On Michelle Obama's Rounds: Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hanks, New Anti-Obesity Challenge

Some news on First Lady Michelle Obama's childhood obesity campaign will come in the next paragraphs, but first, since I am still in post-Oscar mode, this dispatch will also touch on the movies. Here's what the First Couple will be viewing Thursday night at the White House movie theater: A preview of the new HBO series about the Pacific front in World War II, titled simply "The Pacific." Expected at the screening in the small theater on the first floor of the White House: Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, top military brass, some members of Congress and invitees from male and female vets organizations -- the VFW and Women in the Military Service for America Memorial.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Obama on Wednesday had a busy day. She met with Elizabeth Preval, the wife of Haitian Prime Minister Rene Preval, in the "yellow Oval Office," where an East Winger told me they chatted and had coffee. In the wake of the devastating earthquake, Prime Minister Preval was in Washington for meetings with President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and congressional leaders on Capitol Hill.

Later on Wednesday, Mrs. Obama traveled across the Potomac River to a hotel in suburban Arlington, Va., to deliver a speech on fighting childhood obesity to the PTA's national conference. She then headed to the State Department for a joint appearance with Clinton to honor the 2010 International Women of Courage award recipients.

Reese Witherspoon, whom I loved in her "Legally Blonde" movies, was at the State Department event in her role as honorary chairperson of the Avon Foundation for Women. In her remarks, she referred to her role as Elle Woods, the well-dressed character who was beautiful, blond and smart -- and struggled to be taken seriously.

"It is truly an honor to be here today," Witherspoon said. "As an actress, I've always sought out roles that portrayed women as strong and powerful -- such as Elle Woods . . . who happened to be the biggest fashionista who ever came to Washington -- until Michelle Obama."

I had earlier mentioned to my Politics Daily colleagues what I was working on, and they told me that one of Witherspoon's breakthrough films was about politics. In her 1999 flick "Election" -- where her leading man was Matthew Broderick; I love him in everything he's in -- Witherspoon plays ambitious student Tracy Flick in what Roger Ebert called "a wicked satire about an election for student government president, a post Tracy wants to win to go along with her collection of every other prize in school."

Thanks, guys.

Over at the PTA speech, Mrs. Obama unveiled a contest aimed at finding software applications for kids and parents to help them be active, healthy and not overweight. Now this is a bit counterintuitive: one of goals of Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move" drive is to wrest sedentary kids away from their computers and TV sets and get them doing something besides sitting. The White House said kids spend 7.5 hours a day, on average, in front of computers and TVs.

Mrs. Obama's "Apps for Healthy Kids" contest will offer $40,000 in prizes for new computer programs that "take advantage of the reach of digital media even as parents strive to reduce total screen time." The rules for the contest are at www.AppsForHealthyKids.com. Entry deadline is June 30.

"Now, we can also do more to make healthy living fun and exciting for kids, believe it or not," Mrs. Obama told the PTA. "One way to do that might be with video games. Now, we know our kids spend way too much time with these games. And we know we're going to have to fix that. But we also know that that's not going to happen overnight. So we might as well try to use some of that time to our advantage."

The contest, she said, is a shout to "software and game designers -- both professionals and amateurs -- to come up with games that incorporate nutritional information and make healthy living fun.

"And maybe you've seen those dance video games or those exercise games that families are playing together at home, or the ones that kids play using their mobile phones and home computers. Those are the kinds of games that we're talking about.

"We're also challenging designers to come up with apps and tools for us, the parents. So if, for example, you're at the grocery store and you're trying to figure out whether one food is healthier than the other, then you can pull up that answer on your iPhone," she said.

The judges for the contest is an interesting group:

Aneesh Chopra (U.S. chief technology officer, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy)

Mark DeLoura (video game technology consultant and vice chairman, International Game Developers Association)

Mike Gallagher (president and CEO, Entertainment Software Association)

Eric Johnston (senior software engineer, LucasArts)

David Lazarus (senior adviser to the secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

Michael Levine (executive director, The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop)

Mark Pincus (CEO, Zynga Game Network Inc.)

Steve Wozniak (co-founder, Apple Computer.)

Mrs. Obama will deliver two college and one high school graduation speech, the same number as last year.

- On May 8, she hits the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, a historically African American school.

- On May 16, she speaks at the George Washington University graduation; she told the students she would come for commencement if the students, faculty and staff performed 100,000 hours of community service.

- On June 11, the first lady will be at Anacostia Senior High School, a public school in the nation's capital that she visited last year.