Actually, Paul Steinhardt just gave a talk at Fermilab a few weeks ago on the Cyclic Universe. It does solve some of the current problems with the big bang and actually requires dark energy. Dark energy is sort of tacked onto the big bang to explain current observations.

It also keeps entropy increasing from one universe to the next, so there is never a decreasing entropy problem.

It has definitely been receiving some attention in the theoretical astrophysics community.

Rob