Charlotte Rampling

Most foreign actors jump at a chance to work in a Hollywood production -- more money, free English lessons and the global exposure that only the American movie machine can offer. But English-speaking actors including Kristin Scott Thomas, Charlotte Rampling, John Malkovich, Jodie Foster and Molly Ringwald have pursued separate careers in European productions that often receive limited or no release in the United States.

With studios jockeying to position their prestige movies for strategic advantage, the shortened Oscar season this fall may have benefited the 17th annual AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival, which is boasting more prominent movies than in years past. This year the festival, which runs Nov.

In the first few minutes of "D.O.A." (citywide) the film makers honor their source. They copy the unforgettable opening of the 1949 film noir classic in which the dying Edmond O'Brien stumbles into a police station to report his own murder by a slow-acting toxin that has given him 24 hours in which to find out who has poisoned him and why.

The duo performance can be the musical equivalent of one-on-one basketball. Or it can be a team effort, with players relying on complement rather than conflict. Both roads were taken Thursday at System M as the California Outside Musicians Assn. (COMA) sponsored a program dubbed "Night of Duets" featuring three different pairings of musicians, all of whom have an unbounded sense of their craft.

The Iron Lady/Albert Nobbs Available on VOD April 10 Oscar veterans Meryl Streep and Glenn Close squared off in the lead actress category this year, both nominated for roles that saw them radically altering their appearances and voices. Streep won the statuette for "The Iron Lady," a biography of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that skips through decades of the stateswoman's life in breezy flashbacks. Given how controversial Thatcher's administration was — and how much the conservative-liberal divide continues to be a major story around the world — "The Iron Lady" is something of a missed opportunity by director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan, as they take more of a Wikipedia approach to their subject than one that's relevant to today's headlines.

Several video companies have mined their vaults and unearthed a diverse collection of vintage movies and TV series, including a Ralph Bakshi animated flick, a collection of Vivien Leigh films, an Oscar-winning adventure starring Henry Fonda and a lunch box full of episodes of "The Monkees."

French photographer Jean-Loup Sieff, who in questing for the "right light" became one of the most stylish and respected fashion and portrait photographers of his generation, has died at age 66, Agence France-Presse reported Thursday. The news agency said Sieff died Wednesday night at Laennec Hospital in Paris after a long illness, but gave no details. Born in Paris on Nov.

One silent look from the French actress Ludivine Sagnier can tilt a cinematic world on its axis. In Claude Chabrol's "A Girl Cut in Two," in theaters today, Sagnier plays Gabrielle, a TV weather girl in love with a married novelist (Francois Berleand). As a birthday treat, this jaded Lothario, twice her age, ushers her upstairs at his gentleman's club, where she's to pleasure his friends. Vaguely aware of his plan, and self-destructively complicit, Gabrielle downs her drink as realization dawns on her face.

The nominees for the 19th Screen Actors Guild Awards were announced Wednesday morning, and, as always, there were some surprises and perceived snubs. In the drama category, SAG voters followed the trend firmly established at this year's Emmys by failing to nominate the ensemble of any broadcast network series. Last year, "The Good Wife" was among the nominees, but this year only its lead actress, Julianna Margulies, made the cut. The crowded cable landscape also meant that the cast of HBO's fantasy series "Game of Thrones" was overlooked despite picking up a nomination in 2011.

Alan Parker's occult thriller "Angel Heart" (citywide) is the color of marcasite--steely gray-silver and cold even when its actors are steaming in New Orleans humidity. It is a movie cool to the eye, but it's hell's own terrifying vision. It's not the universal, you-are-there, clutching terror of "Blue Velvet," which somehow bypassed the brain and went straight to the soul, but a precisely manufactured sense of doom that escalates as its intricate story unwinds.