“Reaper” (Tuesdays, The CW): The buzz surrounding this supernatural action comedy is true: It’s a winner. The premise is that a slacker’s parents sold his soul to the devil, payable when he turns 21, and now that the day has arrived, the devil has him on bounty-hunter duty, retrieving escaped demons and sending them back to hell. The first episode was much funnier than I expected; the emphasis seems to be comedy over action, which is fine with me. The devil is played with obvious glee by Ray Wise (Leland Palmer from “Twin Peaks”), and the hero is Bret Harrison, last seen in Fox’s prematurely canceled “The Loop.” They’re both strong, capable comic actors, and if the writing stays fresh like this, the show should be a hit. TiVo verdict: Hell yeah.

“Bionic Woman” (Wednesdays, NBC): And then there’s this piece of crap. An update of the ’70s series about a woman who gets some super-powered body parts, this version got off to a lazy start with a bland pilot. The top-secret government operation’s previous bionic woman, now gone rogue, pursues and fights with the new one — but no reason is given for her hatred of the new girl. (If anything, she should be going after the people who made her.) The new girl herself, Jamie, is played by an uncharismatic actress named Michelle Ryan, and she gives the character no personality whatsoever. Nothing about the first episode made me interested in watching it ever again. There just wasn’t anything to it. TiVo verdict: I have a bionic “delete this program now” thumb.

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The best new film this weekend is “The Kingdom,” starring Jamie Foxx as an FBI agent who leads a small team to investigate a terrorist attack against Americans in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It’s a great mix of entertainment and post-9/11 political commentary. ME LIKEY!

Our friends at Cinematical pointed out yesterday that the very informative and interesting opening credits of “The Kingdom” are being hosted at Yahoo. Go over and take a look.

(My review of “The Kingdom” is this week’s Film.com feature. As of this second, it’s not showing up over there for some reason, but I assume that problem will soon be remedied, and I will replace this text with text that has been stricken through to indicate it is no longer applicable.)

“The Game Plan” stars The Rock as a football player who suddenly has to take care of the 8-year-old daughter he never knew he had. It’s stupid and I didn’t like it. The end.

My review of “The Jane Austen Book Club” contains a joke I stole from a column I wrote last year. As always, I make no apologies for plagiarizing myself.

“Trade” is about the sex-slave industry. It (the movie as well as the industry) is grotesque. ME NO LIKEY!

Finally, there’s “Feast of Love,” which I just saw last night and did not feel compelled to bust my butt writing a review of. Look for it this weekend. (Hint: It’s probably in the C+ range.) The most interesting thing about the movie to me is that it was filmed here in Portland. In fact, the coffeehouse connecting all of the central characters is exactly one mile from my apartment! I used to go there a lot! It’s in my neighborhood! The good part of my neighborhood, not the bad part, where I live. It is the coffeehouse described in this “Snide Remarks” column.

NBC already has the best night of comedy on TV, with “My Name Is Earl,” “The Office,” “30 Rock,” and “Scrubs” on Thursdays. Now it looks like they’ve got the best block of sci-fi/fantasy, too, with “Chuck,” “Heroes,” and “Journeyman” on Mondays. We already know how great “Heroes” is, of course; let’s look at the newcomers.

“Chuck” (Mondays, NBC): This sci-fi comedy about an average computer geek who gets all of the NSA’s secret files downloaded into his brain (don’t ask), thus making him an invaluable tool in the war on terror, is very likable. It was co-created by Josh “The O.C.” Schwartz (which is probably why Chuck takes a date to see a cool indie band in the first episode), but the focus is on an “Alias”-meets-”Buffy” style of espionage and smart comedy. The star is Zachary Levi, who evidently was on a sitcom called “Less Than Perfect” from 2002-2006. In other news, apparently there was a sitcom called “Less Than Perfect” from 2002-2006. How do they slip these past me? Anyway, “Chuck” is intelligent and fun. TiVo verdict: Count me in.

“Journeyman” (Mondays, NBC): There’s not as much humor in this show about a San Francisco newspaper reporter who suddenly finds himself traveling through time at random intervals. The reason, of course, is to do good deeds; the show definitely owes a lot to “Early Edition,” “Quantum Leap,” and the bestseller “The Time-Traveler’s Wife.” The first episode established a lot of intriguing backstory: The guy was once engaged to a lawyer who died in a plane crash, and now he’s married to a fellow reporter … who was once his cop brother’s girlfriend. And there’s a nice twist, too, in that our hero isn’t the only person bouncing through time. It strikes me as a pleasant, comfortable show that you don’t have to watch every single week but that will probably be rewarding when you do. TiVo verdict: A low-priority season pass.

