Cate Blanchett

"So many people have condemned the play for its sordid theme," Vivien Leigh said in a 1950s interview about Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," the vehicle for one of her most indelible achievements as an actress. "To me it is an infinitely moving plea for tolerance for all weak, frail creatures, blown about like leaves before the wind of circumstance." That plea seemed more affecting than ever as the Sydney Theatre Company's production of "Streetcar" unfolded Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, with Cate Blanchett inhabiting the central role of Blanche DuBois.

For actor Hugo Weaving, the distance between his farm in Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles isn't just 7,500 miles, give or take. It's the distance between his identities as a pop culture icon and as a conservatory-trained actor who revels in the classical canon. Both of Weaving's faces are on prominent display in the Baltimore area this month. As a cartoon villain with inverted facial features in a red rubber mask, Weaver is stomping around the screen in the dozens of movie theaters where "Captain America" is now showing.

Director Gillian Armstrong has waited 10 years to get her version of "Oscar & Lucinda" on the screen. It seems an odd choice, because her work, such as "Little Women," has shown a marvelous empathy for its characters.In the novel "Oscar & Lucinda," author Peter Carey takes a decided pleasure in dragging his two protagonists through a series of spiritual and physical tortures so baroque that the whole enterprise begins to take on the looniness of a Monty Python sketch.Oscar (Ralph Fiennes)

"So many people have condemned the play for its sordid theme," Vivien Leigh said in a 1950s interview about Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," the vehicle for one of her most indelible achievements as an actress. "To me it is an infinitely moving plea for tolerance for all weak, frail creatures, blown about like leaves before the wind of circumstance." That plea seemed more affecting than ever as the Sydney Theatre Company's production of "Streetcar" unfolded Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, with Cate Blanchett inhabiting the central role of Blanche DuBois.

Heaven is so determined to be poetic and beautiful, it comes across as forced and didactic, a lesson in relative morality whose storyline doesn't so much flow as lurch from one stretch to another. Cate Blanchett, never lovelier or more vulnerable, is Philippa, an English woman living in Italy whose husband has recently died, indirectly the victim of a politically connected drug dealer the police refuse to touch. Frustrated that her continued pleas for them to do something are ignored - she's also a schoolteacher, and has seen the effect the man's drugs have on her pupils, compounding her resolve to bring him to justice - she takes matters into her own hands by planting a bomb in his office.

For actor Hugo Weaving, the distance between his farm in Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles isn't just 7,500 miles, give or take. It's the distance between his identities as a pop culture icon and as a conservatory-trained actor who revels in the classical canon. Both of Weaving's faces are on prominent display in the Baltimore area this month. As a cartoon villain with inverted facial features in a red rubber mask, Weaver is stomping around the screen in the dozens of movie theaters where "Captain America" is now showing.

"So many people have condemned the play for its sordid theme," Vivien Leigh said in a 1950s interview about Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," the vehicle for one of her most indelible achievements as an actress. "To me it is an infinitely moving plea for tolerance for all weak, frail creatures, blown about like leaves before the wind of circumstance." That plea seemed more affecting than ever as the Sydney Theatre Company's production of "Streetcar" unfolded Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, with Cate Blanchett inhabiting the central role of Blanche DuBois.

LOS ANGELES -- Last night was a great time to be Joel and Ethan Coen, as the Minnesota-born brothers performed an Oscar hat-trick, collecting gold statuettes for producing, writing and directing 2007's best picture winner, No Country for Old Men. The film, the story of a drug deal gone horribly bad and the aftermath gone even worse, was the evening's most-honored film, winning four Oscars.

Any other year, and fans of the Academy Awards would be buzzing today about the twin nominations for Cate Blanchett, about the first-time nominations for two aging veterans in the twilight of their careers, and about the wide-open race for the best picture Oscar, where it's truly anyone's guess which movie will win. But the talk so far this year isn't so much about who will win the Oscars as it is about who will watch them. Thanks to the Hollywood writers' strike, now well into its third month, it appears likely the Feb. 24 awards show will have to go on unscripted.

