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Sideshow | Judges don't idolize latest hopefuls

Having trouble getting enthusiastic about this season's American Idol finalists? You're not alone. Even the show's judges aren't thrilled with the current batch.

Actor Shia LeBouf stars in "Disturbia," which debuted at No. 1. His next two projects also look like winners.
Actor Shia LeBouf stars in "Disturbia," which debuted at No. 1. His next two projects also look like winners.Read more

Having trouble getting enthusiastic about this season's

American Idol

finalists? You're not alone. Even the show's judges aren't thrilled with the current batch.

"We're doing as well as we are doing with not a great cast at the moment, to be honest with you," Simon Cowell told Entertainment Weekly. "They're not the best bunch of kids we've ever had." Added Paula Abdul, who is known for her blind (and often tone-deaf) optimism, "I just can't say that they're really good if they're not. I just can't anymore."

You know you're having a bad season when even politicians, who avoid controversy as if it were a personal check, are willing to take a shot at your talent pool.

This weekend, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton was doing a call-in show on a New Hampshire radio station when a listener asked what the citizens of this country could do to stamp out Sanjaya Malakar.

"That's the best question I've been asked in a long time," Clinton said. "Well, you know, people can vote for whomever they want. That's true in my election, and it's true on American Idol."

Update opens at top

Debuting at the top of the box-office heap this weekend was

Disturbia

, which most critics praised as a pretty slick update of Hitchcock's

Rear Window

. Starring

Shia LaBeouf

and Philly's own

David Morse

, the thriller took in $23 million.

LaBeouf, a former Disney Channel moppet, is on quite a roll. This summer, he will star in Transformers, which is expected to be a blockbuster. And it was just announced he will have a major part in the fourth Indiana Jones movie. No wonder he hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend.

Blades of Glory slipped to second place, socking away an additional $14.1 million. It was followed by Meet the Robinsons ($12.1 million) and Perfect Stranger ($11.5 million), the new Halle Berry-Bruce Willis thriller.

It would seem you guys weren't as eager to see Pathfinder, the bloody Vikings vs. Native Americans yarn, as we were. Ah well, there's no accounting for bad taste.

Live-action Trixie

Here's some odd casting news: Quirky indie girl

Christina Ricci

will join the cast of

Speed Racer

, a live-action version of the popular cartoon being adapted by

Matrix

creators

Larry

and

Andy Wachowski

.

Ricci will play Speed's trusty girlfriend Trixie. She will join Emile Hirsch (as the title character), John Goodman (as Pops) and Susan Sarandon (as Mrs. Pops).

That's all well and good, but what we really want to know is who will play the pivotal roles of Racer X and Chim Chim?

Send your suggestions directly to the Wachowskis, who are writing and directing the feature to be shot this summer in Berlin.

Everybody sing:

"Here he comes

Here comes Speed Racer

He's a demon on wheels

He's a demon and he's gonna be chasin' after someone."

Rosie's latest nemesis

As Donald Trump can tell you, the best way to get your name in bold face is to start a public spat with Rosie O'Donnell. Even for someone who has fallen as far off the importance radar as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. On Friday, he wrote on his Web site, "Where are the repercussions for Rosie O'Donnell's hateful, idiotic accusations that President Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks? And her ignorant parody of the Chinese language? Or her comparison of conservative Christians to Islamo-fascist terrorists?

"Why has ABC not suspended her from The View? Why has she not been frog-marched up to some radio show to apologize?" (an obvious reference to Don Imus' penitent appearance on the Rev. Al Sharpton's program)

Rosie hasn't taken the gloves off yet. You might want to tune into today's broadcast of The View to get her unfiltered reaction. But over the weekend, she posted this lyrical response on her haiku-styled, no-capital-letters Web site:

tom delay

sad slug

of rosie odonnell me - he said

"she accused the president

of orchestrating 9 11"

wrong sir - again

Why do we get the feeling this donnybrook is just starting?

French DVD picks

Torn between spending an evening with

Law & Order

reruns or some

Eric Rohmer

DVDs? (It happens to us all the time.)

Be healed with Le Petit Lieutenant, a remarkable, minimalist French police drama with Jalil Lespert as a young hotshot detective out to prove himself. It'll be out on DVD Tuesday.

For the more adventurous, Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre, out on April 24, is a ravishing and disgusting mindbender filmed inside the very consciousness of a serial killer. The anarchic cinematography can be as painful to watch as the killings.

We wonder if the French find Blades of Glory funny?