potboiler

Written by Shelly Davey of Cottage Grove and directed by Gil Rodello, the play finds not-so-famous director Houston Bean struggling with malcontents - a neurotic producer's nephew, a nasty diva, a foodaholic executive and a loony assistant director - while filming his potboiler, "Phantom of the Wildcard Saloon."

Martin's Press), co-written with Robin Moore of French Connection fame, is a quirky, if entertaining, addition to the papal potboiler genre.

Anne Archer does a fine Hillary Clinton impersonation as his boss while Donald Sutherland as Secretary General of the UN adds to that nagging feeling that you've seen this brand of potboiler a hundred times.

Why, with just a couple of ghosts, some kids and a muttering old miser (Raye Birk, for example, as Ebenezer Scrooge in American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco's 1999 production, in photo), does this Dickens potboiler still draw audiences so unfailingly that it has become the American theatre's fail-safe against financial ruin?

He had done Casablanca, Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and many more classics before coming to this potboiler. Maybe he needed Errol Flynn in the lead.

The play is a potboiler of sorts, with traces of Tamburlaine, The Tempest and Don Quixote, a tale of Neapolitan court intrigue featuring a pirate, a libidinous tyrant, and a hero, Virolet, who oscillates between his noble wife and machiavellian mistress, whom he also marries.

Pineau-Valencienne is an unlikely protagonist in this potboiler - or farce, depending on how you look at it.

I don't know if this potboiler is more dangerous because it's published by the reputable Moody Press and widely available in Christian bookstores, or because the Traditional Values Coalition is selling the book and promoting author Hughes as an "information" source fit to share the podium with elected officials and former Secretary of Education William Bennett.

James Wan is a horror filmmaker of such screw-tightening skill that even when he makes a good old rattletrap haunted-house potboiler, it's easy to feel a glimmer of admiration for his talent just beneath your tingling spine.

Like 3 Days To Kill - also out today - it looks, feels and smells like an entertaining potboiler but is really a rip-off of superior crime capers.

Add to that German widow round the stowaway Who knew vineyards potboiler And the reason weekend in Yes, a in the southern late spring.

SAJID Khan's remake of the 1983 potboiler hit of the same name is as loud and brainless as the original, making you wonder if commercial Hindi cinema has indeed not progressed in 30 years.

Nobody would call Sir Cliff Richard an old potboiler and it is to him - in a roundabout way - that the West Enders are turning with a fund-raising production of Summer Holiday.

Like a typical Bollywood potboiler, the match on Saturday was high on emotions and drama.

The simmering face-off between the Congress party and Team Anna has turned into a political potboiler, with both sides routinely criticising one an other on several issues.