Dynamically load JPEG into movie clip (via param) and make draggable, resizeable, and more...

I'm using Flash 8 Pro. I'm pretty new to ActionScript 2.0 but am under the impression that this should be fairly simple.

What I would like is a method of loading a series of JPEG images (assumably passed in via a param) into individual movie clips. Then, basically enabling the user to drag them around, resize them, adjust the alpha channel, etc.

If possible, this will eventually be a larger scale web-based slideshow/image comparison utility-- but for now, I am mostly looking to build a very simple, very basic working prototype to demonstrate to the project managers that something like this could be implemented....call it conceptual research.

The code I have so far is to load one single image into a movie clip, and even that doesn't work. The image loads fine but I cannot drag it.

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// NOTE: assume this is nested in a for loop

_root.createEmptyMovieClip("placeHolder"+i, _root.getNextHighestDepth());
_root["placeHolder"+i]._x = 100*i;
_root["placeHolder"+i]._y = 25;
_root["placeHolder"+i]._xscale = 50;
_root["placeHolder"+i]._yscale = 50;
_root["placeHolder"+i].loadMovie("images/2004.jpg")      
_root["placeHolder"+i].onPress = function() {            
      this.startDrag(true);
};
_root["placeHolder"+i].onRelease = function() {
      stopDrag();
};
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Anyway, as I mentioned above, the goal here is to dynamically load the images, and make them draggable, resizeable, alpha channel adjustable. Eventually, I would like to research adjusting image contrast and color channels as well but that is not of immediate importance. Sample code or a very relevant link to a tutorial is preferred (although I like sample code better).

Thanks in advance,

- Mike