Chen Kaige's mythological epic The Promise is among 100 outstanding Chinese-language films selected by a Beijing jury to celebrate 100 years of Chinese-language film, state media have reported.
The ambitious movie was chosen before its release this month, the official Xinhua News Agency reported this week. Chen's 1984 movie about the Communist Revolution, Yellow Earth, also made the list.
A jury of 100 Chinese film workers and historians also selected 12 films made in Hong Kong and eight made in Taiwan, Xinhua said.
Among the Hong Kong films included were: Yuen Woo-ping's Drunken Master; Jackie Chan's Police Story; John Woo's A Better Tomorrow; Tsui Hark's Butterfly Murders; and Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express.
From Taiwan, the jury chose Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Eat Drink Man Woman, among others, the report said.
The list also includes three films by Chinese director Zhang Yimou -- Red Sorghum, Qiu Ju Goes to Court, and Hero.
The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said this week he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation. The Hollywood director has called Munich, which dramatizes the 1972 raid and Israel's reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, his "prayer for peace."
Actress Argentina Brunetti, who began her film career with the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life, has died in Rome aged 98, her son Mario Brunetti said on her Web site.
Born to an actress mother on the stage of a Buenos Aires theater, Brunetti made her name in stage plays before embarking on her Hollywood career in Frank Capra's 1947 classic starring James Stewart.
Her career spanned more than 100 films including Anything Goes with Bing Crosby in 1956 and The Caddy with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in 1953.
She was made a Cavalier of the Republic of Italy for her positive portrayals of Italian Americans in film.
Brunetti later became a Hollywood journalist, more recently covering the film industry in her blog "Argentina Brunetti's Hollywood Stories."
Her family, who announced her death on her Web site this week, said she would be buried alongside her husband Milo in Los Angeles.
Gay and political films are dominating this year's Academy Awards race with some experts expecting that Oscar will wind up wearing pink, either for left-leaning politics or sexual preference. As Hollywood starts its annual awards season leading to the March 5 Oscars, key front-runners in main categories are either gay-themed or political films, with Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, a drama of love between cowboys, leading the pack in the all-important best picture race.
The cast of Lost, ABC's hit drama of air crash survivors marooned on a mysterious island, have won one battle -- they beat a 40-year-old virgin and King Kong's girlfriend for the title of Entertainer of the Year. Entertainment Weekly named what it called a group of "treasured islanders," the cast of Lost, as its Entertainer of the Year, calling the show one of the "biggest cult breakouts since The X-Files."
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