The Film Industry's X-Rating Under Fire

The jazz singer and pianist made a splash with his debut album two years ago. But despite Connick's success, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead is not impressed. He says the young musician apes Thelonious Monk and Frank Sinatra, and badly.

Rooker appears in two recently-released films -- the big budget action flick Days of Thunder, and the independently produced Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. He was born into a poor, predominantly white town in Alabama, and later moved to a black neighborhood in Chicago. After growing up among people working 15-hour days, it took Rooker until his early twenties to believe that acting could be a real job.

Critic John Leonard says the new trio of texts exploring the controversy stirred by the Satanic Verses vary in style, form, and slant. But all of them overlook a neglected part of the story: the responses of religious leaders in the West, who seemed to have learned nothing from their faith traditions' condemnation of great thinkers like Galileo, Martin Luther, and even Jesus Christ.