Idol Chatter

In this Disney animated film--which hits theaters on Friday--a dog who plays a superhero on TV goes on a cross-country adventure. The movie stars the voices of Miley Cyrus and John Travolta.

In this scene from the just-released WWII movie, a young German boy witnesses his Nazi officer father viewing a propaganda film about concentration camps.

Revealing to reporters the other day that he once considered becoming a man of the cloth, Hugh Jackman told of watching a preacher on stage when he was about 13 years old, and having "a very clear feeling that one day I was going to be up on that stage. ... Then as I got older, I thought, 'I think I just want to be up on that stage. Maybe not in that capacity but in some other capacity'." The "Australia" star says his father was converted at a Billy Graham crusade and often took his son to revival meetings.

Jackman isn't the first actor to be bitten by the religion bug before finding that the stage offers all the drama without the theology and personal privation. But if Jackman is a material guy--he recently signed a deal to buy an apartment in New York's Greenwich Village for $21 million--he isn't without morals: he and "Australia" co-star Nicole Kidman say they discussed "boundaries" for their sex scenes. Billy Graham, no doubt, would be proud.

In this Danny Boyle-directed British drama, a poor young man goes on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" in an attempt to reconnect with an old girlfriend. He does so well that he's suspected of cheating. Check out the trailer below, then read what Movie Mom has to say.

I must admit that I resisted reading the "Twilight" series until a school librarian friend of mine informed me that I absolutely had to read at least the first book before the movie opening. So, being a dutiful friend and pop culture enthusiast, I dove right in, submerging myself in all four books one right after the other--dare I say, I devoured them. (Yes, I said it.) But, I have to admit it was one of the oddest reading experiences of my life. I found the prose a bit pedestrian and was disturbed by the premise of a self-esteem-challenged 17-year-old girl giving herself over completely to her co-dependent manic-depressive vampire boyfriend. And yet, I couldn't stop reading.

Just like a vampire's beauty makes him/her the perfect predator, the story of "Twilight" is the perfect lure. Hey ladies, here's a gorgeous, filthy rich, well-mannered, sensitive man who thinks that you, who's always been considered the plainest of uncoordinated plain Janes, are a striking beauty. In fact, he will always be there to protect you, he can't bear to live without you, and the only reason he currently exists is to make you happy, even if that means giving you over to the other man. That is an extraordinarily attractive picture. But, there's a reason these books are considered fantasy and it's not just because they contain vampires and shapeshifters.

"I doubt that millions of teenaged girls, or women of any age, would be devoted fans of a series of novels about some happy girl with a ton of self-esteem, her "partner," their studied lack of emotion toward one another at their liberal-arts college, their smoothly-proceeding hyphenated-names 'commitment ceremony,' their overlapping parental leaves and their stroller acquisitions," a friend of mine noted. It is true that such a tale lacks a certain allure, but what happened to characters like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" Buffy Summers, a popular cheerleader who managed to battle personal demons while actually battling demons?