Monitor picks

Enchanted 'Castle'

In Howl's Moving Castle, a spell turns a young girl into an old woman. Her only hope is to track down a wizard whose castle - a post-industrial, bagpipe-shaped structure that Frank Gehry might have designed in a moment of wild fancy - is constantly on the move from dark forces. Hayao Miyazaki's animated epic, now on DVD, is as painterly as it it is imaginative.

The Web has a new verb: to zillow. It comes from zillow.com, a new source for scouting real-estate prices by neighborhood. Plug in an address and/or ZIP Code, and all relevant info pops up on a satellite image. There are gaps - the database has 60 million entries and climbing. You'll find yourself zillowing your friends and neighbors. (They're probably zillowing you, too.)

Even scuba divers will marvel at Deep Sea 3D, an IMAX film that plunges viewers into an oceanic virtual reality. Here creatures such as the Fried-Egg Jellyfish make great candidates for "Ripley's Believe It Or Not."

FOX's American Idol should just fast-forward to the final four. It's already clear who's the dross and who has golden-Idol talent: Paris Bennett, with pipes well beyond her 17 years; Chris Daughtry, who makes last year's rocker Bo Bice look like Barry Manilow; the seemingly effortless Katharine McPhee; and Elliott Yamin, perhaps the most versatile of the crooners. Our dark horse? Taylor Hicks, he of the silver locks.

You've probably met a few Monday-morning quarterbacks in your time. You know the type: the bravado-filled boaster who loudly proclaims: "I would have caught that ball," or "I could have made that tackle!" On Spike TV's reality show, Pros vs. Joes (Mondays, 10 p.m. EST), cocky sports fans pit their athletic skills against the likes of Jerry Rice, Karl Malone, and Matt Williams. Is it game over, or game on?