Since you can’t be expected to keep up everything I write — heck, even I don’t always read what the Laotian kids in my sweatshop crank out before I put my name on it and send it to the editors — I thought I’d list some of the more noteworthy entries from recent weeks at Film.com and Cinematical.

- “Predictions for Tyler Perry’s Next Five Movies”: This one might not do much for you if you’re not the least bit familiar with his films (“Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” etc.).

- “An Open Letter to Eugene Levy”: It’s an intervention, really.

- “Science Helps Us Predict When Acting Careers Will End”: A story detailing the mathematical formula used to predict when certain untalented and/or unnecessary celebrities will finally stop getting work. It comes complete with an editor’s note reminding the reader that, ha ha, we’re just kidding! This was deemed necessary in light of Keira Knightley’s tendency to sue people who point out the very obvious fact that she has anorexia.

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“The Big Bang Theory” (Mondays, CBS): Despite being from the creator of “Two and a Half Men,” the pilot episode of this sitcom actually made me laugh quite a bit. It’s about two super-intelligent science nerds, Leonard and Sheldon, who share an L.A. apartment and hang out with like-minded geeks. A pretty blonde moves into the apartment across the hall, and Leonard instantly develops a crush. The first episode overplays some of the stereotypical elements a bit much, with the geeks unrealistically oblivious to the fact that most people aren’t as smart as they are and the blonde a little dumber than normal. But I really like the fact that Sheldon and Leonard play like a nerdy old married couple who argue with each other in highly intelligent geek-speak. TiVo verdict: Provisional season pass (i.e., I’m with you, but I will turn on you in a heartbeat if you betray me).

P.S. The show’s very first joke made me laugh. Here it is:

SHELDON: So if a photon is directed through a plane with two slits in it and either slit is observed, it will not go through both slits. If it’s unobserved, it will — however, if it’s observed after it’s left the plane but before it hits its target, it will not have gone through both slits.

LEONARD: Agreed. What’s your point?

SHELDON: No point, I just think it’s a good idea for a T-shirt.

Comedy!

After I reviewed “Hairspray” in July, I got this e-mail from a reader named Jeff:

I can’t believe you made it through whole “Hairspray” review, even mentioning Amanda Bynes by name, without making reference to that 40+ year old creepy guy that hosts a fan website in her honor! Perhaps you didn’t want to detract from an otherwise glowing review….

Then, when I gave a much more negative review of the Bynes vehicle “Sydney White,” a commenter named “ClobberGirl” once again invoked Creepy Guy:

Where’s that creepy Amanda Bynes fan site guy? Someone should show him this review. I bet he’d say more hilariously crazy stuff for us if we did.

Alas, as subsequent commenters noted, his site is no more.

If you’re just joining us, Creepy Amanda Bynes guy, aka Robert Mackey, sent me three e-mails in 2006, each vigorously and angrily defending the object of his obsession, who was also the subject of his website, “Amanda Bynes NOW!”

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This week’s “Snide Remarks” features my favorite kind of indulgence: self-indulgence! It’s my top 10 list of what I consider to be the best “Snide Remarks” columns ever, in conjunction with the feature’s 10th anniversary — which is this Saturday, officially.

My little column is 10 years old! Seems like only yesterday that I was giving birth to it, right there on the floor at The Daily Universe.

I recorded SnideCasts for the top 10 columns, as I figured that would make them seem fresher to readers who have read them before. To my deaf readers, I have nothing new to offer, sorry.

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There’s a metric shload of new movies this weekend, and three of them are excellent and thought-provoking. How often is even ONE movie in a weekend excellent and thought-provoking, let alone three?

“In the Valley of Elah” stars Tommy Lee Jones as a retired military man investigating the disappearance of his son, an Army soldier just back from a tour of duty in Iraq. You might think it is an anti-war film, especially when you learn that Susan Sarandon plays Jones’ wife, but that is not the case. Or, rather, it is anti-war, but it’s opposed to wars in general, to how they destroy lives and change the young men who have to fight them. The film makes no statement about the current war one way or the other. It’s an extraordinarily well-acted film, and a stirringly patriotic one too, in its way.