Real intimacy has become so rare in today's movies that the fake intimacy of Notes on a Scandal may take you in, then leave you feeling rooked. Seldom has so much first-rate acting and top craftsmanship been wasted on such a small-minded melodrama. The cascade of interest it has aroused this award season may just reflect the current hipness of cruelty. The film grabs your interest as a tale of two flawed teachers: the fetching art instructor Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), who sleeps with a 15-year-old student, and the battle-ax history department head, Barbara Covett (Judi Dench)

"So many people have condemned the play for its sordid theme," Vivien Leigh said in a 1950s interview about Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," the vehicle for one of her most indelible achievements as an actress. "To me it is an infinitely moving plea for tolerance for all weak, frail creatures, blown about like leaves before the wind of circumstance." That plea seemed more affecting than ever as the Sydney Theatre Company's production of "Streetcar" unfolded Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, with Cate Blanchett inhabiting the central role of Blanche DuBois.

LOS ANGELES -- Last night was a great time to be Joel and Ethan Coen, as the Minnesota-born brothers performed an Oscar hat-trick, collecting gold statuettes for producing, writing and directing 2007's best picture winner, No Country for Old Men. The film, the story of a drug deal gone horribly bad and the aftermath gone even worse, was the evening's most-honored film, winning four Oscars.

Any other year, and fans of the Academy Awards would be buzzing today about the twin nominations for Cate Blanchett, about the first-time nominations for two aging veterans in the twilight of their careers, and about the wide-open race for the best picture Oscar, where it's truly anyone's guess which movie will win. But the talk so far this year isn't so much about who will win the Oscars as it is about who will watch them. Thanks to the Hollywood writers' strike, now well into its third month, it appears likely the Feb. 24 awards show will have to go on unscripted.

Heaven is so determined to be poetic and beautiful, it comes across as forced and didactic, a lesson in relative morality whose storyline doesn't so much flow as lurch from one stretch to another. Cate Blanchett, never lovelier or more vulnerable, is Philippa, an English woman living in Italy whose husband has recently died, indirectly the victim of a politically connected drug dealer the police refuse to touch. Frustrated that her continued pleas for them to do something are ignored - she's also a schoolteacher, and has seen the effect the man's drugs have on her pupils, compounding her resolve to bring him to justice - she takes matters into her own hands by planting a bomb in his office.

Director Gillian Armstrong has waited 10 years to get her version of "Oscar & Lucinda" on the screen. It seems an odd choice, because her work, such as "Little Women," has shown a marvelous empathy for its characters.In the novel "Oscar & Lucinda," author Peter Carey takes a decided pleasure in dragging his two protagonists through a series of spiritual and physical tortures so baroque that the whole enterprise begins to take on the looniness of a Monty Python sketch.Oscar (Ralph Fiennes)

Look into the eyes of the Crystal Skull and you learn the secrets of the universe. Look into the eyes of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and you learn the secret of star power. When Soviet super-agent Irina Splanko (Cate Blanchett) forces the dashing archaeologist to lock orbs with her unholy treasure, the irresistible force of the Skull meets the impenetrable object of Indy's brain. Ford brings off this close encounter with the unflappable humor and strength he has brought to each episode of this cheerfully outlandish series.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is one tinny movie. It renders the bloody climax of Queen Elizabeth I's rivalry with her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Britain's defeat of the Spanish Armada as an upbeat Protestant passion play. The Virgin Queen of England, Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), unsullied except for a single kiss from Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), rallies her country against the rabidly Catholic Philip II of Spain with the help of handsome, glittering armor she might have filched from that Catholic and bitterly anti-British saint, Joan of Arc. Director Shekhar Kapur, who made the leap from Bombay to bombast nine years ago with Elizabeth, continues her crowd-pleasing saga.