The History Channel’s Alexander the Great special brought in 3.1 million viewers and gave the network its best rating all year. This audience may also trounce the opening weekend for the Oliver Stone movie event. Alexander looks like a cross between a hustler and a club kid in a golden frau-wig that would make the Gorgon blanch. In this garb his sensitive pouting reads more like the simpering of a simpleton. No wonder, since Colin (b. 1976) plays the son of Angelina Jolie (b. 1975), who chews up the scenery more than the elephants. And for a father he has to outshine Val Kilmer who has only one eye but so extravagantly overcompensates that his assassination comes as a mercy killing. Then there’s the gay thing, which isn’t going to play well in Jesusland (or Greece). Actually, it’s not going to play well anywhere; the flip-flop vibe of flaunting it one moment, turning coy the next is positively dizzy-making. At the Hollywood screening I attended no one walked out or made any kind of sound at all, presumably because they had all been cryogenically frozen into their seats by sheer boredom.

– Fenton Bailey