Lucy Liu

We don't want to cross Lucy Liu. No sense getting her dander up. Even if she is on the phone, we've seen what she can do with martial arts in Payback and Charlie's Angels, with a gun in Ballistic and with a sword in Quentin Tarantino's new splatter-fest, Kill Bill. Heck, we've seen what she can do with just a growl in Ally McBeal. The wrong word, an impolite question, and she just might reach through that phone line and ... "I don't think of any of my characters as mean," she coos. "They're ... misunderstood.

THEATER LIGHT UP THE SKY -- 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Through Feb. 10. Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway. $15. 410-563-9135. Moss Hart famously quipped, "Theater is not so much a profession as a disease." In his classic 1948 comedy Light Up the Sky, he skewers the men and women who have been afflicted with a particularly virulent strain of the infection. The story is set in a Boston hotel room during the out-of-town tryout of a Broadway-bound drama by an unknown playwright.

An angry ex-Angel and lost witness protection IDs mean trouble in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (8 p.m.-10 p.m., FX), with Lucy Liu (above).

Guy wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of who he is, or why there's a dead body next to him, or where the suitcase full of money came from. Code Name: The Cleaner sounds like a parody of The Bourne Identity, and it's clearly envisioned as a star vehicle for Cedric the Entertainer. But it's not funny enough to work as parody, and Cedric has yet to show he has the chops to carry a film. Code Name: The Cleaner (New Line Cinema) Starring Cedric the Entertainer, Lucy Liu, Nicollette Sheridan.

Guy wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of who he is, or why there's a dead body next to him, or where the suitcase full of money came from. Code Name: The Cleaner sounds like a parody of The Bourne Identity, and it's clearly envisioned as a star vehicle for Cedric the Entertainer. But it's not funny enough to work as parody, and Cedric has yet to show he has the chops to carry a film. Code Name: The Cleaner (New Line Cinema) Starring Cedric the Entertainer, Lucy Liu, Nicollette Sheridan.

Come see Drew Barrymore lick a steering wheel while flaunting her death-drop cleavage in an unzipped-to-the-waist race-car jumpsuit! Check out Lucy Liu popping out of a leather bustier that apparently is appropriate attire for both baking muffins and kicking butt! Watch Cameron Diaz in a baby-T and Spiderman undies breathlessly bound to the door to sign for a UPS package! Need we say more to tout "Charlie's Angels"? For those of you who don't just require unabashed titillation to enjoy a movie, rest assured, there's more that makes this one worth seeing.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever doesn't have a plot: It has a rap sheet. The charges include vehicular mayhem, mass murder, assault with deadly weapons (handguns, long-range rifles, grenade launchers, hands and feet), kidnapping, destruction of public property - and the not-so-grand larceny of a microscopic assassination device that can be injected into a target and programmed to trigger a heart attack or aneurysm. That doohickey is what Hitchcock would have called "the MacGuffin," a central gimmick to propel the action.

As someone who's played with Barbies all my life -- well, actually, I stopped when I turned 23 -- I was thrilled to learn about the popular doll's latest incarnation, Barbie for President 2000. Toymaker Mattel Inc. launched the doll in April to show girls across America that they can aim for a position in the White House, and not just as first lady -- or intern. To prove that point, the new Barbie is spiffily dressed in a sharp blue business suit that says "I know the meanings of budget deficit and nuclear weapons!"

They ain't Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but they'll do. Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson have a great time buddying their way through the Old West in the delightful "Shanghai Noon," the latest chapter in Chan's unstoppable march toward U.S. box-office gold. The year is 1881, and martial-arts master Chan is Chon Wang, a less-than-honored member of the Chinese Imperial Guard who experiences the misfortune of allowing Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu) to be kidnapped from the Imperial City. When the emperor sends three of his most trusted warriors to deliver the ransom money, Chon is able to tag along as a baggage carrier for his uncle, the Imperial Interpreter.

THEATER LIGHT UP THE SKY -- 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Through Feb. 10. Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway. $15. 410-563-9135. Moss Hart famously quipped, "Theater is not so much a profession as a disease." In his classic 1948 comedy Light Up the Sky, he skewers the men and women who have been afflicted with a particularly virulent strain of the infection. The story is set in a Boston hotel room during the out-of-town tryout of a Broadway-bound drama by an unknown playwright.

If there's any question whether Lucy Liu is excited about her life and career, here's how the actress puts it: "I feel like I bought the E ticket!" Liu says with a giggle. "You know, like at Disney World or something, when you go on all the rides and then keep going to the next one, and you're like, `Wow!'" That "Wow!" feeling is how audiences have felt since Liu, 37, first hit their radar in 1998 with a career-making turn on Ally McBeal. As Ally's office nemesis, the mega-tough, mega-sexual Ling Woo, Liu was a shark in a business skirt who played with her prey before eating them.

