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Critics go gaga over Three Gorges drama

Award-winning director Jia Zhangke's Still Life (Sanxia Haoren), which won a Golden Lion in 2006, premiered on January 18 in the United States, the 71st country to screen the film.

Set in Fengjie, a small town flooded and partially rebuilt several years ago as part of the Three Gorges project, the story follows a nurse and a coal miner's search for their spouses.

The film has already received praise from American critics. The New York Times says the film bears the mark of Antonioni and Rossellini, but also has strong personal style. The newspaper points out that Jia's work exists continues the work of the modernist masters, among other influences, but says that he is very much an artist of his own specific time and place. The New Yorker says that Jia is incapable of capturing an ugly or a non-resonant image, while the Village Voice says that the directors' sensitivity to location has the focused purity of landscape filmmakers like James Benning and Peter Hutton.

Scarlett to announce engagement: report

Scarlett Johansson is engaged to actor Ryan Reynolds, it has been claimed.

The Lost in Translation actress, who has been dating Ryan for almost a year, is said to be smitten with the Smokin' Aces star and has accepted his marriage proposal.

A source said: "We can expect an engagement announcement from Ryan and Scarlett any day now. They are very much in love and have decided to take the next step. Scarlett is thrilled!"

Scarlett, 23, and Ryan, 31, were first seen together at a New York cinema last April, shortly after Ryan ended his engagement to fellow Canadian Alanis Morissette.

The couple first sparked engagement rumors last year, when Scarlett and Ryan flew to Canada to meet his parents.

Cruise 'closer to kids than Kidman'

Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise's new biography reveals that his ex-wife Nicole Kidman has a difficult and emotionally strained relationship with her children, Isabella and Connor.

Pagesix.com quotes Andrew Morton, the book's author, as saying: "Those who saw the family close up concluded that Tom was much more comfortable and enthusiastic as a parent. The actor was in constant and controlling touch with the youngsters and their nannies no matter how busy he was."

Kidman had said in a TV show: "My kids don't call me mommy, they don't even call me mom. They call me Nicole, which I hate and tell them off for it." The biography is titled Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography.

China Daily-Agencies

(China Daily 01/23/2008 page18)