Idol Chatter

“SHOCK! Geri Halliwell ‘rewrites the Bible’,” shrieked the headline accompanying a report in yesterday’s Now Magazine. “How terribly intersting,” I thought, “A member of the biggest-selling female UK group of all time taking on the best-selling book of all time.” But, alas Halliwell, a.k.a. Ginger Spice, wasn’t creating a GPV Bible (Girl Power Version), but…

Who knew a Narnian prince was a triple threat? Before he landed his first Hollywood lead role, actor Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian in the new “Narnia” movie sequel) was singing and dancing in a British boy band called Hyrise. Performing the mildly racy song “Leading Me On,” Hyrise competed to represent the UK in 2004…

“Prince Caspian,” the sequel to 2005’s “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” hits theaters Friday, May 16th, and to celebrate we have three books to give away—”The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” (movie tie-in edition). One of these books, the grand prize, is autographed by Ben Barnes, who plays Prince Caspian, as well as…

It was just a few weeks ago that I blogged about the interesting piece Daniel Radosh wrote for the New York Times on what he thinks are the top ten Christian songs. Then I read a review of the self-proclaimed secular, liberal Jew’s new book, “Rapture Ready” over at Slate, which intrigued me enough to…

Just about everyone knows about James Frey’s fall from grace and off the best-seller list with his faux memoir “A Million Little Pieces.” A public reprimand on Oprah’s couch will do that to an author. (Or anyone for that matter.) But according to Janet Maslin’s book review, “Little Pieces of Los Angeles, Done His Way,”…

Every parent wants a better life for their children, better than the one they had. It’d be pretty astounding to hear fledgling parents at a dinner party say, for example, that they’d like to put as many obstacles as possible in their kid’s path or quote “no pain, no gain” as a mantra of childrearing.…

There’s a new release out that piled up well over $500 million—that’s “Fiiiive Hundred Meeeellion Dollarzzz”—in its first week of release, including a whopping $310 million in it’s opening day. What a blockbuster! But it wasn’t the new Indiana Jones movie. It wasn’t a Star Wars sequel. In fact, it wasn’t a movie at all.…

Jamie Lynn’s been under the radar as her belly’s been expanding with the promise of new life, staying out of the eye of stalkerazzi, so we don’t have to be subjected to photos of her scarfing down Arby’s. But according to PerezHilton, the imminently maternal Spears did emerge from deep cover to attend church on…

Laila Lalami, a novelist and literary blogger, has a review of the new indie film “The Visitor” in The Nation that serves as a mini-compendium of Muslim film, and how Hollywood has represented Islam since 9/11.

This summer’s upcoming reboot of the “X-Files” franchise after more than six years of living in a Mulder and Scully-less world, rebirth of the “Star Wars” franchise in the form of a computer-animated feature film and television series, and retirement of “Battlestar Galactica,” as it (hopefully) finally finds Earth, got us thinking about the great…

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