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John “Napoleon Dynamite” Heder says he is avoiding the Hollywood limelight. That’s like Lindsey Lohan saying she is respectfully declining the Nobel Prize. He says its because of his strict Mormon beliefs, but I have a creeping feeling it has more to do with the movies he makes sucking. I mean, did you see Benchwarmers? Yeah, neither did anyone else.

You used to be a genius! Have baby names reached such Olympian status that they’ve now become the fuel to stoke the flames of a Gwyneth Paltrow backlash? Gwynnie’s backlash comes about a year after a fun-while-it-lasted-but-utterly-pointless-against-the-universal-money- machine-that-is-Coldplay backlash. I guess husbands and wives share everything: morning yoga, macrobiotic Noodle Kugel, and backlashes.

Opening this week are American Dreamz and The Sentinel, two movies that so obviously cop from their successful television counterparts, it’s a little hard to take them seriously. That said, Keifer Sutherland is in full on Jack Bauer mode in The Sentinel, which means I’ll be in the front row opening weekend, bighting my nails off, pumping my fist and yelling “Just do it!” at random points during the movie. Better yet, Sutherland has just confirmed that a 24 movie is in the works.

In American Dreamz, a thinly-veiled American Idol send-up, Hugh Grant is in full vacant jerk mode…the kind of slick, damaged elitism he polished in About A Boy and Bridget Jones’ Diary. Still, director Paul Weitz proved with About A Boy that he can move away from sophomoric humor of American Pie, and Mandy Moore may have actually found a role that suits her. She probably auditioned for the first American Idol five years ago. No call backs yet. With Dennis Quaid playing a role as close to W as John Travolta’s Primary Colors turn was to Clinton, is it possible that American Dreamz has something interesting to say about our celebrity-obsessed culture?

And finally, Mel Gibson’s Mayan epic, Apcalypto, has been delayed from an August release to a December release because of rain delays. Yeah, you’re filming in a rain forest. Go figure.