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I attended the charity premiere (benefitting The Children's Health Fund) for Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith last night. Wow. Not too many stars in the audience, but a lot of fun. A more detailed analysis of the film, the trilogy, and the entire series will follow. For now,

Another American classic, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which includes several quotes from "Streetcar Named Desire"), is a half-hearted affair, a quintessential bickering couple drama lacking strong enough casting in the male half to pull off the caustic back-and-forth needed to make the tour-de-foce worthwhile. Kathleen Turner is a good

A Streetcar Named Desire  - The previous Broadway incarnation of Streetcar, starring Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange was a disaster, with an outclassed Baldwin-brother squeaking at a timid and practically mute Lange. This production with John C. Reilly and Natasha Richardson is much better though doesn't reach the highest ideal

The Aviator is a glossy, standard bio-pic with good performances and scenery all around, saved by Cate Blanchet's superb incarnation as Katherine Hepburn. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's take on the Howard Hughes story puts the billionaire's obsessions over technology and film at center stage, and adds some peeks into

Decent buddy-pic that, though overly earnest, earns respect for its emotional shadings. Sideways tells of the weeklong bachelor walkabout of two college buddies, both of whom have fallen into mid-life mediocrity. They travel to California wine country (not Napa, but Monterey), find new relationships (serious and casual), and, as these

Consider donating to proivide library books for Iraqi children.

Million Dollar Baby is another latter-Eastwood triumph, though not quite the "best picture" quality that some reviews might have you think. The story is essentially an expertly presented but standard young-boxer/grizzled-trainer movie. Of that genre, Rocky was one of the first to have our hero not actually win the