Idol Chatter

When facing a movie like “The Ten Commandments: The Musical“–based on a recent stage production and set for DVD release this week–I always approach it from two angles: (1) Is the product a good/entertaining one?; and (2) Is it true to the text? The first good sign for this production is its enormously talented cast.…

The first image you see in Stanley Nelson’s new documentary “Jonestown: the Life and Death of the Peoples Temple” is a row of smiling young faces–black and white, teens and 20-somethings–taken under a blue and sunny sky. They look as if they could do anything–even carve out a utopia in the jungles of Guyana. Yet…

Last season, the VH1 celeb-reality series “Breaking Bonaduce” found ratings success by exploiting former “Partridge Family” star Danny Bonaduce as he spiraled out of control. There was no end to the footage in which Bonaduce was abusing alcohol, steroids, and other substances, all the while emotionally abusing his wife, Gretchen. Some equally salacious footage started…

I’m not saying it was our call to boycott O.J. Simpson’s gruesome upcoming book and his accompanying Fox interviews that did the trick. (I’m sure you know that O.J. planned to reveal that if he had killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, this is how he would have done it.) But perhaps…

The current James Bond movie is clearly different from most of the other 23 Bond (21 official) movies. The actor is different. The tone is different. The villain(s) is (are) different. There’s no “Q,” and though “M” is the same actor (Judi Dench), even she has a new edge to her. That said, it’s an…

The relatively minor Jewish holiday of Purim is having its moment in the cinematic sun. First came “One Night With the King,” a dramatization of the Book of Esther, which is read in synagogues on Purim and whose story the holiday commemorates. Now comes “Home for Purim,” a small independent production about a 1940s Southern…

I saw a promo for Monday night’s “Studio 60” episode and couldn’t help wondering: Is this the week that the show–to coin, or at least adapt, a phrase–jumps the cross? As you probably know, “jumping the shark” has come to refer to that definining moment when a good TV show has gone bad, reached its…

What can be said about the news revealed this week that football star turned B-list actor turned murder suspect in the “Trial of the Century” O.J. Simpson will be soon releasing a book called “If I Did It”? The book is a hypothetical telling of how he would have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson…

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray probes the moral core of “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” the video game version of the popular apocalyptic book series by Tim F. LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. (See fellow blogger Paul O’Donnell’s post about the game’s pre-2005-Christmas debut for more information.) Bray’s interest was apparently sparked by Rob Corddry’s satirical…

Okay, this summer’s drunken anti-Semitic rant was a P.R. faux-pas. But just as Mel Gibson overcame his more veiled anti-Semitic reading of the Gospel in “The Passion of the Christ” by coaxing support for the deeply Catholic film among evangelicals, he’s determined to overcome his Cuervo Nacht jabbering by showing his new film, “Apocalypto,” to…

More from Beliefnet and our partners