Ealing Studios

Laura Carmichael may be a lady on "Downton Abbey," but she doesn't have one of the more glamorous roles on the series: She plays Lady Edith Crawley, a mousy, sharp-tongued girl surrounded by two bewitching sisters. Poor Edith falls somewhere between Jan Brady and Cinderella's evil stepsister. She doesn't know how to channel her intelligence, has no luck with men and is too bitter and manipulative to win much affection within her own family. The most pragmatic sister (and the one seemingly poised to succeed in a new era)

Alejandro Bellame Palacios' "El Tinte de la Fama" ("The Color of Fame") reveals in "El Tinte" how in becoming swept up in a Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest, a beautiful but naive young woman ultimately has a possibility for discovering herself -- if she doesn't destroy herself first. It is an assured, graceful film -- Venezuela's entry into the foreign film competition in the 2008 Oscars -- alternately amusing and unsettling, affectionate yet clear-eyed.

Even if classical guitarist John Williams wasn't blessed with immaculate technique and total assurance within the classical European repertoire he would have given his and subsequent generations a liberating gift: By opening up the guitar to influences other than the European canon, he has brought the literature out from under the long Hitchcockian shadow of Andres Segovia.

If the American marriage is frail and on life support systems, then "The War of the Roses" (citywide) is the sneak attack that pulls all the plugs. Pay no attention to its frenzied trailer, which makes it look like an interpersonal destruction derby. In the hands of director Danny DeVito and writer Michael Leeson, "The War of the Roses" is biting and vicious, a styptic pencil on the battered face of "civilized divorce."

Eddie Murphy did it with "Beverly Hills Cop." Sylvester Stallone with "Rocky" and "Rambo." Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis with their "Terminators," "Lethal Weapons" and "Die Hards." Now Michael Caine wants to get in on the act. "I've never had a persona to go on, something which was a Michael Caine film," says the actor, taking a break on the set of a movie he hopes will change all that.

Oscar fever is hitting its peak this week with the Academy Awards' ceremony just a scant five days away. Four DVD releases arriving today offer a look at Oscar then and now, with Warner Home Video presenting two Sidney Lumet films ($27 each) from the 1970s -- "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Network" -- and Fox and Universal each unveiling a contender for 2005.

Gordon Jackson, the butler who was the unquestioned master of the downstairs in the Emmy award-winning "Upstairs, Downstairs" TV series and whose lyrical Scots burr was heard in dozens of films, stage and other television roles, has died, his agent said Monday. He was 66. Jackson died Sunday in London's Cromwell Hospital with his wife, Rona, at his side, Michael Anderson said. The cause of death was not disclosed, but Anderson told wire service reporters that his client had recently been ill.

THE post-World War II British cinema produced brilliant comedies from quirky Ealing Studios, titles such as "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and "The Lavender Hill Mob" as well as gritty "kitchen sink" dramas helmed by angry young filmmakers such as Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger, Lindsay Anderson, Clive Donner and Karel Reisz. Every so often a horror film such as "Dead of Night" or "The Queen of Spades" would pop up on the landscape.

Four films directed by "the man you love to hate," two very, very long epics, Bogey's last bad-guy movie and a ghostly screwball comedy head the pack of oldies recently making their DVD bows. They make up a diverse group that nonetheless together offers an antidote to the patriotic fare filling TV screens at the moment.