I want to use my macbook w/ leopard and front row as my HTPC and my question is can I just rip all my music and movies to an external drive and have front row access it from the drive? and what is the best program to rip my dvds to the drive? Thanks

Yes, Front Row can handle it if your iTunes library resides on an external drive, and as far as ripped dvds, VIDEO_TS is officially supported. If you store them on an external drive, you just have to drop an alias to them in the Movies folder on your Macbook and FR will find them.

For ripping in OS X, I'm a big fan of MactheRipper.

Ok, after reading I decided to give osxbmc a shot. I added a source for movies but how do I organize it so that I don't have to open a bunch of folders? Or how to play the movie all the way through, not 20 minute clips.

Never used it, sorry. There are several existing threads on OSXMBC here, though...their support forum:

http://forums.osxbmc.com/