how to use latest rpms with old distribution

Readers,

After failure to upgrade to 2010, reverted to 2008 which works nicely.
However, some programs need to be updated to be the latest, e.g.
mplayer with the latest ffmpeg. Is it possible to download the latest
mandriva 2011 rpm for mplayer and install everything required
automatically using urpmi. When the mplayer program is downloaded and
installation attempted, the command terminal response is that a
library file is missing. So this library is retrieved and mplayer
installation fails, asking for a _different_ library (!).