Idol Chatter

All through the elephant-dung Virgin Mary dust-up and the “Piss Christ” controversy, one might have drawn the conclusion that Catholic League president Bill Donohue just didn’t get modern art. Who would want to tackle the task of explaining to Donohue how Western art at the turn of the 2000s had come to “appropriate” icons, materials,…

Yvonne De Carlo died of natural causes on Monday at the age of 84. The name isn’t familiar to you? Remember the quirky matriarch of the Munsters clan, Lily Munster? De Carlo breathed life into that television character–the serenely smiling mother to Eddie and wife to the bumbling, loveable, big-hearted Frankenstein-ian monster, Herman. Though only…

While many in the press have continued to heap accolades on NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” as the best new series of the fall season, I withdrew my enthusiastic support after the show took a wrong turn and starting heading into tacky teen soapdom in the vein of a series like “The O.C.” But I am…

Nineteenth-century American author and lawyer Christian Nestell Bovee once noted that “Bad taste is a species of bad morals.” So, what would he think of the posting of the Sadam Hussein execution video and the recent decision to air the wildlife documentary Croc Hunter Steve Irwin was working on when he was killed by a…

“Jack is back,” or so the commercials promise. Next Sunday, Season Six of “24” kicks off during its traditional slot right after Fox-TV’s playoff coverage. It will be eight days short of eight months since the last original episode of “24” aired. I can’t remember any other show in our lifetime that can take more…

No, it’s not a joke. The CBC–a major Canadian broadcasting network–premieres a long awaited, much talked about new television series called “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” tonight at 8:30pm. And, it’s a sitcom! That’s right–a comedy about being Muslim and living in the West. The show, created by Zarqa Nawaz, “focuses on the small Muslim…

A young mother gives birth to a miracle child destined to save humanity but then must flee with her child to safety or be killed. No, I am not describing the plot of “The Nativity Story,” but the plot of the futuristic thriller “Children of Men.” Director Alfonso Cuaron (“The Prisoner of Azkaban“) takes the…

I liked “The Good Shepherd” and enjoyed Ellen Leventry’s Idol Chatter review of it, with one main point of disagreement. Where she saw it as perhaps an incomplete movie about the CIA, I thought it was a thorough–if not ingenious–look at the career path that cost many of our fathers (and grandfathers) the life they…

The world has seen its share of cheesy teacher-transforms-students movies (“Dangerous Minds” starring Michelle Pfeiffer is a classic example). But the “Stand and Deliver” examples of the genre–those that not only inspire but are also well-told, well-acted stories–are a rare breed. “Freedom Writers,” thankfully, is of the “Stand and Deliver” variety. Based on a true…

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