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Perhaps only Clint Eastwood could get away with a movie that lionizes the soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima while debunking traditional notions of heroism. "Flags of Our Fathers" honors the men of the so-called Greatest Generation while reminding us that mythology always involves a lie or two.

I was in New York last weekend to see "Voyage," the first play in Tom Stoppard's trilogy "The Coast of Utopia." It's minor Stoppard: flabby and repetitive philosophizing without much emotional underpinning, the first inconclusive third of a nine-hour event. But this drama set in 1830s Russia was welcome in one way: Its cast held half a dozen noted movie actors.

The Good German (Dec. 8) Oooh, 80 seconds of proof that George Clooney (pictured) is also handsome in black and white. I enjoy the gratuitious swirls of cigarette smoke surrounding the WB logo at the beginning and the title at the end. Whatever this movie is about (post-WWII Berlin), there will be smoking, which makes everything else more authentic. And Cate Blanchett smoking, at that. I can't stop replaying the part where she drawls in her best Euro-rific dialect, "You cahn't ever reeeeeally get out of Berlin." Well, no, not if you're going to keep saying it to me like that! One question: Clooney's an American journalist. Exactly who is the good German?
The Painted Veil (Dec. 15) "Is it a long-drawn-out affair?" asks Naomi Watts. "It's very painful," replies Edward Norton. So may the movie be -- it's about a cholera epidemic in 1920s China, and its tagline, "Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people," appears to have been lifted from a fortune cookie from that era. The trailer's quite lovely if just a touch dull. And who doesn't love misogyny? Show 'em, Na-om!
Dreamgirls (Dec. 21) Who even needs to see the trailer when the "You can do anything!" Kohl's commercial MTV makes you watch is so freakin' inspiring? It makes me wanna follow my dream almost as much as Jamie Foxx urging one of the ladies, "You gotta believe!" Man, Jennifer Hudson is really belting it out there at the end. And Beyonc, for once, isn't overly styled and looks completely believable as a '60s icon. But can she sing? I'm on the edge of my seat!

Even Shakespeare, I'm told, encouraged ad-libs. In his early comedies, he'd write something like "Clown is funny here," and the actor playing the zany part would riff. The script for "Man of the Year" obviously had the same instructions. Writer-director Barry Levinson leaned on Robin Williams the way a one-ring circus relies on its lone acrobat. So they're jointly responsible for the film's utter failure.

On the morning after Scott Ripley's final, sold-out performance in "I Am My Own Wife" at Actor's Theatre, Ripley sat in his home office in Mooresville. The actor/teacher contemplated the antique gramophone he'd purchased, with a thousand bucks he didn't have, so that the production's one essential prop would be authentic. He noticed dust on the machine's wax music cylinder, still playable after 100 years. He reached to clean it.

The script called for actor Jason Statham to bare all in a scene in the L.A.-centric thriller "Crank," which opened Sept. 1. "It was a little unnerving," the British actor admitted, "because there were 200 people looking at your pasty white bum. I said, `Oh my God, what am I doing?' "

Actress Amanda Peet and screenwriter David Benioff, engaged for more than a year and expecting their first child in early 2007, tied the knot over the weekend.

Mark Wahlberg used to be a tough kid roving the streets of Boston and was incarcerated at age 16. In his new movie, "The Departed," the actor examines the other side of the law.

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal got engaged to actor Peter Sarsgaard this week hot on the news that the couple is expecting their first child. It will ...