Bushfiva - negative on the dodge & burn issue, though I can understand your confusion. The "Graduated Filter Tool" is indeed a brand new feature in Photoshop CS4 Camera Raw (it lives on the menu up the top of the screen in camera raw and is easy to miss unless you know about it).
In addition to exposure, you can also adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness and colour which are then blended into the image in much the same fashion as you'd get if you applied a graduated filter either on the lens or in the darkroom in the traditional film analogy.
More here
Five Adobe CS4 Goodies for Photographers .
Apologies for the thread drift Jof, but stick with it and enjoy!