Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

Idol Chatter

Spending five decades on the black gospel circuit is called paying your dues, but now that mainstream success has come for the Blind Boys of Alabama, they aren’t thinking about paying themselves back. As they sing in their new CD “Down in New Orleans,” “you got to live and give.” The disc, recorded in New…

Major confession: if I have ever listened to National Public Radio’s “This American Life” series (hosted by show creator Ira Glass), it was only at the prodding of a friend who insisted I check out a specific episode or because I had tired of the Green Day CD in my car and stumbled across the…

In her third album, 2007 Grammy Award Nominee Ledisi promises “fiery vocals, funk-up rhythm and absolute soul.” And in her 14 full tracks (and two mini-tracks) that make up “Lost and Found,” she delivers. As one of Billboard Magazine’s “Top 10 Faces to Watch in 2007,” Ledisi has been carving out a name for herself…

The movie geek in me loves the idea of posting my Oscar predictions every year here at Idol Chatter, so that I have the opportunity to feel either smug or chagrined over my prognosticating prowess. However, this year I feel like it is pretty pointless to give virtual ink to predictions when I can sum…

To me, the title sounded something like an inquest into the Kennedy assassination or the 9-11 Report, but from the first scenes, “The Final Inquiry” clearly takes us back to biblical times, complete with thieves on a cross, a solar eclipse, earthquakes, and the stoning of an adulterous wife who everyone in town knew. From…

As Americans, we expect three simple things: Life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness by selling things on eBay. But Scientology is standing in the way of that American dream, reports Scott Pilutik on RealityBasedCommunity.net. It seems that the notoriously litigious church has been using eBay’s Verified Rights Owner Program (VeRO) to keep ex-Scientologists,…

Portfolio magazine blogger Jeff Bercovici calls the current state of Britney Spears a “Joseph Welch moment,” referring to the U.S. Army attorney who effectively put an end to McCarthyism in the 1950s by publicly shaming anti-Communist crusader Sen. Joe McCarthy. Like Welch, Bercovici is trying to shame tabloid traders in Britney’s mental-health meltdown by asking,…

Duane “Dog” Chapman–who you either know as the cool guy who catches criminals with the rest of his family, on the hit A&E show “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” or as that guy who was outed by the National Enquirer for spewing racial slurs in a tape-recorded conversation with his son, and then appeared on every…

The only movie I haven’t been able to cross off my Oscar nominated must-see list has been the dark, sweeping, would-be epic, “There will be Blood.” I’ve had plenty of opportunities to listen to the rave reviews as well as some sharp criticism of Paul Michael Anderson’s (“Magnolia,” “Boogie Nights”) period drama about a misanthropic,…

There’s a serious ethical issue that surrounds this year’s presidential campaign. No, it’s not pulling out of the war in Iraq or universal healthcare, but a little thing known as campaign music clearance, a point illustrated once again by Democrat John Mellencamp asking Republican John McCain to stop using his music as a rallying cry…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners