relief.

The performances: I can sum them up thusly- The director didn't speak or understand English. And it shows. Didn't it occur to anyone that that might be a bad idea?! In all seriousness, I've watched lots of MST3K and Roger Coreman has made better movies than this.

Alien Vs. Predator, a seemingly more derided film, just came out on DVD and while not up to the standard of either Alien or Aliens it was about a million times better than this one.