featured content gallery -GRRRR

pretty much at wits end…looking for a solution cant find it…

trying to find out how to:

use a gallery, a slider, anything possible to pull an image from a post,with a blurb/exerpt of the post AND embed the GD Star Rating pluging into that image/frame etc which would allow users to vote on the picture (like hot or not), scroll to the next picture, or click on the picture to go to the post.
also..the ability to filter what content comes into the gallery..aka a dropdown that says..show me this not that..again..liek hot or not..
anyway anyone knows of a plugin or a way to embed dropdown filters and GD Star Ratings into a jquery slider, or nextgen or DDSlider or anything that will give me that functionality..
preferably would be able to use it as a widget but the main content box would work also..
using it on a static homepage…