John Woo Joins Cast of "The Founding of a Party"

John Woo, one of the most successful film directors in modern-era Hollywood, has joined the cast of "The Founding of a Party". The film is a tribute to the Communist Party of China and will be used to commemorate the party's 90th year anniversary.Min Lee, a reporter for the Associated Press provides the following details on John Woo's involvement with the film:-- HONG KONG - A-List filmmaker John Woo is the first celebrity to join the cast of the second major film in the leading Chinese state film studio's campaign to reform the propaganda genre with a heavy dose of star power.Last year, China Film Group Corp. released "The Founding of a Republic" to mark the Chinese Communist Party's 60th year in power. Eager to beef up the party's image among audiences who favor commercial blockbusters or Hollywood fare, the studio stacked the historical epic with Chinese-language cinema's biggest stars. Actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Andy Lau were happy to comply even though they were given mere cameos, mindful of the importance of cultivating relationships in the booming mainland market.China Film Group is now following up the 60 million Chinese yuan ($8.8 million) production with a second star-studded blockbuster that commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party next year. --About John WooJohn Woo Yu-Sen SBS (born 1 May 1946) is a Chinese film director and producer from Hong Kong. Recognized for his stylised films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion,[2] Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard Boiled and Red Cliff. His Hollywood films include Hard Target, Broken Arrow, Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2. He also created the comic series Seven Brothers, published by Virgin Comics. Woo was described by Dave Kehr in The Observer in 2002 as "arguably the most influential director making movies today". Woo cites his three favorite films as David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Melville's Le Samoura.About Communist Party of ChinaThe Communist Party of China (CPC), also known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and the ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is the world's largest political party. The legal power of the Communist Party is enshrined in the PRC's constitution and the its position as the supreme political authority in the PRC is realized through its control of all the state and legislative process. The Communist Party of China was founded in May 1921 in Shanghai, and came to rule all of mainland China in 1949 after defeating its rival the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. The CPC claimed nearly 78 million members[4] at the end of 2009 which constitutes about 5.6% of the total population of mainland China.