“The line that I sort of walk,” says Mike Nawrocki, the 3-2-1 Penguins! spokesman for Big Idea, “is wanting to make sure that the stories that we tell have biblically-grounded messages in them, so they can be a resource for their parents to pass values along to their kids. That’s at the core. And then we’ve got to be really funny, really entertaining, and have really great music. And then just hope that people are going to want to see them. And keep enabling us to keep doing that—with Veggietales, and with 3-2-1 Penguins! It’s a tricky thing. Entertainment itself is a very tricky business, and then when you add the ministry aspect to it—the faith aspect—it gets even trickier.” Look for Save the Planets! on DVD come September 2.

There’s a lot of authenticity to Deal… and it may indeed be the best poker film since Rounders—but that might not be saying a lot. This time out, though, what we’re really getting is The Color of Money repackaged for the world of Texas Hold ’Em. The Paul Newman role is filled by Burt Reynolds (playing the part of Tommy Vinson), and the young buck played by Tom Cruise in Martin Scorsese’s billiards classic is this time named Alex, and he’s played by Bret Harrison. (For those keeping score, you can kind of sense how things might go awry with this project.) The celebrity appearances are rote at best, and the film’s finale is scripted, for dramatic effect, to deny Hold ’Em fans the thing that really makes the game fascinating: getting to see the players’ hole cards. I’m afraid that I’m making this sound like a bad movie—which it is not. It’s just that’s it’s not particularly gripping.