BIG SCREEN

BIG SCREEN

Hancock (PG-13) -- A cranky, alcoholic superhero (Will Smith) hires a publicist (Jason Bateman) to help him repair his public persona. Charlize Theron co-stars for director Peter Berg (The Kingdom). Early reviews have not been kind, but Smith movies and the Fourth of July holiday are an unbeatable combination. Opens Wednesday.

-- RENE RODRIGUEZ

All About Dung (10 p.m. Monday, History Channel) -- Oh, the years I've longed to write this sentence: This show is just a lot of crap. Really: Cow dung. Bat dung. Insect dung. Coffee made from dung. Cellphones powered by dung. History written from dung. I know you think I'm making this up, but, really, this is the straight poop.

The Singing Office (9 p.m. Sunday, TLC) -- Sticking with our dung theme for a moment, this show features the walking musical atrocities Mel B. (Scary Spice of the Spice Girls) and Joey Fatone (the uncute one in 'N Sync) prowling real-estate offices and dentists' waiting rooms for singers as trifling as they were. Or are.

Moment of Luxury (6 p.m. Sunday, WLRN-PBS 17) -- This show on lifestyles of the rich and swinish naturally pays a visit to South Florida. The first of back-to-back episodes checks out Dania Beach, which apparently is some kind of secret hideout of the plutocracy, and then, more plausibly, Palm Beach.

Locked Up Abroad (9 p.m. Monday, National Geographic Channel) -- Back in the '60s, Saturday-morning TV used to be dotted with public service announcements showing college kids being hung by their heels in various Third World hellhole jails after being caught with half a joint. ''When you're busted over there, you're in for the hassle of your life,'' an announcer would sternly intone. Turns out this was one bit of reefer madness that was absolutely true and still is. The debut of the second season of this documentary series focuses on the unlovely life of an American arrested with some hashish in South Korea.

Ganja Queen (9 p.m. Monday, HBO) -- Of course, it could have been worse -- he could have been busted carrying marijuana in Bali. In this documentary, a young Australian woman learns the hard way that in Indonesia, trafficking in marijuana is a capital offense.

The War of the World (11 p.m. Monday, WPBT-PBS 2) -- This provocative three-part documentary hosted by historian Niall Ferguson argues that the wars of the 20th century, from Japan's invasion of Russia in 1905 to the Cold War that spluttered out in the early 1990s, were not separate conflicts, merely different facets of a single century-long clash of civilizations. It's a thesis worth considering at a time when the Judeo-Christian West is seemingly locked in a death struggle with a Muslim East.

-- GLENN GARVIN

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