Crouching Tiger springs into action

The martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has given the New Zealand box office a real kick in the pants.

The film has become the highest-grossing foreign language film released here.

Crouching Tiger, which has English subtitles for its Mandarin dialogue, has taken $1,337,000 so far in its seven weeks in cinemas.

The previous record of $1,310,497 was held by Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning holocaust movie Life is Beautiful.

Crouching Tiger's distributor, Columbia Tristar, says the film is set to increase its take further after widening release to suburban and provincial theatres, although it will be playing in only 13 cinemas at one time.

The movie was No 4 at the box office last week, yet it played on fewer than a quarter of the number of screens of the films that were placed first, second and third.

Meanwhile, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has become the highest-grossing foreign language film ever in both Britain and the United States.

The movie, by Taiwanese director Ang Lee, has won Golden Globes for best foreign film and best director and is expected to figure among the Oscar nominations announced today.