An angry ex-Angel and lost witness protection IDs mean trouble in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (8 p.m.-10 p.m., FX), with Lucy Liu (above).

We don't want to cross Lucy Liu. No sense getting her dander up. Even if she is on the phone, we've seen what she can do with martial arts in Payback and Charlie's Angels, with a gun in Ballistic and with a sword in Quentin Tarantino's new splatter-fest, Kill Bill. Heck, we've seen what she can do with just a growl in Ally McBeal. The wrong word, an impolite question, and she just might reach through that phone line and ... "I don't think of any of my characters as mean," she coos. "They're ... misunderstood.

HOLLYWOOD - According to red-carpet protocol, featured players should arrive before the movie's stars. But at the premiere for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, it was already show time, and the youthful stars - Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu - were inside Grauman's Chinese Theatre when Demi Moore, who plays a supporting role as the dark angel, finally arrived. Moore, 40, swept in - too late to grant interviews, late enough to cause a stir. With young, photogenic boyfriend, well-known ex-husband and children in tow, she smiled to the cameras, tossed a sleek sheet of dark hair and rushed on, granting a glimpse of the real face and body that were as flawless as the images on magazine covers across the United States.

Action figures with figures: You can fit the appeal of the Charlie's Angels series in a cracked nutshell. But Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is so hyperactive, disjointed and downright foolish, you can't even appreciate the pulchritude. The director of this choppy cheesecake franchise goes by the name McG. He's the most aptly named moviemaker since Tinto Brass, who directed Caligula. Based on the success of the first Charlie's Angels movie, and in anticipation of the blockbuster opening of this one, magazines have filled their pages with cutesy-poo group interviews featuring producer-star Drew Barrymore (Dylan)

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever doesn't have a plot: It has a rap sheet. The charges include vehicular mayhem, mass murder, assault with deadly weapons (handguns, long-range rifles, grenade launchers, hands and feet), kidnapping, destruction of public property - and the not-so-grand larceny of a microscopic assassination device that can be injected into a target and programmed to trigger a heart attack or aneurysm. That doohickey is what Hitchcock would have called "the MacGuffin," a central gimmick to propel the action.

Action figures with figures: You can fit the appeal of the Charlie's Angels series in a cracked nutshell. But Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is so hyperactive, disjointed and downright foolish, you can't even appreciate the pulchritude. The director of this choppy cheesecake franchise goes by the name McG. He's the most aptly named moviemaker since Tinto Brass, who directed Caligula. Based on the success of the first Charlie's Angels movie, and in anticipation of the blockbuster opening of this one, magazines have filled their pages with cutesy-poo group interviews featuring producer-star Drew Barrymore (Dylan)

"The 1900 House" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., MPT, Channels 22 and 67) is public television's entry into Reality Summer, a season of voyeuristic "reality" TV series led by CBS' "Survivor" and "Big Brother." I'm not proud to admit that I got hooked on this four-week PBS series featuring a modern-day, middle-class English family living in a house equipped as it would have been a century ago - except for the cameras recording their struggle. The attraction had nothing to do with all the rationalizations about "experiential history" and "time travel back to the Victorian Age" that the series repeatedly offers via its narrator.

Sure, "Charlie's Angels" is about butt-kicking, sassy sleuthing and all that girl-power yadda yadda. But let's face it, what makes this new movie work isn't Drew Barrymore's Oscar-unworthy performance or Lucy Liu's "Matrix"-like kick moves. Superficial as it seems, it's the clothes. And for proof, you don't have to look much further than Cameron Diaz's plunging neckline as she wades out of the ocean in a sleeveless black wetsuit unzipped to the navel. The 1970s "Charlie's Angels" television show about the Townsend Detective Agency and its three comely private investigators may have created fashion icons of Farrah, Jaclyn and Kate.

Come see Drew Barrymore lick a steering wheel while flaunting her death-drop cleavage in an unzipped-to-the-waist race-car jumpsuit! Check out Lucy Liu popping out of a leather bustier that apparently is appropriate attire for both baking muffins and kicking butt! Watch Cameron Diaz in a baby-T and Spiderman undies breathlessly bound to the door to sign for a UPS package! Need we say more to tout "Charlie's Angels"? For those of you who don't just require unabashed titillation to enjoy a movie, rest assured, there's more that makes this one worth seeing.