I also highly recommend “Eastern Promises,” directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen as a man working his way up in the Russian mob. Great crime film, and an examination of the code of ethics among gangsters. The scene everyone will be talking about is the one where Mortensen has a fight with two hitmen while he’s in a bathhouse, completely naked. It’s a knock-down, drag-out fight, too. Cronenberg once made a film called “The Naked Lunch,” and so I kept trying to make a joke about “Eastern Promises” being called “The Naked Punch.” (Get it? Because he’s naked, and he’s fighting!) But nobody thought that was funny. So then I realized the perfect alternate title for it: “Balls of Fury.” Thank you!

Finally (among the great films, anyway), there’s “The Hunting Party,” an absurd but true story about three journalists who on a whim set out to find a notorious Bosnian war criminal — and in two days of looking got closer to capturing him than the U.N. had done in five years of “trying.” Richard Gere and Terrence Howard star. Lots of fun.

This week’s “In the Dark” also makes mention of “2 Days in Paris” (non!) and “Moliere” (oui!).

The three big, fat, wide releases this weekend are all lousy: “Good Luck Chuck” (my Film.com review for the week), “Sydney White,” and “Resident Evil: Extinction.” “Chuck” and “Resident Evil” will probably cancel each other out, since they seem to be targeting the same audience, i.e., 20-year-old meatheads. But we’ll see. “Resident Evil” wasn’t screened until last night, and even then the press weren’t invited. Some of us showed up anyway, though, and we weren’t denied access. Maybe the studio really did want us to see it and our invitations were lost in the mail???

“Back to You” (Wednesdays, Fox): “Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer and “Everybody Loves Raymond” star Patricia Heaton play Pittsburgh news anchors who are reunited when he comes crawling back after failing in L.A. He’s pompous and arrogant; she’s exasperated and brassy. Seems they had a fling once, too. The sitcom is familiar and easy-going, right down to the overactive laugh track and the “oh no you di’int!” sex jokes. Fred Willard plays the old-school sexist sports anchor, and Fred Willard is always a welcome sight. I laughed three or four times during the first episode and was generally amused the rest of the time in a mindless, unchallenging sort of way. TiVo verdict: It’s not a show I’d watch on purpose, but if I were flipping channels and happened upon it, I’d stick around.

“Gossip Girl” (Wednesdays, The CW): OMG you guys, the guy who created “The O.C.” totally created a new show! And it’s based on a series of young-adult books! Apparently! “Gossip Girl” is about idle rich Upper East Side teenagers who sit around being snotty to each other while they drink champagne and smoke marijuana. Their doings are reported on a blog written by the anonymous Gossip Girl (who we hear in voice-over, and it’s the voice of Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell). The pilot episode — in which queen bee Serena comes back to town after a mysterious year-long absence — didn’t indicate what tone the series will take. It wasn’t smart or witty enough to be legitimately enjoyable (the way the first season of “The O.C.” was), but neither was it campy enough to be a trashy guilty pleasure. All the juicy subplots introduced in the pilot suggest it could be “Dynasty Junior”; who knows if they’ll make it as fun as it could be? TiVo verdict: I sort of want to know what happens next … but not enough to expend the energy to tell TiVo to record it next week. That’s the kind of show it is.

I don’t watch “The View.” In fact, I can’t even imagine watching it. The very thought makes me shudder. The small clips I’ve seen convince me I’ve made the right choice in not allowing a band of shrieking women who constantly talk over each other enter my home for an hour every day.

But I was amused, as I’m sure you will be, by this clip, in which the recently anointed fifth co-host, Sherri Shepherd, gives the wrong answer when asked if she believes the Earth is flat: “I don’t know.”

It’s in the context of a discussion about evolution, which Shepherd definitely doesn’t believe in. Whoopi Goldberg (another recent addition to the show, and another good reason not to watch it) is trying to say, “If you trust science when it tells you the Earth is round, why not trust science when it tells you about evolution?” Only she doesn’t say it very well, and I’m not sure it’s a logically valid argument anyway. And besides, Shepherd apparently doesn’t trust science when it tells her the Earth is round. That, or she’s just never heard science mention it before.

Whoopi also tries to say, “Can’t you believe in God and evolution? Couldn’t you believe that God created organisms that then evolved, under His guidance, into more fully developed animals and species?” But she doesn’t say that very well, either, which is too bad, because I think it’s a good point of view to take.

Anyway, I don’t intend for this to be a debate on whether religious people can believe in evolution (although I am resigned to the fact that that’s what it will become anyway). And I categorically do not mean to imply that all religious people, like Sherri Shepherd, are ignorant of even the basics of scientific knowledge. All I wanted is for us to point and laugh at Sherri Shepherd for saying something dumb.