Leonardo Dicaprio

AUSTIN, Texas -- Getting to know Robert De Niro is like getting to know the stranger sitting next to you on a city bus. You can ask basic questions and get reluctant answers, but the stranger probably wishes he were sitting next to the mute bag lady who wasn't so curious.De Niro is a great actor. He gives his all even in a small part like the bumbling pathologist he plays in "Marvin's Room," which is scheduled to open locally Jan. 31. But as an interview, the word is that he's no award winner.

Some 800 to 1,000 of Baltimore's beautiful twenty- to fortysomething-year-olds turned out at the Meyerhoff last weekend for the BSO's "Symphony Rocks." The evening began with a concert that featured Mayor Martin O'Malley and Ravens kicker Matt Stover as guest "conductors." Later, guests could take a shot at conducting themselves, with a virtual conducting computer game that was one of several entertainment stations set up in the lobby during the party afterward. This wasn't a fund-raiser, notes event chair Sharon Nevins, but more of a friend-raiser.

Capsules by Michael Sragow and Chris Kaltenbach unless noted. Full reviews at baltimoresun.com/movies. Babel, -- in which director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu suggests that the world's peoples do a lousy job of talking to one another, doesn't devolve into babble, but it comes perilously close. Inarritu employs multiple story threads that unfold with little regard to chronology, but the device seems arbitrary and unnecessary. The film comes across as more clever than profound. (C.K.) R 142 minutes B- Bobby -- a star-studded fictional account of what 22 disparate people were doing at the Ambassador Hotel the day Robert Kennedy was assassinated, is a lament of what might have been.

Relaxing from the sweet excitements of Christmas day, we went to an evening movie. It went on for three hours and 12 minutes.The plot is simple: A gem-seeking underwater exploration crew hauls up a safe containing a drawing of a beautiful, naked young woman, but no jewels, from a stateroom aboard the Titanic. A television news report interrupts a 101-year-old woman named Rose Calvert as she works wet clay on her potter's wheel. She recognizes herself as the model for the drawing and picks up the phone.

EVERY ONCE in a while, you come across something in the newspaper so profoundly disturbing that you just want to go back to bed and pull the covers over your head.This happened to me the other morning.The sun was shining and the birds were chirping and I was on the back deck, enjoying my fourth cup of coffee and vibrating like a cheap motel bed, which is how you need to be in order to read the paper sometimes.And there it was, a short item on Page 2 of this very section.This is what it said: A fourth "Godfather" movie was in the works.

That Howard Hughes was a bizarre man is indisputable. Bizarre is also how I might describe my own encounter - to use the term loosely - with the reclusive billionaire, who is back in the pop culture spotlight thanks to the new film, Hoax. Hoax is Hollywood's version of writer Clifford Irving's outrageous attempt to sell a fake Hughes autobiography back in 1971 and 1972. Despite his claims, Mr. Irving never got close to Mr. Hughes. In 1968, an odd experience left me wondering whether I had. At the time, I was a young reporter for United Press International in New York, assigned to cover Mr. Hughes' attempt to purchase a controlling interest in the American Broadcasting Company.

"Romeo and Juliet," by William Shakespeare. Abrams. 32 pages. $18.95. I'm not exactly sure who the target audience might be, but Abrams has published a very attractive retelling of Romeo and Juliet ($18.95), with some stunning illustrations by Margaret Early, done in the manner of the Book of Hours, complete with gorgeous decorative borders.People who are serious about the story probably want Shakespeare, while a young person enraptured by the Leonardo DiCaprio version won't really appreciate the quality of the art. At any rate, Abrams is to be congratulated for commissioning Early, whose work makes this a book to treasure.