Samsung SGH-T329 Stripe

I just started a two year contract with T-Mobile and got this phone, and to be honest I'm underwhelmed.
But maybe I'm not understanding the phone, and I was wondering if you guys could help me with 3 questions I had:

1) How do you turn on the front lcd display (ie, the small display showing time and field strength, located on the front of the phone, in black and white) WITHOUT opening the phone?
Say you're sitting in a movie theater and you'd like to check the time, but don't want to open the phone and flood the whole room with light, is there anyway to turn on the front display without opening the phone?

2) How do you change the settings on the phone so that the front display is on for a longer period of time? Right now, I know that opening the phone and closing it means that the front display will be on for about 1 second. Is there a way to make this last longer?

3) Everytime I confirm a change of settings (eg, whether or not the keypad clicks, different ringtones, etc), the phone does an almighty beep. Is there a way to turn this function off, and make the phone completely silent?

Thanks