With iLife 11, considerations of slide shows I have to turn a big stack of images into one of those somewhat sappy slide shows with music.

Google shows various advice from various points in time. The last advice I found was iDVD. Is that the right path to launch off on?
Nope, not at all. iPhoto has great slideshow capabilities.
Lots of examples on YouTube.

No need to involve DVDs; or slow, aging software like iDVD.