And the immigrants Iowa does have, about 2 percent of the population, have become enough of a hot-button subject that twice in the last three years the state legislature was embroiled in debates over proposals, not passed, that English be made Iowa's official language.

However, Neil Young of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film "surprisingly says little about the hot-button subjects it ambitiously sets out to explore."

Now we're discussing the real hot-button subjects, like force protection.

As for that other hot-button subject, racial profiling, Sept. 11 altered many attitudes.

In the age of the Amber Alert and Megan's Law, "Frozen" brings a coolly discursive attitude to a hot-button subject.

One recent afternoon she talked to Karen Durbin about the hurdles and high points of making a multiple-award-winning movie whose hot-button subject made distributors hesitate for more than a year.