FILMS AND BOOKS

As earlier movie offerings from this year -- "Son of God" and "Noah" -- suggest, some in Tinseltown are apparently dusting off their copies of the Scriptures and taking a second look.

He’s a rockstar, literally bigger than life. His red cassock glows with the love of the Church. He’s a small town boy made good, real good, and this year he sat down with one-hundred and fourteen other cardinals to elect a new pope after Benedict XVI abdicated due to poor health, AND, he was elected president of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops.

The following books, including one by an Arizona author, are suitable for Christmas giving.

The book "Three Moments of the Day: Praying with the Heart of Jesus” is one of those tests of Church unity.

For those who have never been inside any of the Vatican Museums, seeing a documentary about them done with a 3-D effect on the big screen could be a real treat.

Ah, how time flies. Wasn't it only yesterday that we were watching Zac Efron sing and dance his way through high school? And here...

Chapels at Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago are explored in Margaret M. Grubiak's "White Elephants on Campus," which provides readers with two history lessons. One is about religion's role on campuses of private, nondenominational U.S. universities; the other is about the architecture of these chapels.

Readers interested in the Catholic Church's role in international development will benefit from reading three books which explain that the church long has been a formal presence in international development and that individuals rooted in Catholic tradition, prayer and Catholic social teaching can change the world. But fair warning: Readers might feel inspired and uncomfortably challenged while reading them, for answering the call of Catholic social teaching, the books point out, is not an easy task.

Although they may be sociologically fascinating, in the cultural scheme of things, Elvis Presley impersonators are not widely deemed to occupy a particularly exalted position.

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Four couples learn lessons about maturity and mutual respect in "Think Like A Man" (Screen Gems), a sprawling romantic comedy...